Classic Camera Shooters

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<b>Bob said:</b><br><br>

"As I understood the original idea, it was a forum/gallery to deal with older, fully mechanical cameras - and to demonstrate that good photography could be done with basic, old, cheap equipment. I think 1960 is a pretty good cut-off date since there wasn't much (if anything) before that date which has autoexposure (and certainly no autofocus!)"

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I think you have nicely summed up the idea; it seems adequate to me as the basis for a forum. I'm not very concerned myself with hard dates for the period tho I have a personal preference for pre and post-war folders.

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I'm also not concerned much about outlying odd cases like Kodak's early foray into autoexposure. After all, how many of those are likely to be in the hands of shooters who are going to post on photo.net. Also, what if one does show up? Would that be offensive somehow? Doesn't seem like it.

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I don't think I was very clear in my comment about the cost of acquiring a working vintage camera. I was not saying that I was interested in cheap cameras. My point was that it is still possible to find excellent cameras and lenses at very low cost. Some of those cameras were actually pretty expensive when they appeared on the market. For instance, the Retina IIa sold for around $165 in the '50s; I believe in today's economy that would be the equivalent of about $1000. Today, on ebay, they are obtainable for $35-$65, which is a tiny fraction of their original value in real money.

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Anyway, it is nice to see this discussion proceeding toward some results.

Regardless, i think a forum for non-SLR mechanical cameras would be quite interesting, since it fills a niche. This would include TLR's, rangefinders, folders and whatnot.

 

Of course there is going to be conflicts with other forums - the medium format forum, the Leica one, maybe even the Nikon and Canon ones if you want to talk about the S3's etc. That is unavoidable. And if someone makes a post on the Exakta, well, it would be OT but I think it would have a better chance of seeing quality responses than if the poster assigned it to the beginner's forum or general archieved forum.

 

Yes, this could divert traffic - on the other hand, it can also stimulate interest and even more postings as the regulars of the forum get to know each other's personality, such as the Leica forum.

 

As to the odd people who post in the wrong forum , well, no one is ever going to stop that. For all we know, someone may post Canon-related threads on the Leica forum (they definitely post threads on Konica AF's etc), but unless the thread is interesting, it is going to be ignored.

 

What about it?

The question of 1960s mechanical SLRs is an interesting point.

 

As I "understood" the original idea, it would seem to excluse such cameras as they are too "similar" to current models. There's no really much difference between a needle match exposure Pentax Spotmatic and a Canon EOS-1v except for a few bells and whistles, whereas there's a huge difference in operation between a post-WWII folding camera and an SLR.

 

By using a pre-1960 date we're mainly looking at the pre-SLR era. I know there were a few, but very few. Using a pre-1970 date we move into an era of cameras much like current cameras, just a bit less automated. We have instamatics for example and a whole bunch of SLRs with various degrees of automation, but which aren't essentially different from current cameras.

 

TLRs, of course bridge the gap. They're still made today (e.g. Seagull cameras" and they're essentially the same as they were on 1950!

 

However folding cameras are pretty much gone now and most of the "user" models do fall into the pre-1960 era, with such items as the Zeiss Ikonta and Moskva cameras.

 

So the choice seem to be pre-1960, where most of the cameras are significantly different from those produced today, or some later date such as 1970 where we also include cameras that are essentially just old (hence cheap) versions of current cameras.

 

I still thing any such forum should be mainly for camera discussions rather than image presentations. If users of such cameras want to present images they should create gallery presentations, not use the forum structure to present them. The gallery is designed for such presentations, the forums aren't. You can drive a screw into a piece of wood with a hammer, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't be better off using a screwdriver!

<b>trial balloon</b>

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I've put together a small presentation on one of my favorite '50s folders at <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation.tcl?presentation_id=217115">http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation.tcl?presentation_id=217115</a>.

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I'd appreciate knowing if this is what Bob had in mind, along with any other feedback on the appropriateness of the format to support the classic camera shooters forum. I enjoy doing this sort of thing, but it is pretty time consuming.

I guess I'd vote for the cutoff being 1970, letting in the leading edge of the SLR explosion, but also ensuring that the trailing edges of some other camera model families are included. I reckon there are other forums where a lot of the SLR discussion will end up anyway.

 

However, I don't think Bob or I are going to be big contributors to this forum (could be wrong about Bob); so it would be good to hear from others on this issue.

 

At this point, my working title for the forum is "Older/Classic Cameras (pre-1970)", relying on the date to diminish confusion as to what "Classic" means. The description might be: "a forum to discuss the use of older ("classic") camera models introduced before 1970, including such types as box cameras, folders, twins lens reflex cameras, and 35mm rangefinders."

are you looking for suggestions about categories for the forum?

 

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Following Mike's lead, I imitated him to some degree and made up a first draft of a presentation <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/presentation.tcl?presentation_id=217481">old and classic camera photographs</a>

<p>what other ideas, opinions or suggestion can help at this point?

I think the idea of a forum for discussion of old cameras, along with pointers to gallery presentations is an excellent compromise between an "all forum" or "all gallery" approach. With the gallery you can see the thumbnails and the user can arrange it however they want.

 

I'd see a forum as strongly encoraging this form of image presentation, though uploading images to the forum itself wouldn't be prohibited.

