The history of the VP Twin, manufactured by E.Elliott Ltd based in the West Midlands, has been excellently researched by David Gardner, resulting in a comprehensive article in the magazine Photographica World, issue No.108, 2004/2, of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain (PCCGB).

Interestingly, correspondence within my family, dating to May 1935, talks about a camera having just appeared for sale in Woolworths, taking 16 pictures on a roll of film normally sized for taking 8 pictures (so presumably 127 size). This reference to the first appearance of what is almost certainly the VP Twin agrees exactly with the 1935 date found by David Gardner in his research.

Woolworths sold this camera until 1959 when competition from other low cost, but superior cameras, forced it out of production. But by then some half a million had been sold by Woolworth's alone.

By coincidence, 1957 also saw the appearance of the Ilford Sportsman camera range. The first Sportsman cost over £13, about the same as an unskilled working man's weekly wage. It was far too expensive for my shallow pockets at the time. In 2005 monetary value, the original Sportsman cost £200 !

Another 1957 happening, on a less happy note, was the death on January 18th of a famous name in photographic equipment marketing. Wallace Heaton, Ph.C died at the age of 79. He started his first photographic business in Sheffield in 1902 and opened in Bond Street, London, in 1919, the capital's most exclusive shopping area. He bought the five 'City Sale and Exchange' shops in 1929 and in the 1930s he opened his two other West End (London) shops. A Royal Warrant (suppliers of photographic equipment to their majesties the Queen and the Queen Mother, and H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh) was first granted in 1938. Wallace Heaton had several full page advertisments right at the front of Amateur Photographer magazine every week by the 1950s and these continued for many years after Wallace Heaton's death. By 1969 there were 9 branches, a processing laboratory, commercial studios, repair workshops and a Proving Dept testing new equipment before it was opffered for sale. I was always impressed by these adverts, so much so that I visited the 127 New Bond Street premises of Wallace Heaton Ltd while in London on a 6th Form school trip around 1962. All I could afford was a single half-plate developing dish, but I was proud of making a purchase in such a prestigious shop. Wallace Heaton was the premier photographic retailer in London, but the chain was eventually purchased by Dixons in 1972, by which time there were 15 shops in the Wallace Heaton chain.

Other 1957 happenings ?:
On 3rd January, the Hamilton Watch Co. introduced the first electric watch.
On 14th January, Hollywood film actor Humphrey Bogart died of throat cancer.
On 25th March, The Treaty Of Rome (Patto di Roma) eastablished the European Economic Community (EEC) - "The Common Market".
On 4th October, The Soviet Union (Russia) launched the earth's first artificial satellite into a stable orbit, named Sputnik. This upset to US prestige started the 'space race' which culminated in the Apollo 11 mission landing Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin on the moon, 20th July 1969.
On 13th November, the 'laser' (light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation) was invented by Gordon Gould.
The Elvis Presley (Elvis was, and remains, the King of rock & roll) movie Jailhouse Rock was released

While indulging in the nostalgia of the 1950s and 1960s, take a look at John Chenery's site, especially the page where he shows pictures taken on Ilford film at Butlins Clacton in 1964, when he was a lad of five. In 1964 Ilford had a 50% interest in Butlins Photographic Services Ltd. which operated photographic services at seven holiday camps, two hotels and a beach outlet.

I sold my VP Twin, after about 12 months ownership, to a cousin for 5/- (25p) and purchased a Coronet Flashmaster (or similar 12 on 120 Coronet) by weekly payments via my mother's Burlington home shopping catalogue. According to the 1956 BJPA, it cost £1.11s.3d (£1.56p). My success rate was immediately transformed.

The picture shows the Flashmaster equipped with its CoroFlash flashgun, which has a proprietary 2-pin fitting. The 1957 price was 13s.1d (65p).

From David Gardner's research it seems that Elliotts may have produced Bakelite bodies for Coronot cameras, as the two companies are known to have collaborated in the 1930s when their factories were in close proximity.

It wasn't long before I wanted to try developing my films and making my own prints. So, around 1959, I purchased a Johnsons of Hendon kit, containing the sort of simple equipment shown alongside. To see an Amateur Photographer magazine advertisement for an even simpler Johnson 'Print -a-Snap' pack, in September 1955, click here.

There is a black Bakelite contact printing frame (RHS, back of picture) to produce prints from negatives up to 2½" x 3½" (as 8 on 120 or 620 roll film), a set of See-Thru red masks in order to produce white borders around prints down to 35mm, two ¼ plate developing dishes (black & orange) and two print forceps (black & orange). It also contained a Johnsons instruction booklet: 'How to start ~ Printing your own Photographs', some contact paper and packets of developer and fixer. Johnsons first introduced their Bakelite contact frame at the end of 1947 to replace a wooden version; wood was prone to warping.

