Classic Camera Irony

<p>I recently thought of something unique about classic manual cameras. It's that film cameras are commonly older than the photographers who are using them. Small format film cameras are often older than the younger people using them (Olympus, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax from the 70's and 80's) large and medium format cameras are commonly older than middle aged people. <br>

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The irony is that film cameras are churning through multiple users over time. Old used cameras get bought and sold, used, and resold again to maybe another student or a curious photographer. Quite the opposite of today's digital photographers churning through newer and better digital cameras every so often. What do you think? </p>

<p>I think it may well be something to do with a lot of the classic cameras having fewer bits to go wrong. As long as shutter works, the body has no light leaks, lens has no scratches or fungus and the winding mechanism is working, there is little to go wrong with all manual cameras. The modern electronic camera or for that matter the classic electronic cameras would be more difficult to repair when they break down. My Olympus OM4 is probably not going to be getting repaired after a few years but the OM1 would go on and on.</p>

<p>The other potential problem with today's cameras is batteries. Will batteries still be available for them 30 years from now? I can easily find batteries for my 1928 Bergheil.</p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

<p>Kent, that must be some battery in that Bergheil :) I think you have hit on some sort of formula there David. I'm trying to outlive my cameras, but it's a losing battle. They will still be going strong long after I am, well, where ever I'll be.</p>

<p>Interesting and astute observation, <strong>David</strong>. Planned obsolescence is a feature of modern cameras, I fear; forseeably disposable, a concept not really part of the equation when the classic mid-century film cameras were created. As for the users; most of my oldest cameras are my contemporaries; go back any further and you'll find people in darkened rooms, tracing pictures on vellum from the image projected by pinhole in the wall...</p>

<p>I don't know if it's "planned obsolescence" as much as just rapidly evolving technology. But the fact remains that digital cameras age very poorly. Custom battery designs are the worst problem, but additionally, the cameras are full of custom chips. Once the manufacturer stops making replacement parts, the cameras are repairable only by cannibalizing other units, and eventually there won't be any of those. Twenty years from now, film cameras will still be usable (if you can get film), but many of today's digital cameras will be dead.</p>

<p>Most of the cameras I actually enjoy using are younger than I am. My current favorite 35mm SLR is the Nikon F3HP, which came out when I was in my teens.</p>

Battery packs can be rebuilt, if you have ever taken one apart you will find standard size cells. I made battery packs for the Nikon DS-1 EE servo for the F2S out of cordless phone batteries.

 

I have a Leica M3 made the same month that I was born.

<p>I really love the new digital technology, but lets face it, camera factories aren't making heirlooms like my M2 anymore.</p>

Disposable income.

<p>I wonder if we are drawn to the cameras we saw as children? Those cameras are burned into my brain as "the way a camera should look." I was born in 1973, the same year as the Spotmatic F -- my personal Platonic ideal of camera. I am also fond of cameras that were in use over my childhood: the Nikon F3, the Canon AE-1, the Leica M4P.</p>

<p>I have found a similar corelation to cars (for those who love automobiles.) My dad is a sucker for a '49 Ford, I love the 1970 Chevelle SS, and my younger cousin loves the 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix.</p>

<p>With our film cameras the amazing technology is contained in the little can that I slip in the film chamber. When I put a modern color film like Ektar into a 60 year old camera do I wonder what had to be designed, built, and maintained to allow me to do this simple act? Not usually. Even with B&W films there is a lot of things that have be maintained 'just right' to deliver the level of reliability we expect when we buy a brick of film. What is also amazing to me is that for $2 you can still buy a 135-36exp. roll of a serviceable 200 ISO speed color film, in 2013! </p>

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<p>I wonder if we are drawn to the cameras we saw as children?</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />That's clearly the case with me - When I got into photography as a teenager, the cameras to have (but way beyond the grasp of a high schooler) were F-1's and F2's, and the F3 when it came out. That's exactly what I use now (Just to reassure myself that I'm hip and up-to-date, I also use an F4 ;-)<br>

Same with cars - I'm currently restoring a '72 Triumph TR6, which was a "hot car" when I was a kid in Ireland. This will be my daily driver when it's completed.</p>

<p>I think it is all a bunch of hooey. Where there is a need there is an entrepreneur. </p>

<p>For film camera:</p>

<p>I can buy Wein cells that put out a constant 1.35 volts.</p>

<p>I have a wonderful selection of color and B&W films. Some film sizes are obsolete or are hard/costly to obtain but I can generally take all the film shots I want and get them developed or buy the chemicals and do it myself.</p>

<p>I can get camera restoration equipment from Micro-Tools.</p>

<p>I can get a wide selection of film and chemicals from Freestyle.</p>

<p>I can get pre-cut light baffle material from Interslice.</p>

<p>Film darkroom equipment is almost free for the asking.</p>

<p>Digital cameras:</p>

<p>The Canon Powershot Pro 70 was the first camera tested by DPReview. You can easily find batteries and memory cards for it.</p>

<p>Digital cameras are hand-me-downs to the next generation.</p>

<p>KEH seems to be doing a thriving business in used digital cameras.</p>

<p>--------------------------------------------------</p>

<p>You can look at a glass being half full or half empty. All I know is that my camera shelves are packed and I need more room. I can buy a Canon Elan IIe for about $30 from KEH. The same camera cost me about $400 back in 1996.</p>

