A Polaroid to remember things by: editing from 1/2 Sony portable to 1/2 inch mains deck. TV sets were our monitors- using the RF (antenna) input not many had a video line-in, couch cushions our tilt bases.

How to edit – Pause edit master at the tail of your first shot, press Record (or press Record and Pause together depending on the machine) cue the portapak to a few seconds early, let it roll and stabilise,  release Pause on the mains deck at edit point. Repeat.

Power outlets in a small apartment were limited so you always needed a nest of double adaptors (and a card of higher amp fuse wire beside the fuse box). The white box in the middle was an audio equalizer and helped clean up the sound, this one has a rack mount notch so it may also have had a video time base corrector but that seems a bit advanced for what I remember.

There were video ‘enhancers’, I had an Akai one for years but it really only sharpened the noise. It helped a bit when you were making a copy tape, always a softer result but it put reproductions (and distribution) into our hands at a low price compared to 16mm or 8mm film prints.

No-one today would design a camera prop that rested the zoom lens on the ground and two flimsy wires, but you had to put these down a lot, they were heavy.

This was taken, I think, at Sasha Trikojus’ Carlton flat, maybe Bert Deling’s. Probably before Bert did Dalmas, around the time of Richard Alpert’s visit as Baba Ram Dass, who they did a long video interview with.