The October Wasp – A One Shot Story

I came across the wasp while walking to town on an unremarkable Sunday afternoon. This modest photo was taken with an ailing Pentax Auto 110 film camera, using a generic colour film that had expired in September 1995. I was using the Auto 110’s 18mm wide angle lens, an example that seemed to be quite grubby and faintly scratched. I didn’t hope for much from any of the kit.

We’re not in macro territory: no close focusing, no 1:1 magnification ratio. But we are in the realms of the fantastical – a tiny automatic SLR camera made by Pentax between the late 1970s and early 1980s, a minuscule lens, a frame of film that measures about 13mm x 17mm and a wasp that survived into late October. The camera and lens were new to me, purchased from an auction site for a modest amount. I took my inspiration from other photographers on 35mmc who have recorded their experiences with this camera.

But there’s a back story too – the camera had caught my attention forty years ago as a young man, growing up in Australia. I was looking for a first SLR, a first serious camera after a childhood Kodak Instamatic. I can remember seeing these Pentax cameras and the accompanying kit in shop windows in the city. A whole system of interchangeable lenses, a flash, an auto winder, filters and lens hoods, carry cases. At the time I never got close to owning a Pentax Auto 110. I guess the camera cost too much for a young student.

At the time, to my mind, the Pentax seemed to be a strange hybrid: a camera built like a fine watch, as beautiful as a piece of jewelry, as discrete as a tool for espionage. Weird, perplexing, almost unreal, a bit like the wasp on the leaf. Perhaps it was just too odd for me as a novice photographer. In the end I bought the more mainstream 35mm Minolta XG-M. I used this camera until I dropped it getting off a bus. An unfortunate end for a fine SLR.

On that ordinary Sunday I was putting a roll of expired film through the Pentax and struggling with the slipping winder. I could move the film on by making repeated strokes of the thumb lever. Eventually I seemed to get the film to the point where the Pentax registered a new frame and the shutter was ready again. The camera felt quite vulnerable, a fragile, delicate thing that needed finessing, being respected for its age and miniature engineering.

Midway through my walk, the wasp was a complete surprise – still, solitary, silent. I framed the shot, focused and pressed the shutter. Simple. There was nothing to review; no screen to examine; no idea if the photograph would amount to more than a blurred mass of green and autumn gold. Perhaps not even that. A blank frame, a failure.

When the developed and scanned photo came back I was pleased with the result. The 110 camera and film is never going to create the sorts of images we make today, but the little Pentax does create a mood, a nostalgic air, and a fragile, delicate window onto a world that I might have stepped into four decades ago.

Developing and processing by Photo Hippo Lab: https://photohippo.co.uk/

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