Vintage – 2nd hand

photo credit: davidgsteadman

When buying a photo camera, we often research in order to decide if this is the best camera, if its features will be goo enough, but will it be robust enough? Will it be useful or necessary to purchase a warranty contract extension? Will it fail very soon?

When somebody asks me these questions (and it happens quite often since I consider myself some kind of photography expert), I am usually without good answers; Nobody really speaks about this dirty little secret: Reliability of photo cameras is a taboo issue. In most cases, talking only happens for very extreme situations (I will not mention any pro camera events in the past few years). But on a daily basis, will my camera follow me everywhere? will it survive the bad treatment I will apply? Or will it fail at the sight of the first cloud (of dust or rain)? Preferably just a couple of days after the end of the warranty period?

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It’s been years that I fell in love with the excellent Dark Roasted Blend web site. Today, I found a nice post showing some of the most beautiful vintage photo cameras they could find.

Recommended visit if you have a couple of minutes to spend.

Even before Photoshop was available, some photographers tried to improve their photos. Sometimes, it was to clean little blemishes, but it could go to quite significant upgrades: removing somebody form a group portrait (like with chairman Mao, below), putting a better body under the head of VIP, etc.

This guy is no longer welcome here!

Source: NY Times.

To follow up on a previous post, here are the ugliest photo cameras I could find (with the very active assistance of The Online Photographer, I have to admit):

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Christine Berrie is a pencil artist whose work can be astonishing. If you are in vintage cameras, you’ll probably love her vintage camera poster.

Copyright (C) Christine Berrie

And you can buy the poster at Etsy.

Michael Zhang has a good set of advice to provide to help us all buy a lot of pro camera gear on a student budget. This is quite attractive because most photo enthusiasts quickly notice that the only limitation to our photo expenses is the money we can invest into it.

Let’s admit it, there is always some more expensive hardware that we could buy. Usually, this is a pro SLR camera, a major prime lens or exceptional pro zoom.

Lenses and cameras in a packaged deal on eBay - Cheap?

Now, in these times of budgeting for students, it is quite important to try and get the best out of a limited amount of money. Michael essentially offers a small set of very sound advice, that I summarize here with my own grain of salt:

• Buy second-hand (everything is much cheaper than top-of-line gadget-freak-oriented new equipment, even if specifications are evolving – but more slowly than a few years ago).
• Invest in lenses more than in camera gear (lenses will have a much longer life span and re-sell much better than camera bodies).
• Be ready to sell back some of the equipment you have.
• Buy your lenses in package deals (they much more interesting than individual lenses) even if you have to sell some. Sell individual pieces, never a package/set.

One of the good things about buying lenses in second-hand markets/fairs/auctions is that when you sell them back (when you reached the purchase power to grab even better equipment), the old gear can be sold without loosing too much (if you kept it in the same good condition as at purchase time).

This auction sale is a bit unusual. The camera bag does not look like anything nice, it’s covered with old dirt, but its value would be lowered if cleaned, it’s really nearly unique, it’s not been used a lot, but traveled very far.

This is the bag used to store 16mm and 70mm film magazines for Jim Irwin and Dave Scott, astronauts in the Apollo 15 Lunar Module. Landed on the moon on July 30, 1971 the bag was used for two 7-hour EVAs (extra-vehicular activities) and the dust is actual lunar dust.

It goes to auction at Bonham’s in New York City. Price estimate: $40,000 – $50,000.