An advert in Amateur Photographer (AP) for December 1956 shows this Junior Kit retailing at 13s/6d (66p). The same advert shows Outfits of increasing complexity, rising to the No 4 at £5.12s.6d (£5.63p)

My kit contained two additional item; a battery powered dark red safelight, giving sufficient light to enable orthochromatic roll films to be developed by see-sawing them through developer and fixer in open trays, plus a copy of the 4th Edition of Johnsons 'Home Photography'. It was that booklet which inspired my growing interest and made me long to own an enlarger. My regular Wednesday copy of Amateur Photographer, full of tantalising advertisements, was a regular 'read'.

Enlargers were too expensive for me and I looked at possible sources of 'bits & pieces' to enable me to build my own. Everything was more expensive in those days (1960) and it wasn't unusual for people to try to build equipment. I enjoyed trying to make things, but my skills were relatively crude and I had no metal working facilities. Hence, I bought the cheapest enlarger on the market, the Agilux, Agiscope. A full page Agilux Ltd advert in AP, 24th October 1956, gives a retail price of £7.5s (£7.25p) but by May 1962 it was being sold at £6.5s (£6.25p). It was complete with a simple lens, which would otherwise have been yet another on-cost.

The Agiscope was made by Agilux, Croydon, and was sold through various of the larger photographic retailers. I think I purchased mine by post from Sands Hunter. It was a plastic bodied enlarger with a 15" x 13" wooden baseboard and 22" inclined metal column. Light diffusion was by a sheet of flashed opal glass (no condenser lenses) which also held the negatives flat within the carrier. It came with masks to enable enlargements from 35mm to 2½" x 3½" negatives.

The lens, permanently moulded within the plastic helical focussing screw, consisted of a simple fixed aperture rapid rectilinear doublet, operating at about f8. This was a major disadvantage as the combination of flashed opal diffuser and an f8 lens gave a relatively dim image, awkward to focus and without any facility to stop down the lens to accommodate focussing errors.

After struggling to focus my Agiscope using various special focussing negatives, I saw a Harringay Photographic Supplies Ltd advert in AP, offering enlarging lenses at the very low price of £1.9s (£1.45p). These lenses, available in either 3½" or 4½" focal length, had apertures f6.3 and f11 via a sliding plate with two holes and 'special barium glass component'. I reasoned that if I could substitute one of these lenses (3½" probably) for the lens in my Agiscope, I would be able to focus at f6.3, having a brighter image, and stop down to f11 for the exposure, enjoying some focussing latitude.

Harringay eventually became part of the Phototec Group

I proceeded to cut away the Agilux lens from within its helical focussing mount and substitute the lens from Harringay. No doubt what I did was constructionally very crude, but I managed to fix the new lens in position and align it such that I then used the new set up for several more years.

By the summer of 1964 I was earning a small wage, sufficient to enable me to purchase (by weekly installments) a fixed lens single lens reflex (slr) called the Mamiya 'Saturn' (originally sold by Mamiya as the 'Family' in the US and the 'Penta' in the UK) from Dixons in Union St; Birmingham. The 'Saturn' was also sold by Bennetts in New St. Birmingham, as the 'Korvette'.

The Mamiya 'Family' (aka 'Penta', 'Saturn' & 'Korvette') and most all Mamiya 35mm cameras, are shown on Ron Herron's excellent site.

Later I 'upgraded' to a Russian Zenith 3M slr with f2 Helios and by the end of the 1960s I was taking 35mm colour slides on a Minolta ALF 35mm compact. It was at that time that I left home and gave up darkroom work.

In 1981 I purchased a Durst M302 35mm enlarger with colour head from Jessops (Hinckley Rd, Leicester, in those days) and tried my hand at colour printing negatives from my Canon AE1 slr. I purchased a f2.8 El-Nikkor enlarging lens and gradually became proficient at subtractive colour printing. However, home colour printing was a time-consuming and error prone process that, on many evenings, kept me from spending time with my family. It was a way to exercise control over the finished print on those rare occasions when a 'shot' was a particularly good one, but could never replace commercial processing for speed, cost and convenience. In the early 1990s, when I stopped colour printing, no one knew the image quality that would become possible by digital colour inkjet printing. Now (2007), inkjet print quality is amazingly high, and is the only sensible route for the amateur.

I still use my enlarger and el-Nikkor occasionally, though now only for Multigrade black & white printing.

Read about my Colour Printing experiences: