How to Collect and Identify Vintage Cameras.

Collecting vintage cameras has become more popular in recent years, especially as digital cameras have replaced film cameras in most homes as the first choice for family and holiday snapshots. Collectors should follow a few simple guidelines when considering vintage cameras, whether they are collecting for fun or hoping to find rarities that will gain value in the future.

Instructions

1. Find out what cameras are collectible and which are just junk. Get a vintage camera collector’s guide, such as the McKeown’s Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras. The guide is large and expensive but is the most comprehensive book on vintage cameras on the market. Watch auctions on eBay and see which cameras get a lot of bids. These two sources alone can help you become familiar with vintage cameras.
2. Poke around antique stores, thrift stores, flea markets and vintage camera shops. Look at the cameras that are available and see what prices these stores are asking. While browsing, you should pick up the cameras and give them a good going-over, checking for dirt, rust, mold and other conditions that might make the camera inoperable. You should also try the mechanics of the camera to see what works and what doesn’t. The more you handle vintage cameras, the more familiar you will become with the various brands and styles that are out there, as well as what a mint-condition camera versus a poor-condition camera looks and feels like.
3. Look for cameras that were extremely popular brands and that were produced in high quantities, which may be easy to find in a decent used condition. These are great cameras to search out, especially for vintage camera collectors who wish to use the cameras to take photos and not just to display or resell them. Leica, Nikon, Canon, Minolta and Yashica are all well-known brands that created quality products. Beware of cameras that have no name on them or that are imprinted with brand names you don’t recognize. While some of these might be decent cameras, it is always a good idea to do the research first and find out before you buy. You will become familiar with the common cameras quickly, and after some study, the rare finds will begin to stand out.
4. Look for cameras that will hold their value for a long time. Usually these are cameras that introduced new, groundbreaking technology when they were released or that became known as workhorses–cameras that could function well for a long time with little maintenance. Leica cameras were the first 35 mm cameras that were compact and portable and have maintained a lifetime reputation for being great cameras with exceptional lenses. Argus was the first American compact 35 mm camera, which sold for $12.50 when it first hit stores in 1936. While their value isn’t very high, vintage Argus “Bricks” can still be found in good working order, and they make great 35 mm cameras for amateur photographers who want to play around with manual film cameras. Rollei was a popular brand, especially for their medium format Rolleiflex, which was used by several fine art photographers. Rolleiflex cameras are still easy to find in good working condition. The Nikon F introduced an updated SLR design that made it much easier for photojournalists to use it in the field. Nikon still produces the F series, so there are several generations of these to be found, from the original through to the more recent F6. There are other great cameras to look for; just do your research and find one that suits your style.
5. Decide what is of value to you and then start learning all about that type of camera if you want to collect vintage cameras. Small, portable cameras have been marketed to consumers since the 1920s. Millions of makes and types of cameras have been produced since that time. Some vintage camera enthusiasts are photographers first and want to collect cameras that will be usable either as is or with some minor cleaning and repairs. Photographers frequently collect several of the same kind of camera so that they can use the ones in good condition for photos and the others can be broken down for parts. Other collectors have no intention of using the cameras but are interested in finding and collecting vintage pieces to display for nostalgia or in hunting down rare treasures to resell them.

Tips & Warnings

1. Visit your local vintage camera shops, thrift stores and antique stores frequently. In many places, the turnover of stock happens quickly, and frequent visits will allow you to keep up with what’s coming in. Also, the more that store owners get to know you and what you’re looking for, the more likely they are to start buying those items from others and letting you know about them.
2. If you’re looking for vintage cameras that are still in working order, become familiar with how to check camera functions and how to clean old cameras. Some conditions, such as mold in the lens, are not easily reversed and make the camera inoperable unless you replace the lens.

Source.

Best photographs ever – Part I.

1 – Vulture Stalking a Child – Kevin Carter.

2 – Afghan Girl – Steve McCurry.

3 – Migrant Mother – Dorothea Lange.

4 – V-J Day in Times Square – Alfred Eisenstaedt.

5 – Napalm girl, Vietnam – Nick Ut .

6 – Uganda Famine – Mike Wells.

