In your bag No: 1425, Mika
Mika keeps things as simple as possible, we as simple as it can get with 3 cameras. A bag full of compact goodness to finish the weekend off. check it out.

Hello everyone !

My name’s Mika, I leave in south of France,

I began shooting film around 2008 when I read an article about pinhole, I was fascinated with the idea of taking pictures with such a simple system. So I tried matchboxes with 135 film, I remember feeling like a kid dealing with magic ! these pictures were so intriguing ! I was hooked!

My bag is a very cheap one, around twenty euros I think, I see some beautiful bags on JCH but I’m a man of a very few things when it comes to accessory so I keep enjoying with my eyes !

I wanted my gear to be the simpliest possible, it’s almost the most important thing for me with compactness. I always wanted cameras that could fit in my pockets.

I usually shoot while I’m in a place for something else, I mean it could be while working, when I’m having a beer with friends, when I go for gigs (I play music in some bands), so that’s the reason why I need the camera to be the smallest possible.

I’ve tried some reflex at the beginning but I felt very soon that carrying lenses and accessories wasn’t my thing so I began to collect all these rangefinders from the 70’s and 80’s like Canonet, Yashica Electro, Olympus RC, Ricoh 500GX then Lomo or Olympus Mju, always searching for compactness and metering in low light, since I shoot mostly at night, then I stopped around these three cameras:

Minox 35 GT-E that I bought for almost nothing with A Mju 1. Even if I’m not always at ease with zone focusing, this one is by far the one I was using the most before the shutter began to fail opening some times, it must be the electromagnet that is dying, I’ve already repaired it one time but I guess the end is near…I had so much pictures I liked from it I have to buy another one as soon as I’ll find a good deal.

Ricoh GR1 is a gift from a friend (yes, I’m surrounded by amazing human beings !) I’ve always wanted to try one because of Moriyama of course but in my early years, I’ve never wanted to spend a lot of money in cameras, I thought: « If the camera comes to die, I want to be able to replace it for a few Euros » and I knew this one would die one day or another so there’s was no way I would spend 500 euros on average on that one ! So you can imagine my hapiness when I opened the box, I was quite shocked ! It’s an amazing camera, each JCH reader know it I guess. It looks quite new but time does his job and sometimes, light meter is doing shit and ultra overexposed shots comes out, almost the end I know…Still dreaming about Ricoh/Pentax fixing them again one day, who knows…

Voigtlander Bessa R3A comes from a good deal too, I’m always looking for a Leica CL or Minolta CLE or a Leica M6 but I think I will never have the money for that one. But I found this Voigtlander with an Industar 50mm f3.5, as I said upper  I shoot most often at night or in low light, so the 8 seconds metered shutter speed is a must for me, since I don’t want to be depending on an external light meter.

I could been used to the 50 mm but the collapsible system was a nightmare for me, so I began to search for the good deal on a 40 mm, no matter it was the summicron-C or the Rokkor-M and I found this Rokkor-M I’m very happy with, so pleasant to use and very compact. that’s the camera I use most often now, I’m missing compactness but here I am at the moment. I also did a pinhole to use with the M mount, first love you know !

Long shutter speed I use are always working with electromagnetic shutter, and I fight with dying camera’s quite often because of that but I’m still looking for other solutions, if you think about something, please tell me !

Concerning film, it’s most of the time Ilford HP 5 or Kodak Tri-X pushed to 3200 iso in Rodinal or Ilford 3200 but that price’s one is begin to seriously rise here…Then printed in my Dark(bath)room.

The book Is Anima from the Lebanese-Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad.

I take the subway almost everyday so I have time to read, this one is the one I had in my bag at this time, quite a strong story.

Mouawad also wrote a play called Incendies adapted in movie by Denis Villeneuve, maybe some of you have heard about him, he’s the director of the next Blade Runner, this director is quite a surprising one when it comes to choose a project. Exciting.

Duck tape, always !

I’m not very good at promoting myself so I don’t have any Facebook, Instagram or anything else, here’s my website:

www.whattomorrowknows.com

it’s quite particular for a photography website but I wanted it that way. It’s more about moods and atmosphere than clicking on thumbnails. It’s about patience and constance. Some of you will get the idea and some don’t, I guess…

thanks !

Mika

Thanks for sharing with us, Mika. Nice and simple.
Check out the links and please come and comment.
Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com
Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.

Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here. Please understand that there is a long wait now as there is a backlog of submissions. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, as the ones that are not do not go up.

Cheers
Japancamerahunter