The Bessa is a folding bellows camera, taking either 6x9 or, with a removable mask, 6x6 frames on 120 film. Voigtlander made the first Bessa in 1929, but the RF model was introduced in 1936. In some ways it's quite sophisticated for its age - it has a coupled rangefinder and a viewfinder which can be switched between the two frame sizes. It also has a shutter release that's not on the end of the bellows, but pops out from the lens door as it opens - high technology for the time. However the eagle-eyed will notice the unnecessary cable release attached in the photo above - I didn't actually manage to find the shutter button until well after I'd shot two rolls of film.

I quite like using old folders like this - it's a world away from modern photography, and forces you to take your time. The difficulties involved just add to the experience of using the camera for me, even if it makes the results a little unpredictable. A folder is a very portable way of exloiting a large neg size, making them good for landscape stuff where a bit of walking is involved and you don't want lug a great lump of camera around.

Gerry shot a large number of landscapes - mostly on 35mm slide, but a good deal on medium format as well. He clearly enjoyed just wandering on his own with a camera, and there's a definite appeal to that - just walking and looking, and not really thinking about much else. In later years Gerry struggled to walk any significant distance, due to something called intermittent claudication (something similar to gout, and I think similarly a consequence of good living). As a result, the amount of lensmanship sadly decreased. This was no barrier, of course, to the continued acquisition of interesting cameras.

I took the shots below whilst on holiday in France this August. Over several days I drove the route between Quimperle and the campsite and admired the openness of the scenery. Large fields punctuated by rows of trees, telegraph poles and only the occasional house. Not much different from rural Britain, but different enough. So, I went for a walk along the same route with the camera.

As with most folding rollfilm cameras, there's no fixed travel wind-on, you just turn the knob until the next frame number appears in a little window on the back. The window has a sliding cover on it, and I've never really thought about whether I usually shut this cover or not. On this occasion I left it open the whole time, and this proved to be a mistake - it's clear from the fogging in the images that light is getting in. I think some light was probably leaking round the film door, but in the image below you can see the red blob of the film counter window is the main culprit.

With black and white film it's less of an issue; there's more of an overall fogging, which has the effect of aging the whole image, making these pictures seem like artefacts from the early days of photography. Not exactly what I was aiming for, but quite nice in a way.

I really enjoyed using this camera. I suppose you could call it slow photography, and that slowing down makes for a pleasurable, relaxed experience. I'm not sure it was a roaring success image-wise, but I'd certainly go back to it, or at least to one of the numerous variants of the Bessa in Gerry's collection.

The Contax G1 is something of an oddity. A sort of rangefinder that's actually an autofocus; a sort of point and shoot that offers only aperture priority or manual; a sort of compact that's actually quite big and has interchangeable lenses. The G1 sits in a no-man's land between modernity and tradition. At the time it was made - the mid nineties - it was designed to rival the Leica M6, and it makes that camera look technologically backward by comparison. But with twenty years' hindsight, the G1 seems a little too modern to be interesting. It's not quite classic enough have the cachet the M6 still enjoys, but not modern enough (or, essentially, not digital enough) to have a real use today.

I can remember Gerry buying this camera - he got it new, which means it was probably an end of line deal . Although the G system lasted until 2005, the G2 came in around 1996 which would have made the outgoing G1 too cheap for Gerry to pass up. Contax was one of the brands Gerry seemed unable to resist - he bought several of their SLRs, as well as the T2 compact, and the Yashica branded T4 and T5 compacts. I think he liked the sharpness and, of course, the cachet of the excellent Zeiss lenses. And he wasn't alone in that - many of these cameras still command high prices due to the quality of the lenses. The standard lens for the G1, the 50mm f2 Tessar, is a case in point - in contemporary tests it outperformed the Leica Summicron and was apparently the second sharpest 35mm lens ever (I don't know what beat it, but apparently not a Leica).

The camera has a solid, quality feel to it. Every surface is clad in titanium, and the overall look is a sort of nineties update on the classic rangefinder layout. It's very pleasing to hold thanks to excellent weight balance and ergonomics. Like all the best designed cameras, it makes you feel like you could really crack the whole photography thing with this one. However, in actual use it doesn't quite turn out that way. Gerry was very fond of the phrase, "A bad workman blames his tools", but in this case I am going to blame the tool, at least in part...

First off, the lenses are brilliant. The 50mm, in particular, is beautifully sharp, and really gets the best out of the limited capabilities of 35mm. This is provided you manage to get anything in focus, which is a bit tricky with this camera as the autofocus is, frankly, bog-awful. It's incredibly slow, the single central focussing point is overly precise, it makes a racket, and is completely freaked out by sky. There's also what is obviously supposed to be a very sophisticated parallax correction system in the viewfinder which just makes a lot of noise and is more distracting than helpful. There's no continuous autofocus, and although there is a focus lock, you have to half press the shutter so delicately to avoid accidentally firing off a shot that I was scared to use it most of the time.