<p>I have had my DSLR for about 5 years. I took it on a recent vacation. I can carry an extra battery and memory cards in the space of a couple of rolls of film. I can shoot all day long, day after day for no additional cost.</p>

<p>I recently bought a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 MF macro lens. I have a number of adapters. I can use this lens on over 30 different cameras that I own, both film and digital.</p>

<p>I have been involved with photography for almost 50 years. This is the golden age. Embrace it.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I <em>wish</em> that most of my cameras were older than me. But the truth is that most of my DDR gems post-date me by at least 5 years. These, and many of my non-DDR cameras for that matter, are the ones I wanted to have back when I was younger, but cost hundreds of pre-inflation dollars.</p>

<p>I also wish that the old digital cameras were as cheap to buy as the film ones. The prices for even the early 3-6MP digital cameras are surprisingly high, or I'd be trying them out just as I did with the the early AF film cameras and the EOS film cameras.</p>

<p>Unfortunately I disprove the theory, because I'm much older than all my nine cameras.</p>

Classic manual cameras remain popular for some of the same reasons why manual wind watches, fountain pens and vacuumn tube electronics remain popular.

 

Mechanical simplicity

Quality of build

Aesthetics

Ergonomics

Nostalgia

 

I see digital techology going in two directions.

 

For the mass consumer, digital photography is an add on feature to other gadgets, or utilized as a throwaway planned obsolescence commodity.

 

For the enthusianst mid level and higher digital technology is approaching the point (and some would say has already reached the point) where the capability and resolution levels are beyond the abilities of the user. Higher end digital cameras- many DSLR and some all-in-one cameras- are viewed as investments rather than gadgets, meaning that the owners will keep them for a long period of time and then pass them on to the next generation. Something like a Nikon D7000 has cababilities beyond the abilities of most users. It will be used for many years before upgrading or unitl it breaks...much like the "F" series before it. Will it have the longevity of the "F" ? Who knows, but judging by the support for older prosumer and pro level Nikon bodies I suspect it will.

<p>I thought about the premise, "cameras we saw as children", &, in my case, would like to modify it to age & place; for example, as a student at Pitt, I saw a Chevrolet Stingray from the 60's which really impressed me so that I would still prefer a Stingray to a newer Mako Shark design. With respect to cameras, my platonic ideal is probably the Nikon photomic F with a 50 f1.4 lens.</p>

<p>Marc may well have some legitimate points, but I'll go along anyway. "Cameras we saw as kids."<br /> I seem to have solved that issue. The camera I saw as a kid was my father's Diax L-1. He gave it to me 20 years later... I tuned it up and I still use it... so there, and it predates me by five years.<br /> :-)</p>

<p>"I wonder if we are drawn to the cameras we saw as children?" The cameras I see now(still 14) are fully digital, with plastic EVERYWHERE. Never really appealed to me, even after I bought my first DSLR, thought it a bit too light, too fiddly. I soon got myself a camera which is definitely older than me, an F2 Photomic. Really, it is wonderful to shoot, solid, metal, heavy, everything I have been looking for in a camera. So that does not apply to me :)</p>

<p>I do think we are drawn to the cameras we saw as young kids, either in advertisements, in a store, owned by a family member, etc. That was totally true of my grandfather's film camera, a Kodak Retina Reflex III. I saw it when I was about 8 years old and remember thinking it was the best looking camera I had ever seen! To me, it looked and felt like a "real" camera and I knew I had to have one some day. <br>

It still is my personal favorite to this day.</p>

 

<p>I think David is right. I always wanted a Graflex SLR because the chimney hood looked so cool and the panel with all the numbers on it looked so mysterious. After the internet got going I found one by way of the auction site. It's 82 years old (still older than me!) and after a CLA it's working just as it's supposed to.</p>

<p>What's more, if you heat up a Nikon F you could use it as an iron :)</p>

<p>There's usually a 30-40 year span before something gets over the awkward used/junk status to become retro, unique and collectible, but not necessarily valuable. </p>

<p>Many digital shooters keep multiple generations of digital cameras as they progressively upgrade, and one day no doubt they'll be recycled in the used/collector/accumulator market just as film cameras are currently. </p>

<p>I was born in 1964, just after my Nikon F. Dad shot Nikon, so very early on (modulo a digression into a Pentax Spotmatic 'cause my uncle had one and I could borrow his big bag -o- lenses when I was a poor college student) I latched onto Nikon as my dream. The notion that I could take a lens off any of my Nikons and mount it on any other of my Nikons and have it at least pass light in the general direction of the shutter, along with the essential indestructibility of most Nikon gear, keeps me wedded to it (anyone wanna sell me a D90 cheap? :) ).<br>

<br />One thing I dearly miss about the older manual SLRs was simplicity - I could hold the thing in my left hand, and work all the controls - shutter, speed, film advance, aperture and focus - without moving my right hand or taking my eye off the finder. No can do any more. Hey Nikon, howabout you revise your cameras' UI so that the aperture ring still does does what you'd expect? Ah well, that's progress for you.<br>

Oh yeah, my most recent camera acquisition *is* considerably older than I am - a Zeiss Ikoflex rescued from dark oblivion in a closet :). <br>

<br />Interestingly, this same sort of "new v. old" argument crops up in ham radio circles all the time.</p>

<p>In my Humble collection the only camera older than me is the Rolleiflex camera made in 1937<br>

the next oldest is in the 40's that's about it , I thinks its time to take the Rolleiflex out for a walk soon:</p>