7 – Albert Einstein –  Arthur Sasse.

8 – Fire on Marlborough Street – Stanley J. Forman.

9 – Nagasaki 1945 – U.S. Air Force.

10 – Che Guevara – Alberto Korda.

Best photographs ever – Part II.

How to choose the camera film.

In this short video:  several nice tips how to choose the correct film camera.

 

Intro to film cameras.

In this video You can check :

• several vintage cameras
• photographies shot with different kind of films
• tips how to set the camera with manual settings

 

 

 

 

Celebrities with film cameras.

Between the 1950S-1970S.

Arnold Schwarzenegger with an SLR

Audrey Hepburn being photographed by Fred Astaire

Bob Dylan with a Nikon SP Rangefinder

George Harrison with (left to right) A Nikon F, A Kodak Retina IIS and his Rolleiflex

Grace Kelly taking Frank Sinatra’s photo with a Hasselblad

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with an SLR

James Dean taking a photograph of Anna Maria Pierangeli with a Rolleiflex

James Dean with a Rolleiflex

Leonard Nimoy and a Nikon F

Liz Taylor and a Rolleiflex

Marilyn Monroe with Nikon Camera by Bert Stern

Michael Jackson with an SLR

Mick Jagger with a Polaroid (Image by Baron Wolman)

Nick Drake with a Hasselblad

Paul McCartney self portrait with a twin reflex camera

Paul McCartney, a cup of tea and a Pentax Spotmatic

Ringo Starr with a Pentax SLR

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page with Nikon F2s

Sammy Davis Jr. puts in face time with his Rolleiflex in the early 50Õs.

Sean Connery with an SLR

Stanley Kubrick with a rangefinder

The Queen with a Leica

The Supremes with their Polaroid Land cameras

Source.

Film photography survived.

An interesting video why  film photography does not die and eventually, film begins to have more photographers start shooting in this area.

The beauty of manual SLR photography.

Almost everyone gets to the point sometimes where you are fed up with the tons of pics that take up all the space on your hard drive, and you don’t even wanna bother looking through all of it. The time when you are bored with going through the manual of your DSLR again cause you don’t know what all the buttons are for.

That’s when you would consider to pick up again that old manual SLR from your bottom drawer and rid yourself of all the beeping and flashing that modern cameras tend to come with and just go back to basic once again… or for the first time, depending on your own photographical history.

Time to find out how great it can be to use a manual SLR and about the countless possibilities that come with that!

Increase the possibilities of your pictures

There are many reasons for photographers to want to try out how they would do with a manual SLR. You might discover that the normal point-and-shoot film camera, that you have been playing around with for a while, limits your progress as a photographer, as it doesn’t come with the focusing options you would need to take… let’s say sharp close up portraits.

Photo by Mr Jeff

Simplicity that makes you concentrate

Sometimes it is hard to comprehend all functions of your semi-professional DSLR, which makes you want to go back to a simpler camera, to be able to concentrate on the essentials of focusing, framing and the right exposure. Also, since film and developing of the pics will all cost money, you are likely to choose your objects more carefully and spend more time with composition and the right framing.

Photo by Cai Shun’an

After doing that you can pick up your DSLR again with greater confidence, after mastering the basics on a traditional model that makes you actually do the thinking. Instead of training yourself on a fancy DSLR, that makes you worry to much about mode of metering and hundreds of white balancing options, you can fully concentrate on your object and still get great images without too much post production.

Photo by Shawn Hoke Photography

Used by professionals

Traditional SLRs are still used by many professional photographers who value them for their robustness, which makes them unimpressed with difficult weather conditions. So you might very well come across photo-journalists who like to include an old SLR in their setup.

Photo by brook9457

You might be remembered forever

Today, traditional SLRs like Nikon’s FM2 or Canon’s F and A series – though out of production – are still easy to find on online bidding platforms at reasonable prices. For those who want to dig a little bit deeper in their pockets, you might as well go with one of the famed Leica models. Most of the pictures still regarded ahead of their time today were taken with these cameras, just like Steve McCurry’s “Afghan Girl” was shot with a Nikon FM2.

