The Vintage Camera Club Thread

[JimWagner]

Getting away from 35mm for a bit, here's my Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. This particular one is off eBay, but I did have one when I was in early high school and they were fairly new at the time.

 

[2jakes]

My first job in the camera department was selling these:

 

[JimWagner]

When I was deployed to Iceland in 1968 I bought one of these Minolta-16 MG miniature cameras, a James Bond special. It uses 16mm movie film and you can get an idea how big it is beside that quarter. It took awful pictures.

 

[JimWagner]

About the same time I bought the little Minolta I picked up one of these Yashica Mat-124 cameras at the base exchange. I was spending a lot of time in the base darkroom. The nights are long and cold in Iceland. For it's time this was pretty much state of the art unless you could afford a Hasselblad medium format.

 

[JimWagner]

Returning to 35mm cameras, here is my Nicca 3-S. It's a Leica IIIf clone and a very nice old camera. One of my favorites.

 

[JimWagner]

Here's my Canon IVSb2, another Leica rangefinder clone. Also a nice shooter.

 

[JimWagner]

I bought one Canon IVSb2 that I knew had shutter problems to use as a sacrificial victim to my desire to teach myself how to repair and refurbish old cameras. Here it is in pieces on the bench waiting for me to get back to it.

 

[JimWagner]

This is my Canon VT de luxe 35mm. One of the things unique about this camera is the the film advance is a lever on the bottom of the camera body. It's similar to the old Leica rapid film advance mechanisms except it's not removable as such and there is no film advance knob.

I have a number of 35mm SLR cameras, but they are all 1976 or newer so I'll skip posting them. Likewise on my digital cameras.

That's all for now. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

 

[Benproof]

Which technicians do you guys use? I've got an old wartime one just like yours but it doesn't work!

 

[JimWagner]

Sorry, I haven't found anyone. That's why I'm teaching myself. At this point I wouldn't touch one of my better cameras and certainly not someone else's.

 

[Benproof]

That's pretty hard going. I've messed up a number of shutters by my own DIY efforts watching springs suddenly dislodge from somewhere. Harry Fleetnor has a reputation stateside (but long waiting lists now?). Essex Cameras in the UK. I haven't found anyone who thinks my old banger is affordable to repair (i.e. cost of repair exceeds what I paid for!)

 

[JimWagner]

Part of the problem in repairing old cameras in particular goes beyond finding parts. The service manuals are extremely difficult to come by. In the day that knowledge was a closely guarded secret. If you weren't a factory trained repair tech then the manufacturer wouldn't sell them to you. Today many of those companies are long gone. Occasionally you can find a copied manual on eBay and there is a growing movement to preserve some of that knowledge, but camera repair is still pretty much a closed society professionally.

You can see a Canon factory manual open on the right in that bench picture I posted. Took a fair amount of luck to find it.

 

[martinsantos]

Leica IIIa with VISOM (universal viewfinder).

Curious acessory for Leica called FOOVA, to wind film into the metal cassettes. It's the only practical way do load the cassettes with movie film, as I usually do (with Eastman Double-X). It's from 1938.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This week I was given three large boxes of photographic paraphernalia which turned out to contain a Speed Graphic "Anniversary Model" 4x5 camera, which the serial number dates to 1941. Inscribed on the bed rails is the name of the original owner, one E. C. Espiritu of San Francisco, Calif. The person who gave me the stuff mentioned that owner had been someone who photographed celebrity publicity photos and movie stills and the like, but I haven't found any confirmation of this anywhere.

The camera itself has been heavily modified. The focus-plane shutter curtain has been removed, and the winding key feels like the spring is disconnected. There is a postwar Graflok back installed. There are also quite a few lenses in various states of assembly and deterioration. Only two seem to be fully usable, a Wollensak 135mm Raptar in a Rapax shutter (which is currently dissasembled on my kitchen table following a cleaning of the mechanism) and a Schneider 210mm with a serial number dating to 1961. The Kalart range finder has been gutted -- with no internal mechanism inside the casing.

The only film holder included in the lot is a Polaroid 500, and there's a three-cell Graflite flash unit that will not be sold to a Star Wars buff for conversion to a lightsaber handle.

I'm intending to put this camera to use once I've got it cleaned up and functional, but I'm looking for some bits and pieces to get it back into full working order. Anyone got a spare focal-plane shutter curtain lying around?

