…and the one I use most often is the one in my cell phone.
Because the A to Z blogging challenge is starting soon I’ve been thinking a lot about cameras. That’s because I decided that cameras will be the theme I use for the challenge.
Every letter is covered, except for Y and Z.
We have a few cameras (by few, I mean about 600), so I figured it would be easy. A greater challenge would be to narrow down the types of cameras.
I decided to go with single lens film cameras. You might ask, what other kinds of cameras are there? Besides digital cameras, of course.
April is among my favorite months for blogging, because of the Blogging from A to Z challenge. The idea is that or each day of the month, exluding weekends, one writes a blog post related to a specific letter of the alphabet. April 1 is A, April 2 is B, etc.
While a theme is not a requirement, it can make blogging a lot more interesting. In this post, I shall reveal to you, my dear reader, what this year’s theme will be for this blog. A lot of blogs are participating in the A to Z challenge and are revealing their themes today, in a the A to Z Theme Reveal Blogfest.
There is, I suppose, the slightest chance that you’ve wondered why my blog is called ‘Paleopix.’ Perhaps you’ve ventured so far as to visit Paleopix.com and have been a little surprised by what you saw.
When my husband and I first married (in fact it might have been before we married), we started collecting antique cameras. We collected over 600 older film cameras, the oldest being from the late 1800’s and the newest being one that we bought about the time we got married. The collection we have is neither his nor mine, it is ours.
It all started with one camera we found at a yard sale, the Univex Corsair II. I think we bought it for $7. It fascinated us both, and it teases us on many levels. It’s mechanical (and there’s nothing battery-powered about this camera), which caught the interest of my husband. It’s very Art Deco, with is an aesthetic that my husband and I share, with all the glossy black and silver. It’s a camera and we both enjoyed taking pictures. We do have our favorites, however. I’m a big fan of the older bakelite cameras. The husband likes the 1960’s-1980’s SLR cameras.
Univex Corsair II – our first camera
We put together a Microsoft Access database (which is how I learned to use Access), and cataloged and tagged each camera (well at least the first 500 or so), and would spend hours cleaning them and trying to make them work. For each camera that still worked and for which there was film available, we’d shoot a roll and get them developed. We have thousands of photos. We were glad when we were later able to just get the photos on CD.
But then we had our son, and the camera collection and web page development had slowed. OK, it’s pretty-much stopped. But the boy is older now, and I’m starting to think about getting back into the collection and working more on the website. In the meantime, here’s a few photos of some of our cameras!
Minolta SRT-MC-II – My first camera. Actually, it was my dad’s camera, but I borrowed it for so long he finally replaced it…Our oldest cameraA Minolta SLR camera for 110 cartridge film. It was a little like taking photos with a sandwich.This is one of our littlest cameras, called a ‘HIT’ camera. That’s a penny for scale. Yes, it worked (though we’ve never tried it).The Nikon F – one of the original Nikon SLRs. Still works. It’s lenses work on our new Nikon digital SLRs.The Univex Mercury – a half-frame camera (took 48 photos on a 24-exposure roll). This was just post WWII. It had a rotary shutter, hence the funny dome on top.Another Univex Mercury. Same vintage, but had flash and rapid-winder. I’ve shot a roll through this one.Bolsey camera – one of the first to take the ‘standard’ (yet now extinct) 35mm film cartridge. We put a roll through this too.Winpro cameras were made near here in Webster NY. Pretty cheap plastic.A Voightlander twin-lens-reflex camera. These take 120 film which is still available (or was when we bought the camera). We never tested this one.Falcon – one of my favorite cheap plastic/bakelite cameras.The Royal Reflex – another cheap plastic/bakelite camera. This one is a twin lens style.A Kodak 3A folding pocket camera – we have lots of bellows cameras. This one’s nice because the bellows are red and intact. It took postcard-sized plates.
There’s a few more, but you can visit the website to see them. Obviously, we have far less than 600 cameras photographed and posted. Some of them, maybe several hundred, are not really worth photographing, but we have some treasures as well. Maybe we’ll get around to posting them all… soon.
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 