# Vintage cameras



## Ludwig (25 Apr 2021)

Collecting vintage cameras is quite a nice hobby. I haveca few here including the Olympus Om10, Olympus trips, Ricoh KR10, several Sony Cybeshots and 3 old bellows cameras. S lot of the very eary digital cameras take reallt good pictures and the batteries last a long time and can pick them up for very little money.


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## Ridgeway (25 Apr 2021)

My father collects cameras, has done for many years. He still has quite a few even as he approaches his 90's and he loves finding that "next camera". I guess he's been collecting since the 50's and i can remember many of his finds overs they years, nice hobby


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## midlife (25 Apr 2021)

I have a box of old cameras in the garage, Box brownies and all that I think. Inherited them in a house move 35 odd years ago....


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## figbat (25 Apr 2021)

I don’t collect cameras so much as just keep them when I get a new one. The oldest I have is a Pentax ME Super (with ME2 Winder), then there’s my beloved Nikon F801s, a crappy F50 I bought as a backup body for a safari trip and then the digital stuff - D70s, D200 and D7100. There are a few lenses too from across the eras.


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## numbnuts (26 Apr 2021)

I still have an Zenit-E with a stack of lens for it


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## HMS_Dave (26 Apr 2021)

I've come across a few that needed repairs. A lot get tossed out due to dirt/sand getting into the zoom mechanism and they jam. They're full of tiny intricate parts, notably tiny springs that go flying if you're not careful. Amazing engineering really. Old SLR's tend just to get gummed up with crud, if they haven't been for a swim in salt water first...


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## DCBassman (26 Apr 2021)

I now only have two cameras. One is a Sony Cybershot DSC-W55, my cycling camera. When I can remember to take it with me...
The other is in pieces, because it is an as-yet-unbuilt Haynes (as in manuals) plastic Twin-lens reflex kit. One day I will build it and get some ISO400 mono film and get snapping!


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## byegad (26 Apr 2021)

I have my Olympus Trip, bought new back in the late 70s or early 80z, can't remember when. 
Also Olympus E500 and E510, EPM1, EPL5, EP3, EP5, OMD EM5, OMD EM10, OMD EM5 Mkiii and 
Panasonic G6, Panasonic DC FT7 and 
Samsung WP10.
As you see I don't throw things away. I have about 40 lenses, many from extinct SLRs and DSLRs bought cheap. All the adapters I have mean that they can all be fitted to and used by my MFT cameras, and many by my 4/3 E500/510.
They all work but the quality of the older 4/3 pair and the G6 is less than acceptable, and probably always was.
The Samsung Waterproof has been replaced by the Panny DC FT7, both are rugged and bought for use while cycling.
My hobbies include wildlife, street and landscape photography, and apart from the 4/3rds cameras and the EPM1 and G6, all get outings throughout a normal year, whatever one of those is.


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## Fab Foodie (26 Apr 2021)

I have a few, will have to dig them out sometime. Quite a few I gave away to a collector friend in the USA a long time ago.
Just bought my daughter A Pentax ME to get her going on analogue photography, all my kids are into it :-)


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## Badger_Boom (26 Apr 2021)

numbnuts said:


> I still have an Zenit-E with a stack of lens for it


Same here. I eventually replaced it with Pentax K1000. I prefer old-school reliability to thousands of 'options' that I never use.


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## Randomnerd (26 Apr 2021)

My fave is my Olympus XA 2. Tiny. Silent in use. Amazing lens. Total work of art with so much packed into a small 32mm body. Very stealth for film camera and, apart from focus being almost guesswork, gives superb results once you are used to it. Way better than any digi shots. The giant A12 flash to clamp alongside is also a right piece of kit.

ive a few other Trips, including the 35, which I like a lot. Still use a nice AF, but it is heavy. Great lens though. 

Canon 400d just sits there looking bulky and sad.


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## MichaelW2 (26 Apr 2021)

Randomnerd said:


> My fave is my Olympus XA 2. Tiny. Silent in use. Amazing lens. Total work of art with so much packed into a small 32mm body. Very stealth for film camera and, apart from focus being almost guesswork, gives superb results once you are used to it. Way better than any digi shots. The giant A12 flash to clamp alongside is also a right piece of kit.
> 
> ive a few other Trips, including the 35, which I like a lot. Still use a nice AF, but it is heavy. Great lens though.
> 
> Canon 400d just sits there looking bulky and sad.


