Two forearms held together, one with a fine line outline of a camera and the other with black lettering reading f/5.6 and 1/125 on the inner arm.

Camera and exposure settings tattoos on forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two people hold hands, with a black line-work camera tattoo on one forearm and the numbers f/5.6 and 1/125 in a clean black typeface on the other. The camera is drawn with simple outlines and light shading, and the text is solid black. The soft, blurred autumnal background keeps the focus on the two arms, and the image shows black ink only.

Fine line Lettering Forearm Camera Number Text Couple Matching tattoo

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the camera under a tray of brass keys at the far end of the market, where the awnings sag with rain and the stallholder has stopped pretending to sell anything. The body is cold and heavier than it looks. Someone has wound the film to frame nineteen and never wound it back, so the shutter sticks halfway like a tired eye. The man says twelve pounds. You offer ten, and he gives you the look of someone who has waited all morning for a buyer that stupid.

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At home you clean the lens with your sleeve and practise on the lamp. The light meter needle trembles and settles when you find the right balance, and you write the numbers on the back of a bus ticket so you won't lose them: f/5.6 and a hundredth and a quarter of a second. The kettle clicks off. Rain keeps tapping the window as though it wants a turn with the camera.

The film goes to the chemist on Silver Street, who develops it in a back room that smells of vinegar and old pennies. Three days later the envelope holds twenty-four prints: a pigeon mid-argument, a stranger's umbrella, cobbles shining like wet slate, and, in frame nineteen, a stall owner's hands tying a knot in a tarpaulin, sharp as glass in a dull grey day.

You go back to the market in the rain, find the far end, and the trestle is gone. In its place a girl sits on an upturned crate, sketching the bellows on a napkin. She asks what the numbers mean. You tell her about small openings and quick shutters, how a moment can be held still if your hand stays steady. She nods, pulls a biro from her pocket, and writes them on the inside of her wrist.