First film 1959 Praktica IV

At the former Baptist Chapel in Haggate, Burnley, Lancashire.

Well, it has been quite a while, but the 1959 Praktica IV is finally back from being repaired and fully professionally serviced and I ran a film through it yesterday. I have had the film developed and scanned so lets see what a 1959 Praktica can do today 66 years after it was built.

The shutter and a fault where the mirror would raise when being wound on making it unusable, the slow speeds did not work and the shutter was generally very sluggish. A new spring was made for the slow speeds and everything was dismantled, cleaned, lubricated and put back together.

The camera now sounds as sweet as anything, and I even managed to get 37 usable negs from the first film ! What a difference the service has made to this camera. The cost was £61.50, but I now have a useable camera instead of a nice looking paperweight! I think the repairer did a great job.

Here are some of the resulting images.

The subject of this film is Haggate Baptist Chapel, it is less than a mile from the Hill Lane Chapel featured on my last post, and is the Chapel from which the congregation split to form Hill Lane Chapel.

Sadly though, history has not been kind to Haggate Baptist Chapel as it was demolished around 20 years ago.

Why would you demolish a perfectly good chapel ? This is what I asked an elderly gentleman sat in the sunshine on a bench in the middle of the chapel cemetery! The answer came with a little shake of the head, 'they said it was unsafe' He knew, like I knew, it was just an excuse to pull it down, another thing in this countries program to destroy strong working class communities.

Then a slow smile spread across his face, 'they did not get it all though, the Chapel Organ went to a Church in Latvia.'

I strode a few places forward to take the picture above, then turned round to continue my conversation, but he had gone!

I tripped up in the long grass, looked down and saw this stone, half buried in the undergrowth.

So you may be thinking, what is it like to use a 66 year old Praktica IV today? The answer is it's great fun, but very slow compared to a modern digital camera, oh yes, and you have to think, which like this camera, is becoming a thing of the past!

I could of course have used a more modern lens, an automatic one, that would have speeded things up a bit, but no I thought, I would use the non automatic 50mm f2.9 Meritar from E.Ludwig, made in the Dresden area of Germany at the more or less the same time that K.W produced the Praktica.

The Meritar lens was the entry level lens fitted to the Praktica IV. In 1959 it cost 52 DM, a manual Tessar would have cost you 139DM, an automatic Tessar 190 DM, while a 58mm Biotar would have set you back 305DM! So without being unkind to the little Meritar, it was very much a budget lens.

The above is a price list from 1959, yes it's an Exakta list but the prices like the lenses are more or less the same.

The Meritar lens. I used no 1248566 for the pictures of Haggate Chapel. It is a neat small compact lens, you can pre-set the aperture using the thin ring at the front of the lens, focus wide open otherwise the viewfinder is too dark to see anything, them once composed and focussed move the thin middle ring until it stops at the aperture you pre selected. I chopped the top off the first couple of upright shots I took, by removing the camera from my eye to check the aperture, then when you put the camera back to your eye the image is too dark to re-compose. The trick is to do it by feel, just moving the thing ring back with your fore finger without taking the camera from your eye! It's easy by the time you have shot a whole film!

I had got the hang of it by the time I had taken this upright shot above.

So what do you think about the little 50mm f2.9 Meritar ? I was more than happy with it, I quite like the results I got from my expedition into rural Burnley at the Chapel that is no more. I like the look of the pictures, they have a nice vintage feel to them in my eyes. I suppose this is to be expected as the Meritar is a three element triplet lens, a Cooke Triplet, the design of which originated from 1893, of a similar vintage to many of the gravestones here.

I like how this lens renders the images, sharp, but not bitingly sharp like the Zeiss lenses are, its like it is saying, yes it's sharp enough you don't need any more!

So, I quite like this lens and my next task is to find a good lens hood, a UV filter and a couple of yellow ones of varying degrees and give it another go. As for the Praktica itself, then an eye cup for the viewfinder to cut out any stray light would be useful, I do find focusing the plain screen difficult, but that is a fault of my eyes more than the camera!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this post and the accompanying pictures, I may have made the grave mistake of the subject being similar to the last post, but there you go. Talking of last posts, there are a few war graves in the Haggate graveyard including a memorial to Clifford Lacey DFC, a wartime pilot hero of the Second World War.

I really enjoyed using the Praktica IV, yes at first it was difficult to compose and focus, but once you got going it became much easier, you sort of slow down and relax, chill out and take your time. I was only thinking of spending a few minutes there, but I ended up being there all afternoon. A fascinating place and an interesting subject.

The real star of the show was the little Meritar, I was expecting very little from this lens, instead I think I got quite a lot !

And what of the community of Haggate, does the future bode well for them. The Chapel has gone, one of its two Pubs that stood either side of the crossroads has gone, that's two major pillars removed from a small community, I don't think it bodes well, even the big blue sign at the graveyard entrance has gone, but I hope I'm wrong.

The film used here was Agfa APX, for 36 exposures it cost £8 from my local friendly processors, Hippo in Burnley. This is the second one I have tried, and I'm quite liking it.

My uplifting thought from my visit to the Chapel that is no more, is that somewhere in Latvia, that chapel organ paid for by the Weavers and Millworkers of Haggate in the hard times that were the industrial revolution, somewhere, it is belting out the old Hymns!

Take care,

Phil