When I worked in a camera shop I got to borrow a lot of the used items and had a thing for quality tiny cameras. I tried out the XA2, Contax T3, Minolta CL (Leica CL). After leaving I popped back in and saw a Ricoh GR1s with my name on it. This was my general purpose/travel camera for years before I went digital and it was a cracking little camera with a sharp 28mm/2.8 lens. I prefer using well crafted analogue cameras but dont use them any more.


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## Blue Hills (26 Apr 2021)

byegad said:


> I have my Olympus Trip, bought new back in the late 70s or early 80z, can't remember when.


I well remember my dad offering to buy me a camera back in the late 70s or early 80s - we went in a fairly old school camera shop in blackburn - I was really keen on getting a 110 camera (remember them?) as they seemed so nifty.
The chap sold them but tried to advise me to go for a Trip - said the pics were better quality.
Like a young idiot I went for the 110, which he sold me/my dad with a certain sigh.
He was right of course - the prints from the 110 were atrocious - how could they not be with such a small neg.


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## Blue Hills (26 Apr 2021)

Randomnerd said:


> My fave is my Olympus XA 2. Tiny. Silent in use. Amazing lens. Total work of art with so much packed into a small 32mm body.


I have a few XAs bought second hand in the 80s.
An amazing bit of design. A classic.
Feels wonderful in the hand.
At least one of mine was the rangefinder version.
I gave one to a gf and an idiot friend of hers who clearly knew nothing laughed at it.


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## MichaelW2 (26 Apr 2021)

Blue Hills said:


> I well remember my dad offering to buy me a camera back in the late 70s or early 80s - we went in a fairly old school camera shop in blackburn - I was really keen on getting a 110 camera (remember them?) as they seemed so nifty.
> The chap sold them but tried to advise me to go for a Trip - said the pics were better quality.
> Like a young idiot I went for the 110, which he sold me/my dad with a certain sigh.
> He was right of course - the prints from the 110 were atrocious - how could they not be with such a small neg.


I got an Agfa Isomat Rapid 35mm compact of similar spec to the Trip but used some propriatory film canister and an odd aspect ratio The Trip was the best 35mm compact foreverday use and young enthusiasts.


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## Drago (29 Apr 2021)

Im not into this, but I know a chap who has a few. I think a Leika, some Praktika stuff, and most interestingly a Minox spy camera. I'll try and get some pics when im next up his end.


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## MichaelW2 (29 Apr 2021)

Drago said:


> Im not into this, but I know a chap who has a few. I think a Leika, some Praktika stuff, and most interestingly a Minox spy camera. I'll try and get some pics when im next up his end.


Minox was a genuine spy camera but all the ones I saw were civillian. The leash is sized to measure the correct distance for photocopying documents.


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## Drago (29 Apr 2021)

The one my friend has is a pukka spy one. It has the clamp and frame for holding it at the correct distance for photographing documents. Just been googling them - and 85 year old design, although they still look pretty modern to my eye.


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## Reynard (29 Apr 2021)

Oh dear, where to start... 

Got all sorts of stuff from 1920s boxes to those mini bellows jobbies, rangefinders, a plethora of old japanese, soviet and east german SLRs, assorted compacts in 110, 126 and 35mm formats, as well as my own Canon Eos 5 SLR and 10D and 1D mk2 DSLRs that I bought new, plus a range of good quality glass. And my little stick-it-in-my-handbag IXUS 60 that I picked up in CEX for a tenner.

Can a girl have too many cameras? 

My 10D has issues with the flash shoe, and isn't worth fixing. The 1D mk2 is 15 years old and still takes banging photos that can be printed to A3 without any issues. At typical print size, it would still hold its own against much newer bodies. Where it does fall flat on compared to the current generation of DSLRs is its low light performance.


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## Hover Fly (9 May 2021)

I have an _Ihagee_: _Auto-Ultrix_ that came from my mother’s side of the family I still like to use, and had one or two photos taken with it published. Some of the very early pictures taken with it were of her cousins in the early days of the RAF, standing by the cockpits of their planes, looking heroic .


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## mustang1 (10 May 2021)

My two favourites cameras are Nikon D40 and a Casio Something (looks like a cybershot kind of body). Both from the mid-2000s.

I bought the Casio in NY from a small store that sold "stuff". I got a 2nd battery, mini tripod, a couple of memory cards and I used it loads.

When I was ready to get an SLR, I was thinking of Nikon D40 or Canon Whatever_the_equivalent was. The Canon had 10MP and a bunch more features yet was the same price as the Nikon. But when I held both cameras side by side, I knew I would get the Nikon. I then bought a Nikon D...uhm... something because the D7100 wasn't in stock and I just _had _to have a camera. A week later I bought the D7100 as well. 