 

I'm still not sure about the cutoff date. I'd go for 1960, Brian seems to favor 1970. The earlier date excludes most 35mm SLRs, the later date lets in a bunch of them. Both pretty much exclude most the the 1970s rangefinders such as the popular Canonet QL17. If you wanted then you'd have to make it 1980, which pretty much makes the idea of a "classic" camera forum bite the dust since it then allows in just about all the auto everything cameras of the 1970s and you might just as well call it "used cameras"!

Category suggestions would also be welcome. I'd see them based on camera type rather than manuafacturer. So maybe TLR's, Box Cameras, Rangefinders, Scale focus. Folders etc?

 

Categories for "odd" formats (620, 127) are possible, but then they'd clash with any camera type categories.

 

Ditto for classification based on age (1950s, 1940s, 1930s). That would clash with both format and type categories.

 

I think there are probably WAY to many manufacturers to categorize based on that.

What about having the criteria be any camera before 1960 (or whatever date we decide on) which has no spot to place a battery, that way only older photovoltiac(sp) meters are included?

 

I think that may solve a lot of issues around electronic cameras.

If the date is 1960, that's really not much of an issue. There's weren't many electronic cameras before then, basically because you couldn't get a vacuum tube and a 100v battery in a camera!

 

I really don't see any reason to exclude cameras which use a battery powered meter while allowing passive meters. Seems like an arbitrary criterion. Since there were autoexposure cameras based on passive metering (no battery) you don't exclude autoexposure by a "no battery" rule if that's the goal.

Oh, ok Bob... my mistake... That really makes sense though, for some reason i thought the diaphram was controlled by a servo.

I did a search on the terms, "vintage camera", and found that a discussion similar to this one had taken place in the Medium Format forum in November. I posted a message there with pointers to this discussion and to the November one, and some new responses are being posted there now.

I happened to be doing a search on the Nikkorex 35 II and found a source of Nikon camera information and noticed this bit of text

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<i>The release and the sales of the Nikon F2 on September 21, 1971, drew a great deal of attention.</i>

<p>Which is later than I realized and would I suppose put the Nikon F2 outside the parameters we have been talking about. I bought a used F2 last year and aside from using it to develop my biceps, like it quite a lot.<p>

regards, Bill

I think the most interesting alternative that has come up in the MF forum is a suggestion to establish a "category" within the MF Forum entitled "Vintage Medium Format", and to set up a separate Forum over on the camera side entitled "Vintage 35mm". That does seem like it would capture most of the cameras that people are going to be shooting. One could also establish a time period to define "vintage", or just let the participants figure it out for themselves. I could certainly live with any of the periods that have been suggested here.

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I thought about posting a picture to draw attention to the MF discussion, but doing that in the past has created quite a bit of confusion when people tried that and I didn't want that to become the topic. It seems that the MF people aren't quite so into their computers as some others. I would be nice to add the simpler picture uploading form to any new subject forum so that people could occasionally put up an image without being an html expert.

Since 90% of the interest in vintage (non-Leica) cameras comes from medium format shooters (since most such cameras are rollfilm and on eof their major attractions is that they ARE medium format) and the Leica shooters have the Leiva forum, I don't think it would be worth the effort to start a "35mm vintage camera" forum.

 

If the medium format forum established a "vintage cameras" categeory, I'd just drop the whole idea of a new forum and leave it to them.

Brian,<br><br>

Thanks for creating the new forum; I think it will have a lot of participation. I've put a note in the MF forum alerting people to look in the "Equipment Specific" section for the forum until the title appears in the summary at the top of the page. Perhaps it will be possible to put something in the photo.net opening page about the creation of the new group?

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I don't know if Bob's prediction about the preponderance of MF classics will come true, but will certainly be interested in seeing what happens, and have no plans to retire my 35mm folders.

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<b>thanks!</b>

Now I'm totally confused.

 

Do you want a new forum or are you happy with just a category in the Medium Format forum? Does Andrew Booth (the MF moderator) want it that way?

 

If you're making a "clasic/vintage" camera category in Medium Format, as I said, I'll drop the whole plan for a new forum. Am I wasting my time on this one?

 

35mm vintage cameras is too small a focus group to support with it's own forum. Other narrow focus groups are LUESNET legacy forums and would not be created today.

What is going on? Please clarify, thanks.

FWIW, I would appreciate seeing both 35mm and MF classic/vintage cameras in a forum. And that this forum would have the capability for participants to upload images in a fashion similar to the uploads done in the Nikon and Leica forums. I would also hope that technical questions and best practice type information would be shared there as well.

 

I dont understand what Mike is referring to in his last post.

Not sure what part of my last message was confusing, but to restate:

Brian has created a new forum for pre-'70s "classic cameras" of any make or format. It is at <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1903">http://www.photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1903</a>.

Come on in, the water's fine!

Retrospect: The Forum with the 1970 Cutoff date has turned out quite well, don't see any "theft" from other forums. Mike C has stopped posting. Those of us with Newer Film Slr's are stuck in the Ozone.

yeah, that 1970 cutoff ---- my newly bought used Nikon F2 Photomic misses by two years. My late Dad's old Nikon FM, simple but effective all mechanical SLR with built in light meter, misses by a decade, I think it was a 1980 debut. So I went out and bought some non-AI Nikkor lenses. Any reason to keep on collecting.

 

It is a good forum.