The Lubitel 2B

At the start of this blog I mentioned the cameras I had as a boy and how that fed into my passion for photography, the majority of which were compact cameras of one sort or another such as Kodak "Instamatic" 126 cartridge  models and a 120 boxy shaped one.
Like many boys I did have  fascination with older equipment especially if it was of better quality than what I had and at that time older Kodak box cameras could be had a few pounds from school or church fair sales unlike today.

One improvement was the quality of the lens and another is 120 roll film known today as 'medium format' has a bigger negative that can capture more detail and has less grain and so it was in 1979 for Christmas I had a brand new camera.
The Lubitel 2B is part of a fairly unique species of camera that uses two lenses, one for the view finder which is the smaller one on the top your peer down to view and another much bigger one that includes the shutter for taking the picture.
Mamiya in Japan made some which had interchangable pairs of lenses such as the C330 but my Lubitel made do with just one of 75mm focal length which is roughly 45mm in regular 35mm film terms.
It was a copy made in what was the Soviet Union of the Voightlander Brillaint German prewar Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) from the 1930's which meant  the shutter speed range was restricted from 1/15 thru 1/250 with Bulb which was set around the lens mouth as were the aperture settings.
It also lacked a light meter so unless you were prepared to guess, you needed to carry a separate lightmeter with you to set the shutter speed and aperture with.
Provided you knew what you were doing, always checked on the back of the camera for how many frames you had wound on and kept to suitable subjects (never airplanes in the sky) you could as I did get some lovely photos from it.