The Camera that Launched my Career… and Nearly Devastated me.

I’m talking about the EXA 1-A, my first ‘grown-up’ camera.

Don’t confuse this model with classic Exacta cameras with leaf or focal plane shutters. The Exa has no real shutter. The mirror flops up and down to expose the film. That’s it. The camera offers B, 30, 60, 125, and 175. A 1/175^th of a second? That’s what makes it such a rare collector’s item. Think of the subtle tones one can achieve with 1/175! You can’t get that kind of control with a Leica. My EXA includes a printed tutorial…on the camera!  Just one more reason it’s a classic. I’ll explain the tutorial later.

Do I love the EXA? People talk about their first loves in vastly different ways ranging from a magical experience on a powdered sugar beach in the Caribbean or the back seat of a 1956 Chevrolet BelAir at the drive-in movies. The beach scene is universal, but a drive-in movie may require non-Americans to do a Google search. In any case, the EXA was my ‘first’, so it’s special to me.

I’m sure you want to know how a dopey camera like the EXA 1-A can be both an important wrung on a career ladder, and the source of painful memories. Let’s begin at the front, where this uppity-down ditty started.

I was 14 years old in the eighth grade. My brother was serving in the U.S. Army in Germany. Being the great big brother he’s always been, he sent me a 35mm camera. I’d been a keen camera bug since age 7, but this device took me to a new level. When it arrived, my mother signed me up for a 6-week summer school class in B&W photography at the local high school. It included camera handling lessons, field trips, and (this is important) 2 hours of darkroom time 5 days a week. That was 60 hours in the darkroom!! Loads of kids dropped out, but our instructor, the young and stunning Ms. Victoria, kept me under her spell the entire time.

I was a very enthusiastic pupil and by the end of the class, her and her husband, a journalist, were taking me in tow to shoot pictures. Hundreds of pictures. Rock concerts in Golden Gate Park, anti-war demonstrations on the Berkeley campus, and shots of people doing odd and interesting activities. Ms. Victoria pushed me to “get close enough to touch your subjects. If you can’t smell them, you’re too far away.”

“Yeah,” her husband Phil said. “Don’t hide behind garbage cans and be a photo sniper. That’s crap.”

By that Fall, I was submitting photos to our local paper, the Hayward Daily Review. As soon as I got my driving license at age 16, I went to the Oakland Tribune without an appointment and showed my ‘portfolio’ to the photo editor, Sam Sydney.

“You got moxie, kid,” he said. He sent me out on an unpaid assignment to see what I could do. It was obvious from his dismissive attitude he didn’t expect much.

The assignment was to shoot a dicey area of Oakland slated for redevelopment. Mr. Sydney showed me what photos they had so far, and frankly, they were all boring. They had no close ups of the people inhabiting the place. The wide view documentary photos, to paraphrase the words of Ms. Victoria, had no beating pulse, no drama, and no soul. I left the Tribune office and drove straight to the ‘blighted’ neighborhood with my EXA, 50mm, 135mm telephoto, and loads of Plus X. Around 6 PM I returned to the Tribune building, located the darkroom, processed my film and made several prints. Can you believe there were no security guards asking me what I was doing? No locked doors or elevator codes in the tallest building in Oakland in 1968. Around 9PM that night I put a stack of prints into Mr. Sydney’s in-box and went home.

Mr. Sydney called me at 7am the next morning. My mom thought I’d gotten in trouble at school because the man on the phone was gruff. I didn’t know who ‘the man’ might be.

“Hello?”

“This is Sydney. Where did you get these prints?”

“I made them.”

“When?”

“Last night after I got back from shooting.”

“Kid, we gotta talk. When can you get down here?”

I didn’t tell him I was a sophomore in high school and it was a week day. I just said, “In an hour.”

When I showed up at his office, he took me into a conference room with “WAR ROOM” scrawled on the door. There were people sitting at a long table writing notes, looking at photos, and deciding what news was fit to print. Photos were scattered all over the place and some were tacked up on a cork board. Five were mine. Nobody paid any attention to me.

“Hey, crew, this is Jeffery. He took the shots of people on the board.”

No response, other than a few nods. Mr. Sydney turned to me.

“Kid, go back out there today and shoot some more. We go to press with a teaser at 10 tonight for the early edition tomorrow. The big spread is on Sunday. Get some people other than drunks. Working people. If you do more stuff like this, you got yourself a job. Understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“Not sir, and not Mr. Sidney. Just Syd. Now get some film from that cabinet and shoot this story.”

I shot 15 rolls of film that day. Meter maids, alley cats, garbage collectors, librarians, painters, carpenters, people breaking into cars, hippies smoking pot, a guy shooting up heroin in his car, hookers doing business in the narrow space between buildings, etc, etc, ad nauseum. I stuck my camera into faces and places I would never attempt today.

The shot of the drunk leaning against the wall appeared as a full page in the editorial section of the Sunday edition. The story won some awards. Months later a section of Oakland was flattened to make way for a new city hall and convention center. I did a lot more shooting in Oakland, but I never saw any of my subjects again.

When I look at the well-dressed parking lot attendant and the drunk guy leaning against the wall with his shiny boots, pressed shirt, sport coat, and silver belt buckle, I realize that no street people in Oakland today are dressed that well. The Native American guy drinking wine is well groomed and his jacket looks new. ‘Homeless’ wasn’t even a common term back then. Fifty-four years later the buildings are tall and glistening, but the people have sunk to new lows.

