Canon 814 Autozoom Memories

Ingmar Bergman with a Canon 814 Autozoom – the camera of my youth!

Whoa.!

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I put this camera on layaway for a year. Saved all my allowance money and from doing odd jobs. I only spent 29 cents all that year – for a bag of sunflower seeds – that’s how much I wanted that camera. And I got it!

I loved that camera. The case it came in had a “new car” smell. I still have the camera and the case, and now, almost 45 years later, it still smells like that whenever I open it, and it take me right back to the thrill of having such a wonderful camera and making all kinds of experimental films.

I was so enraptured, that after I finally picked it up, I put its companion projector and audio recorder on layaway as well, and spent another year saving up for them. The recorder came in a brown leather carrying case, that also had that “new car” smell.

I was so proud and felt I could make the most wonderful movies ever committed to film. Perhaps, in my own artist’s heart, I did, though I’m likely the only audience that believed so.

Still, I’m drawn back to the eager anticipation of the future or, as Tom Petty once sang, “The future was wide open.” Those were the days of dreams and surprises, of joyous motivation and unexpected pleasures.

I think I shall pull out that old camera again this evening, or, as Elton John once sang, “Roy Rogers is riding tonight…”