There was a time you could not give your dark room equipment away - not any more.

As Frome Nub News learnt when we visited the packed return of the Frome Wessex Camera Fair at the Cheese & Grain, the pull of traditional photography has never been so great.

The hall was full, every table taken, as old photography hands rubbed shoulders with newer fans who have been turning from digital and mobile snaps to a more focused hobby.

According to one retired professional photography, one visitor had just snapped up a complete dark room set.

Photographer David Golby spent decades as a photographer, both in a news room and then as the official photographer at the London auction house Sotheby's .

The eighty three year old had also been behind the lens for EMI, taking snaps of stars such as Cliff Richard, Helen Shapiro, and Russ Conway.... and Chubby Checker who taught him to twist.

David told us : " I operated out of Totnes for 40 years but also worked in a studio in London before that so that was when I worked for EMI.

" Photography is really growing in popularity. People are spending a lot of money today, some of these cameras cost more today than they cost new thirty years ago."

On Sunday (October 16) it was the welcome return of the South West's largest camera and photographic fair. On sale from over 30 tables, all sold out in advance, there were cameras of course, collectable and modern), lenses, filters, flashguns, film, photographic paper, books and old prints.

The pull was in part nostalgia explained David: " There are the amateurs who come back and are still using those the old cameras, they are coming to buy film and to buy lenses. You can still get all the film you need for all the old cameras, you just need to know where to go. "

David has a long photographic career.

" I did work for the Daily Mirror in the 1970s I was at their West Country office, which was a training hub, where us more experienced guys would take the trainees under our wing. to try and educate them a bit into the ways of the press... but that has all gone now. Everybody has these damned things (gesturing to my mobile phone.

" But here there is a girl buying a full set of darkroom analogue equipment... there was a time when you couldn't give dark room equipment away. Now the tables have turned. Now you have a job to buy decent stuff and the prices are sky high It is like vintage cars."