There is manual focus, which is in effect a kind of digital rangefinder. An LCD scale below the viewfinder tells you when the focus is correct. However, it uses the same system as the autofocus so is, unfortunately, equally frustrating. I'm sure I'd eventually get used to the Contax's foibles, but after shooting two rolls I was mainly just annoyed with it. I so wanted to love this camera, but just couldn't manage it. I would have been better just looking at it and never using it. It looks great.

That's probably enough complaining - I hadn't really intended to do a technical review, but it sort of took over. Probably time for some actual photos. Here are a few shots taken in Guestling Woods, just outside Hastings.

I also took it to Camber Sands. Here's a quick tip: don't try and change a lens on the beach at Camber. You'll be removing sand from the insides of your camera for ever. That aside, I managed a few passable photos. This one, of Erin chasing after Ziggy, was my favourite, and I'm not really sure why. I think perhaps it's because there's something a little strange about it - a bit off-kilter - so it's not entirely clear what's going on.

Overall this camera makes me a bit sad. I'm not that sure Gerry, having undoubtely paid good money for it, actually used it that much. I imagine he was put off by the same things that annoyed me. So, it's been underused in its lifetime and is pretty much defunct and unloved now. It seems like a grand idea that didn't quite come off. What's sad is that the G1 should be a great camera, and almost is, but it's let down by the technical ambition behind it. The lenses are now sought after as converters allow them to be mounted on modern digitals, but the camera itself is nothing like as popular as its less advanced contemporaries. In terms of long-term appeal, Contax should probably have just gone for a decent but simple Leica knock-off, but I like the fact that they at least tried to push things forward.

This the Nikon S3, a 35mm rangefinder camera dating from the late 50s. Nippon Kogaku had been making optical equipment since 1917, but only started making consumer cameras in 1948. Nikon's most famous rival, Canon, had been making a 35mm rangefinder since 1933. Whilst Canon's models were essentially Leica knock-offs, Nikon had ambitions to produce something new. This is a quote from Nikon's website:

The design specifications of the small-size camera needed to introduce the advantages of the "Leica" and "Contax" models. These models were dividing the world of photography as the highest-class models available. However, the camera could not be a duplicate of either of the two.

This doesn't quite tie in with what Gerry had always told me: that Canon copied Leica and Nikon copied Contax. So, I dug out a Contax and compared the two:

Not an exact copy, but the resemblance is clear. Not as unique as Nikon had perhaps hoped.

Really, this is what Nikon has always done: rather than make something earth-shatteringly new, and suffer the inevitable teething troubles, they take existing technology and make it work. And not just work; Nikon make it work well and, crucially, they make it work reliably.

I'm a big fan of Nikon's mechanical SLRs, in part for their robustness and usability, but also aesthetically - they have the sort of rugged beauty which only comes of form following function. For similar aesthetic reasons, I've always liked the look of the Nikon rangefinders, but until now I'd never used one.

Gerry was, as he would say, 'more of a Canon man', so there are only a few Nikons in the collection. All of them seem to be in really good condition, so this was probably his reason for buying them - he couldn't resist a decent example of any camera if the price was right. This S3 looks like it's hardly ever been out of its case. It's got a 50mm f1.4 on it, so a good fast lens for low light stuff. I thought it would be interesting to try shooting indoors with it a bit, so went first to an auction house in Perth. I'm trying to pluck up more courage when photographing people and thought this might be a good spot for it. However, I still had to hide behind some chairs to get this shot:

I like the contrasting light levels in the image, although I think it would have been a better photo with just one person in view. Like in this next one, where the bloke didn't seem to mind me photographing him at all...

It's a great camera to use - a nice clear rangefinder, well placed controls - and makes a fantastic noise. It's a bit clattery, but it's somehow a precise clatter. I realise I'm becoming a little obsessed with the sounds of these old cameras. It must be some nostalgic hankering for things lost to digital - a bit like people who become wistful about the crackling of vinyl records (and those people would include me).

Whilst in Scotland I took the kids out for a game of pool with their cousins. I brought the Nikon along, and although the varying lighting in the room made things a little tricky, I was surprised that there was generally enough light for shooting at 1/30th sec. In between getting in the way - and generally embarrassing the children - I managed to get a few half-decent images:

I'm particularly pleased with this last one. The lighting and composition has worked out well, but I also like the look of determined concentration on Katharine's face.

For a camera that's knocking on sixty years old, the S3 feels almost modern. I found it really easy to use, which meant I got better shots . It just works, and doesn't get in the way of what you're doing, which is what a good camera should be like. With cameras like this one, it's easy to see why Nikon made such a big impact on the professional market in the fifties. What's surprising is that they only made rangefinders for such a short period. By 1959, a mere eleven years after making their first rangefinder, Nikon was winding down production to concentrate on the growing SLR market which, as it turned out, went rather well for them...