The Casio, D40, D7100 have been my favourite cameras (especially the former two as I used them to photograph loads of fun things that were going on in my life at that time). I also had a Kodak Uhm... (the one where you pull the handle out) which was £16.99 from Argos back in the early 1980s which I also liked a lot even though I did not know much about photography back then (though, the more you know, the more you realize you dont know that much).

Edit: after reading @MichaelW2 's D5300, I realized it was the 5300 I bought the week before the D7100.


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## MichaelW2 (10 May 2021)

My Nikon D5300 is a descendant of the D40 but the pixel count went from 6 to 21 gigamegs of pixel.
The cheaper Nikon APS sized dslr handle nicely for me and take good photos. The lens support of smaller APS sized lenses is poor but you can use bigger full frame lenses.
They lack the autofocus calibration of higher end models so if your lens and camera are a poor match there isnt much you can do.


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## raleighnut (10 May 2021)

MichaelW2 said:


> When I worked in a camera shop I got to borrow a lot of the used items and had a thing for quality tiny cameras. I tried out the XA2, Contax T3, Minolta CL (Leica CL). After leaving I popped back in and saw a Ricoh GR1s with my name on it. This was my general purpose/travel camera for years before I went digital and it was a cracking little camera with a sharp 28mm/2.8 lens. I prefer using well crafted analogue cameras but dont use them any more.


Olympus Mju 11 here as a 'travel cam' when I couldn't be bothered to take my big Pentax rig.


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## mustang1 (10 May 2021)

MichaelW2 said:


> My Nikon D5300 is a descendant of the D40 but the pixel count went from 6 to 21 gigamegs of pixel.
> The cheaper Nikon APS sized dslr handle nicely for me and take good photos. The lens support of smaller APS sized lenses is poor but you can use bigger full frame lenses.
> They lack the autofocus calibration of higher end models so if your lens and camera are a poor match there isnt much you can do.


I've always fancied a full-frame camera but dislike the size of them and I'm not much into micro-4/3 stuff (odd clicky sound when taking photo). My favourite lens is my cheapest one: Nikor 35mm prime and connected to the D7100 (I realliy like the physical buttons on it). I actually used the 5300 a couple of days ago and forgot how to use it!

Talking of physical buttons, that's one thing I hate about phone cameras...


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## Reynard (10 May 2021)

raleighnut said:


> Olympus Mju 11 here as a 'travel cam' when I couldn't be bothered to take my big Pentax rig.



I have one of those. A cracking little camera - absolutely pin-sharp images.

Picked it up on a jumble sale for 50p. And it took much better photos than the Pentax P&S with all the modes and functions that my dad bought about the same time. It was that Pentax that drove me to get my Eos5 SLR - forgot the number of times I wanted to throw that camera into a hedge because it wouldn't do what I wanted it to do. Always a day late and a dollar short, that Pentax...

Mind, when it came to photography, my dad was one of those "all the gear and no idea" kind of people.


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## Hover Fly (29 May 2021)

Hover Fly said:


> I have an _Ihagee_: _Auto-Ultrix_ that came from my mother’s side of the family I still like to use, and had one or two photos taken with it published. Some of the very early pictures taken with it were of her cousins in the early days of the RAF, standing by the cockpits of their planes, looking heroic .


Now I come to think of it, also this:





40 007 Leven Viaduct.


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## ericmark (31 May 2021)

I have one like this



my dad bought it for 6d in Germany as the war ended, I thought it was something special, but seems rather common and worthless. The way the lens could be moved to take pictures of building without the normal distortion was interesting but can't get the film any more, so little pointless keeping.

Most my stuff was late 70's early 80's, I ended up with a Ricoh with Pentax K lenses which kept going wrong, and I gave up for years, then restarted with a Pentax K10D which still used the old lenses. Then got sisters Nikon D7000.

The problem with the old cameras is can't get cheap film any more, 35 mm still around, but so expensive now, so gone total digital.

The other is processing the film, dodging and burning is an art with film cameras. And colour processing was expensive, so I ended up with black and white as did not have the kit to do colour, did at one point move to slides and a slide copier, but today went out on my bike, took some photos and can publish already.




To have done that with film would have been very time consuming and expensive, may be not everyone's cup of tea, many don't like tone mapping and combining monochrome and colour, or the vignette, however it would have taken hours to do that with film.


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