Photo by Steve McCurry

Put you and your objects at ease

But still, the biggest treat of using a traditional SLR is how it makes you calm down and puts you at ease. The preparations for a day out are enough to put you in the right mood. Take your camera out of where ever you keep it. Look at it from every angle to see if there are any new scratches from the last time of usage. Pull the film advance lever slowly to see if it goes smoothly, and then press the shutter release button to hear that down-to-earth sound, which is just loud enough for you to know that your camera fired, but silent enough to not make you the center of attention. Then you fill it with life (meaning the film) and you are ready to go.

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Maybe you will stumble across one of those rare moments meant to be remembered forever.

Source.

Scanning film.

The good answer for creating large images to print is to use a film scanner to scan the film instead of the prints. These are often called slide scanners, but they scan both slides or negatives. Most are for 35 mm film.

Scanning film is better than scanning prints, because in the first place, scanning the film is using the original image, but the print is a second generation copy. Making a copy of a negative onto photo print paper is like making a copy of a music CD onto a cassette tape. The cassette tape is not so bad, it is very usable, but it sure is not a CD. We would not choose the cassette tape as the master to make yet another copy if the CD were available.

In the second place, film has greatly more detail and contrast available. Without quibbling about the numbers, most film is capable of over 3000 dpi, compared to only about 300 dpi for color photo print paper. The 35 mm film is a smaller original, so it must be enlarged more, about 4 times more than a scanned 6×4 inch print, to get the same image size at the printer. However the film and film scanner has well over 10 times more capability to do it.

Image size and memory cost can be quite huge when scanning film, because you are realistically able to scan at very high resolution. The huge size is the entire point, for example to create enough pixels to print full page size. You will want at least 128 megabytes of memory, and more is better. But a film scanner definitely does allow acquiring enough quality pixels to scale to print a large image.

For example, a full frame 35 mm color negative scanned at 2400 dpi will be about 3400×2200 pixels, and about 22 megabytes. Scanning at 2400 dpi and printing at 300 dpi allows enlarging that printed image 8 times more than the original film size (2400/300 = 8). Scaling by 8, so that the 1.4 x 0.9 inch film size (36 x 24 mm) prints 8X larger gives 11.2 x 7.2 inches. It will look great in regard to detail if printed at 200 to 300 dpi (assuming the printer can handle it). Scanning film originals can support this level of detail. Scanning a 6×4 inch photo will not.

Let’s quickly review scaling again, to make the point about large images, and to make sure the simple arithmetic is understood. The basic fact is that dpi means “pixels per inch”. The main point is that the image size in inches is computed from the image size in pixels, using resolution to space those pixels on paper.

Click button below to convert inches in centimetres

The ratio of (scanning resolution / printing resolution) gives the enlargement factor. If scanning at 2700 dpi, and printing at 240 dpi, then the printed image is 2700/240 = 11.2 times larger than the original film. We can adjust the printed size by varying the printing resolution, maybe 200 or 300 dpi instead of 240 dpi.

Saying the same thing another way to make sure it is clear: If we scan 1.4 inches of 35 mm film at 2700 dpi, then we get (1.4 inches x 2700 dpi) = 3780 pixels. If we print 3780 pixels at 240 dpi on paper, then that image size is (3780 pixels / 240 dpi) = 15.7 inches. 15.7 inches is 11.2 times larger than 1.4 inches. Large images in pixels are needed to print large images in inches.

For example, to print 8×10 inches at 240 dpi requires (8 inches x 240 dpi) x (10 inches x 240 dpi) = 1920 x 2400 pixels. It takes (1920 pixels / 0.9 inches) = 2135 dpi to create this image from 35 mm film (full frame, so even more if it is cropped).

We do need large images to print large at high scaled resolution. Film scanners will give us those large images while retaining very good image quality.

Source.

Video – How to Develop Black and White Film.

After this extensive post How to Develop Black and White Film,  let’s now see how it develops the practical process.

There are a few important points to retain in the film processing:

• Dark room.
• Control temperature and time.
• Developer.
• Stop bath.
• Fixer.
• Clearing agent (optional for many photographers).
• Drying the film.

I hope this 3 videos can avoid any doubts about the all  process.

Enjoy.

What film photography still has to offer.