That day, in the Tribune building, I became a working photographer. I managed to stay in high school for another year, but never finished. I did graduate from Brooks Institute of Photography years later, but that’s another story. Let’s get back to the camera stuff.

The EXA wasn’t up for the task of shooting day in and day out, so I got a bag of used Nikon gear and a Rollei TLR for people shots. The EXA was relegated to a lonely existence in a box with my Corgi car collection and other discarded kid items.

Fast forward to 1973. I was 21 and my girlfriend, who will be known as ‘Da’ in this expose’, was 20. She was planning a trip to Hawaii with her girlfriend ‘Cha’, and she wanted to borrow a camera from me. Da was a very pretty ballet dancer, quite bright, but not mechanically inclined. To assist her, I covered my old EXA in incomprehensible step-by-stumble instructions. It’s no wonder that she only a took few photos with it and stashed it back into her suitcase. She relied upon Cha to shoot their vacation photos with a Kodak 110. She returned the EXA to me and I put it into a box where it sat for five decades. The reason I kept this silly camera for so long is that it had a special place in my heart because of who gave it me and who borrowed it from me.

While thinking about the weirdest most obscure camera I could cover in an article for 35mmc, the EXA popped into my head. I found it last week. Being a long-time photographer, I checked to see if it had film in it. IT DID! The counter indicated four shots had been taken. I was thrilled! I hadn’t touched the camera since Da had borrowed it.

I rewound the film and processed it. There were three well exposed images! Spoiler alert: heartbreak dead ahead. The shots were of Da in a bikini on a Hawaiian beach with a guy draped under, around, and, well, all over her. I was crushed for reasons that are perfect for a Seinfeld episode:

• She was obviously enjoying herself.
• I was tempted to break up with her, but it’s been over 50 years since I’ve seen her, and I don’t know where she lives or what her married name might be.
• I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations on infidelity has run out.
• I was not an angel in the ‘be true’ department during our 3-year romance.
• The guy (very important fact) was a mutual friend of ours and…
• Still. Know. Him. Yeah. He works on my car!
• Dear Abbey, (or Annalisa Barbieri for the Brits) California has 650 men on death row. Shall I join them, or find a new mechanic?

I made a couple of prints for the traitorous backstabbing mechanic and demanded he buy me a beer and apologize. He was grateful to get the photos, bought me a six-pack of expensive imported ale, and promised to do my next oil change for free. I guess the affair he had with my girlfriend was a more serious than a quick fling in Honolulu.

I decided to shoot some photos with the EXA before tossing it into a dumpster. What is it like to shoot with such a cheap and primitive camera? Fun! The puffy body looks and feels like a fat metal toad. The button on the top of the camera where the shutter release should be, does… well… nothing from what I can tell. Maybe a broken double exposure button? The actual shutter release is on the left side of the front of the camera. When pressed, the mirror slaps up and down with a squeak and clunk that’s loud enough to wake the dead. A mini guillotine. Very Stephan King-ish. There is something living on the inner surfaces of the glass. It’s some hazy splotchy stuff that makes me short-of-breath just looking at it.

I wasn’t expecting much, but the darn thing still has mojo! It almost screams to be in the hands of a working photographer. Actually, ‘screams’ may be too strong of a word. Grunts, squeaks, and groans are more accurate. The film strains to move forward when cranked, and doesn’t manage to do it fully every time, evidenced by some overlapping frames. The thing is like an old grey fox limping across the parched prairie, sniffing, pawing, wheezing, and never giving up.

What did the photos look like? Not as good as that fateful day in Oakland over fifty-five years ago, but not bad. Not bad at all. I did comparison shots with a sharp 35mm folding camera; my beloved Zeiss Contessa.

The contact sheets show the low contrast and less density of the EXA. Processing details: Ilford FP4 at box speed. Rodinal 1:50 with minimal agitation and a +30% soup time. That’s my favorite 35mm combination, and perfect for the EXA with a top speed of 1/175.

Here’s the door of my former mechanic’s shop taken with the EXA.

Here’s the same shot with a Zeiss Ikon Contessa.

The Contessa is sharper, but it’s a photo finish. Both cameras were on a tripod. I bracketed the shots and worked hard to print them as close as possible. That involved using different contrast filters because the EXA images were pretty flat.

This is a car parked in front of the entrance to a winery. The EXA has some lens flair problems. I could have burned and dodged the print, but that would invalidate the test.

Here’s the same subject with the Zeiss. Better tones and sharpness for sure. In fact, in the 8×10 print you can see the detail in the radiator. It’s hard to beat a Zeiss lens.

Here’s a house on the main street in Murphys California shot with the EXA. Quite acceptable.

Same house with the Zeiss. Better by any measure.

Will I shoot with the EXA 1a again? Absolutely! I’ve got it on my calendar for July of 2074.

Despite the mediocre quality of the EXA photos, it was a great performer in its day…and so was I. I didn’t throw the EXA into the refuse bin. I could not do it. The EXA 1a deserves a full pardon. The camera is innocent, and I owe it a debt of gratitude for three important reasons:

• The camera was gift from my wonderful brother, who I need to visit more often.
• The EXA helped to launch my career as a full-time photographer.
• In a strange turn of events, the EXA made me see that I’m lucky not to have married a girl named Da.

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