Thursday 21 February 2008

Pop that top.



The Jeep will never have a Pop Top, but it seems my life has featured cars with lifting roofs for a long time. I photographed the Bedford CA in 1964 on the first roll of film I ever shot. Kodak Bantam Colorsnap 2, 828 Kodachrome 2 film, set to ‘cloudy, but bright’. Life was so simple then. Dad had borrowed the Dormobile from a colleague at work and four of us went to a campsite in Manorbier, near Tenby. Easter from memory and unusually clement weather for both the time of year and Wales. The Bedford was both cramped and slow, but in 1964 most things were. The Land Rover was shot last month in Libya. How plain the colours look in comparison and yet its Pop Top dates back to 1970. Perhaps I should fit it with some nice flowery curtains.

4 comments:

Affer said...

Pop up tops indeed. Pshh! No wonder you youngsters are so soft....in my day we would have gone n holiday in a trailer towed behind Pater's Morris 8 and slept on the ground under a coal sack.

(GREAT photo!!!!!)

Peter Ashley said...

Do you know, I think I am going bonkers. After all my going on about having a Kodak Retinette, I go and actually go and get it out of the drawer and lo! It's a Bantam Colorsnap! Still don't do any film for it though. Love these pop-tops, sounds like a breakfast cereal.

Toby Savage said...

The film is actually 35mm, but without the perforations and stuck onto some backing paper with a piece of tape at the leading end. 12 exposures, from memory. It would be possible to make your own, if you could put up with loosing about 15% of the image to the sprocket holes and, more importantly, if you could be arsed.

Fred Fibonacci said...

Ah! The Dormobile holiday. It was Easter, because our Mum tricked Toby and me with some rock-hard sugar eggs. They were, to our innocent eyes, indistinguishable from the real thing. We spent most of our first breakfast trying to crack them open. I remember most our time at Manorbier, but not that fabulous porthole on the Bedford. Is there room for one on the Carawagon? With a little spinning wiper, like an Isle of Wight hovercraft?