By Cubie King, Special to CNN

There are no more Polaroids. No more Kodachrome. And the smell of potent darkroom chemicals has almost disappeared.

For most people, “analog photography” is a relic or something their parents once used; an archaic technology now lumped in with yesteryear’s sensations, like the rotary phone or 8-track tape player.

Over the past decade, the number of analog film and manual cameras has dramatically decreased in favor of their digital counterparts. Digital photography has ubiquitous control over the market, leaving little to no room for alternatives.

Yet in the New York City metro area, there is a close-knit community of photographers, merchants, galleries, institutions and darkrooms that keep the art of analog photography quietly in practice.

“[There’s] just something inherently different about the medium that you can’t get with digital,” said Steven Sickle, who works at K&M Camera in Tribeca.

Some say that “something” is depth or quality.

K&M Camera, open since 1976, caters to photographers, from the first-time film student to the hardened fine-art photographer who refuses to use digital technology. The newly expanded store proudly embraces their connection to analog film. There are 35 mm cameras on display around the store and refrigerators and freezers stuffed with film.

Although digital sales mainly drive the store’s profit line, the store continues to sell everything film-related, from darkroom chemicals to beakers, loupes and print paper.

“We still sell analog film in large bulks to all sort of clientele,” Sickle said. “It’s a lot of fun when you get guys that come into the store not knowing much and leaving knowing more about film and its process.”

Uptown from K&M on 43rd Street is the International Center of Photography, where photographer/artist Lesly Deschler Canossi teaches a class on color printing to teens. Film negatives and prints are sprawled out in front of the students as they listen attentively to Canossi. She lays out the day’s agenda before they head into the pitch-black darkroom.

The students quickly learn that it takes more patience than they initially thought to work with analog film. This patience is earned through hands-on experience with their negatives and in the darkroom and classroom discussions.

The center offers students of all ages more than 400 photography courses a year that cover such topics as lighting techniques, black-and-white printing and marketing their work.

“What we hope within the Teen Academy is that as they move forward, and if perhaps [they] switch to digital, they have a much better understanding of manual camera functions as it relates to film as it translates to digital,” Canossi said.

Across the street from the school is the International Center of Photography’s museum, which is exhibiting a retrospective of the work of world-renowned Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, recipient of the center’s 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award. Throughout Erwitt’s decades-long career, he’s used only analog film.

Visitors can see quickly that Erwitt’s talents closely reflect the diversity of the medium itself as he dabbles in almost every genre — from portraiture, to street photography, documentary, fashion, humor and wit, and everyday life. Erwitt classifies himself as both a professional photographer and hobbyist.

“I’m a traditional photographer in that I don’t use electronic devices,” he said.

“I think I’d like to know that I’m taking pictures because I’m interested in the human condition, in stories and people and animals and whatever is in front of my lens,” he said. “That’s what drives me, not the latest gadget.”

Downtown on 19th Street is Print Space, where photographers can rent well-designed darkrooms (black-and-white or color) to transfer negative images onto print paper. It’s a cozy little establishment that transports photographers to another era. The smell of chemicals wafts through the air, and the pace of the staff and clientele seems to mimic the process of making a print: relaxed yet deliberate.

“There’s something that’s not so immediate about the analog world,” said Hashem Eaddy, Print Space’s lab manager. “You take a picture with your film camera, you have to wait. And all of those pieces have to come together so it’ll be a print. Printing takes time, but the patient are rewarded.

“In terms of analog, for the most part, it still gives you a higher-quality print than digital, but I feel like the way people are looking at things now doesn’t matter anymore,” Eaddy lamented.

But to each of these people, organizations and establishments, film does indeed matter and continues to evolve. It’s vital, not only to their livelihoods, but also as a gateway to a deeper understanding of the medium as a whole, even if one does end up in the digital arena.

To serious-minded photographers Erwitt added this: “I certainly would suggest that anyone interested in photography start by doing the hard stuff; that is to say print, photograph, develop, dodge, do all the things that are essential in producing a good analog print.”

And like the variety of steps required to make that analog print, these practitioners, viewed as an amalgamation, form a community that continues to further the history, tradition and craft of analog photography.