Black and grey realism tattoo of a vintage film SLR camera with a small red heart in the lens, on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Film camera tattoo on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a vintage 35mm film SLR camera with the word Canon on the prism. The body and lens are rendered in smooth black and grey shading with fine highlights, giving the metal and leatherette a realistic, dimensional look. A small red heart sits inside the lens, the only colour in an otherwise greyscale design, and the camera is centred on the upper back.

Realism Back Camera Lens Heart

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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

Nell had the roll out of the camera before the light went, winding the film back into its canister in the shade of the potting shed, because her grandfather had taught her never to trust a dying battery with a memory. The camera was older than her mother. Its leatherette had gone soft and dark where his thumb used to rest, and the shutter still gave the same satisfying clack that she had never once managed to imitate.

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Under the runner beans she had photographed everything he planted last spring: the bamboo stakes, the drooping sweet peas, the dented watering can with its rose head. She had shot the whole roll without checking the viewfinder, trusting the light the way he had. Frame twenty-four was the one she was afraid of, because it showed him asleep in the deckchair with his hat tipped over his face and the lens cap still on.

Mostly, though, the film was of the garden. The dahlias came out heavy and blurred. Held up to the kitchen window, the front of the lens still carried a faint pink mark where she had once stuck a paper heart to it as a joke, and she kept meaning to scrub it off and never did.

She carried the canister to the bathroom, where the red safelight made everything look like a rumour. Her hands shook less than she expected. Beyond the back door the sprinklers came on, ticking across the lawn, and she counted the seconds the way he had taught her, one thousand, two thousand, until the first shapes of the garden began to rise out of the tank.