 

[2jakes]

This week I was given three large boxes of photographic paraphernalia which turned out to contain a Speed Graphic "Anniversary Model" 4x5 camera, which the serial number dates to 1941. Inscribed on the bed rails is the name of the original owner, one E. C. Espiritu of San Francisco, Calif. The person who gave me the stuff mentioned that owner had been someone who photographed celebrity publicity photos and movie stills and the like, but I haven't found any confirmation of this anywhere.

The camera itself has been heavily modified. The focus-plane shutter curtain has been removed, and the winding key feels like the spring is disconnected. There is a postwar Graflok back installed. There are also quite a few lenses in various states of assembly and deterioration. Only two seem to be fully usable, a Wollensak 135mm Raptar in a Rapax shutter (which is currently dissasembled on my kitchen table following a cleaning of the mechanism) and a Schneider 210mm with a serial number dating to 1961. The Kalart range finder has been gutted -- with no internal mechanism inside the casing.

The only film holder included in the lot is a Polaroid 500, and there's a three-cell Graflite flash unit that will not be sold to a Star Wars buff for conversion to a lightsaber handle.

I'm intending to put this camera to use once I've got it cleaned up and functional, but I'm looking for some bits and pieces to get it back into full working order. Anyone got a spare focal-plane shutter curtain lying around?

Lizzie, had I known a year ago, I would’ve gladly given you the spare parts for the 4x5.
I’m a news photographer and for the longest time I collected vintage cameras.
I’m down to 35mm screw-mount Leica and Nikon.
There’s a focal-plane shutter on eBay. But I’m sure you already know this.
Good Luck to you.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Sorry Lizzie, all I've got is a Pacemaker Crown Graphic - essentially the Speed Graphic without the focal plane shutter that uses the lens-mounted shutters. I've got a bunch of standard 4x5 film holders: send me a PM if you'd like me to mail you some.

I've also got a Graphic View II and a bunch of lenses. But I honestly can't see myself ever shooting sheet film again. (I'm still occasionally shooting b/w film in my Nikon F2 and Minox IIIs.)

 

[Hurricane Jack]

I have a couple of Graflex Speed Graphics, light saber flash, custom doctor's bag, misc. Using it as a prop these are the only pics I have ready in file:

I also have a Rolleiflex Twin lens 2.8f with mirror lens cap (forget the model), several Nikon bodies & lenses (EM, FG, F2, F4, F5, D).

 

[martinsantos]

I'm playing around a lot with this one. Exakta Varex IIa, 1956. I don't understand why these are so cheap - it's a great camera, very well made. All they need is a competent repairman, as any old camera.

 

[alanfgag]

Zeiss Contarex "Bull's Eye" c. 1960. I've had two of these bodies for many years, used infrequently during the film era but have pulled it out to explore the Zeiss lenses on a Leica SL mirrorless digital body. The 25 2.8 Distagon is an interesting lens - focuses very close (to 7 inches, I believe) and is very sharp at 2.8.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I recently got around to doing to a long-procrastinated project: scanning stereo slides that my parents shot circa 1955-1963. As hoped, it turned out to be a bonanza of forgotten images from my early childhood.

But first, a bit about stereo slides, since this once popular format is pretty much entirely forgotten now. The cameras used regular 35mm transparency film, but shot two images at a time, with the lenses positioned about typical eye-distance apart. After processing, the pairs of transparencies were installed in double slide mounts, for viewing in binocular viewers. When viewed, this produced the sort of 3D effect everybody remembers from their old Viewmaster toys.

Anyway, here's a quick phone pic of the camera that took all the images below, the less expensive version of the Stereo Realist with the slower f/3.5 lens. (This camera has been sitting in cabinets and boxes since 1963... and I was surprised to see that the shutter, aperture, focus and rangefinder all seem to work fine! Boy, did they build stuff then.) And an example of the slides themselves along with the carrier for a tabletop viewer (which I also still have, and used to figure which of the hundreds of slides to scan, though I didn't photograph it).



Anyway, I usually scanned the left-eye image. Between the smaller-than-full-frame transparencies and this camera's not super-sharp lenses, the results aren't always great, even in my 2400dpi scans... and many of the 60-year-old Ektachrome slides had faded to red. But most of the Kodachromes still look great. Some examples:



Of course, it should be noted that my parents were working professional photographers, so it's no surprise that their family slides are wonderful. What a treasure trove! And talk about great twentieth-century photo technology!