I thought it would be nice to start a new thread about camera equipment from the old days. Here's a picture of a camera that used to belong to my grandparents, the 1962 Agfa Optima Ia :
If any of you have a picture of an old camera, please post them here .
A family member had a "folding" medium format camera, the Franka Solida II, made sometime in the early 1950's in some small town near the Black Forest. It was a solid piece of equipment with a nice lens.
Thanks for your reply. Now that's a really old camera, might be worth quite some money if you would sell it now. I found out that the one I posted is only worth 19 euros these days . Well, I am not planning on selling it anyway .
I posted something over at the Pentax SLR thread, I don't mean to "double post" by putting this photo here, but it's what Prospero was looking for. This is very similar to my very first SLR, mine was a lot newer but Pentax's design didn't change much for a very long time. Cheers.
Nice picture, Beachluvr. These are indeed the kind of pictures I am looking for . Don't worry about the double post, the picture is only 25 kb or so. The next time, however, you want to post the same picture twice you could also link to the first picture using the "Insert Image" button. You then have to type the URL of the image you first posted. You can find the URL by right-clicking on the original image and choosing properties (or whatever it's called in the English version of Internet Explorer). If you do it this way, the image will be stored only once on the server of DCRP, thus saving some space.
EDIT:
Never mind, If you post a picture that way, for some reason only a link appears in the post, as the experiment above shows.
Thanks for the feedback Prospero. Continuing on with old cameras in my past, this is what my first Nikon looked like. It was a Nikon F with the add-on meter, a very advanced concept when it was introduced!! That camera and I had our work published in many newspapers and magazines and it was there with me to photograph presidents, royalty, celebrities and some very amazing ordinary people. I have an old picture of me with my Nikon F that I'll try to find and post here. That should be good for a laugh.
Thanks for the feedback Prospero. Continuing on with old cameras in my past, this is what my first Nikon looked like. It was a Nikon F with the add-on meter, a very advanced concept when it was introduced!! That camera and I had our work published in many newspapers and magazines and it was there with me to photograph presidents, royalty, celebrities and some very amazing ordinary people. I have an old picture of me with my Nikon F that I'll try to find and post here. That should be good for a laugh.
Wow its got the original Nippon 50mm on there too! Great pic beachluvr. I bet that'd be worth a pretty penny in the collectors market
One of the other 35mm cameras I've owned, at least for a short time, was a Mamiya Sekor. Many people may not be familiar with the brand, but it was well regarded for a period of time. I traded it, plus some cash, for my first Nikon FTN (which became my first "personal" SLR that I used more for family/trips/fun than for anything serious).
When I was with "Vogue" their standards prohibited "small" format (ie. anything under 4 x 5). Even today magazines like "Arizona Highways" are among those who will not accept digital photos and prefer 4 x 5 transparencies.
The camera they issued me was a 4 x 5 Pacemaker Speed Graphic, one of the last wood (non-plastic, non-metal) cameras in the series, and a large collection of 4 x 5 film. After my shoots I would spend HOURS in the darkroom processing my own film to assure it would render exactly the results expected. Compare the imaging area and resolution to anything the "digital" world has to offer today and you will finally understand why digital looks good to the casual eye, but is years away from being a truly professional format.
I showed up one day with a medium format Hasselblad to do a model shoot. I had to rent the camera and pay for the rental out of my own pocket. The powers-that-be were beyond shocked that I would bring that cheap piece of crap into their studio. At the time the Hasselblad was one of the most expensive products my mind could conceive, I think the camera/lens combo cost more than my friend's Jaguar XKE!!! They let me do the shoot but were VERY critical of the results ... they were too blurry (sound familiar to those looking at VR/IS/AS?
... and this is what the Hasselblad looked like. I ended up getting my own after I discovered the freedom it gave me. I also left the 4 x 5 format far behind and started to discover what I could do with my Nikon F.
But editors are editors and I have always ended up needing to conform in some way to their publishing standards.