A while ago I got myself a Recesky TLR kit camera. This is a copy of the Japanese Gakkenflex camera, which was published as a kit with an issue of ”Otona no kagaku”, a magazine about science and engineering which always comes with a kit project to make. You can get the Gakkenflex on ebay etc with the magazine, which looks beautiful, but with my somewhat shaky command of Japanese I thought I’d go for the Recesky, a Chinese copy which is almost identical and significantly cheaper, but comes on its own with no magazine. Mine was twenty quid on ebay.
The camera comes as as a kit, with full instructions that are a) in Chinese and b) illustrated with diagrams that don’t exactly match what’s in the box, which can lead to some interesting trial-and-error.
It’s actually not that hard to assemble, there’s no tools required apart from a small screwdriver and it’s fairly logical how it all goes together. The only bit that was really tricky was the shutter assembly as the diagram didn’t show how the spring needed to be set and it was very hard to get into place, one of those situations where you spend half an hour nudging it into place only for an ill-timed hiccup to send a shower of small parts pinging across the room.
Make sure you put the lenses in the the right way up too.
Once assembled you get a surprisingly solid feeling camera, complete with pop-up viewfinder shade and anchor points for a strap. Loading film is ridiculously simple, and operation is just point and shoot.
The viewfinder allows for reasonably accurate focussing, although the plastic lens does blur considerably towards the edge of the frame. Film is advanced by turning a knob, it doesn’t stop automatically at the next frame but there’s a rotating wheel marked with arrows to show you how far to turn. You can roll the film forwards and backwards as much as you like for all sorts of multiple / overlapping exposure possibilities.
According to the manual the camera has an aperture of f/11, and the shutter speed is about 1/100 – 1/150 depending on how the spring is set.
I’ve been playing with mine for a while and am really happy with the results, for something you put together yourself from a kit it’s great to see photos come back and is a wonderful illustration of how simple photography can be.
