Mourning the Death of Shutterbug and Popular Photography Magazines. Their Articles on Classic Cameras.

May 6, 2019

#308

Gentle reader,

It's been a while since I've written anything about classic film cameras. Mainly because, aside from nine still cameras and two movie cameras, most of which were gifts, and my Voigtlander Bessa R, which come to think of it, my wife gave to me for my birthday, I have no more collection.


NOTE: If you are viewing this on a computer, clicking on any picture will open a second window over this one. You click through or use your right and left arrow keys to look at the photos. They will be larger than seen here. If you are viewing it on a device such as a phone or tablet, I do not know if that works the same way.

My camera articles are the most popular by far in this blog series, and I have you to thank for that. I did not have a "real" camera until April, 1995 when I visited a pawn shop for the first time and picked out an Olympus OM-10 with a 50mm lens and a generic flash.

Since I knew NOTHING about cameras, I subscribed to  Shutterbug and Popular Photography magazines. In fact, the first time I'd seen the word: eBay, was a full page ad in Shutterbug with a photo of a single old camera centered and at the bottom: www.ebay.com.

By then, 1998, I'd started collecting cameras, as people found out what I was doing, they started giving me old cameras: A Voigtlander Vitessa, Rollei 35 and a Busch Pressman 4x5 camera. Later, my sister gave me a pair of old Kodaks: a box and folding camera. The latter in the original box. The movie cameras were my in-laws.

As you no doubt know, both Shutterbug and Popular Photography magazines are now out of business. Which I why I felt safe to finally write this article. 

In fact, I had written to the editor of Pop Photo, telling her about my having kept old article and of my longtime subscription. She e-mailed me back to ask if it was OK for her to hold off publishing my letter until the next issue. She wanted to include all of it and didn't have space in the upcoming issue. Unbeknownst to me, that issue turned out to be their LAST one! She wrote about me in her editorial and published my entire e-mailed letter. Quite an honor to be sure. I was saddened about their folding and again when Shutterbug announced a couple of months later that they too were ceasing to exist.

I have made all of these scans full sized so that you should be able to read the articles.

I had kept these and many other articles in binders, thinking I could refer back to them in the future. Jason Schneider had a column about collecting old cameras which I especially liked. Of all those above, I had a Contax II, Leica IIIC and an OM-1, as well as a number of Olympi cameras. Olympi is plural for Olympus, right?

I had a Mercury II and a number of Argi, including that one shown. I mainly collected rangefinders, but had a number of SLRs over all those years.

The closest I had to any of these was a Kiev 60. Big, heavy beast that shot 60cm by 60cm negatives. Made in Kiev, Ukraine.

My Rollei 35 is an original model, made in Germany. My brother mailed it to me.

I had both versions of that compact Petri and a whole lot more Petri models, all rangefinders.

I also had several Olympus X series cameras. The XA is the only one that has a rangefinder.

The Electro series of Yashica rangefinder cameras were quite popular and with a battery adapter can still be used today. I had all of them in all-black as well as chrome models. None gold plated, however.

I always wanted one of those TASCO binoculars/cameras. But all that I could afford were a number of 110 models.

 I too had a King Regula, one of the more attractive rangefinder 35mm cameras.

Once, while looking through the usual bagged small items at one of our favorite thrift stores, there in one bag was a Contax T2, marked at $7.00. Here it is:

Titanium body, Carl Zeiss lens. I should have hung on to it. I sold it for $200 then. They are worth much more now. Who knew?

There were SO many TLR cameras made by so many manufacturers. I had a number of them, but no "sem".

Ah, yes, Aires. They were a favorite of mine. The top model was the 35V which had interchangeable lenses. I bought no less than FIVE 35 IIIC models before getting one which worked. The IIIC resembled a Leica M3, unless they were side-by-side.

 Two Bolsey models were in the collection, one B2 and a Jubilee.

Very few Zeiss Ikon cameras came my way. I did have a Moscow which was the Soviet copy of a pre-WWII Zeiss Ikon 6x9 roll film rangefinder camera.

Aside from my Cosina-made Bessa R, I also had a Voigtlander similar to that one, but not meter equipped.

Here are some photos of Germany's most revered camera brands that were mine for a while.

This is a pre-WWII Contax, it was modified with a pair of contacts to use a flashgun.

The lens is post-war since it is coated, the T indicates that and the fact that one can see so many colors reflecting inside it.

My one-and-only Leica, a 1946 IIIC which I recovered with snakeskin. 

These are the panels I came up with to mount the cameras on. I called them CameraLock. I offered plans to build them online but few took up my offer.

This is both of then in one shot. I had more cameras which were too large and/or heavy to mount thusly. 

Finally, this fisheye lens shot of the collection. I spent years amassing them and then realized that I had achieved my goal of having a large camera collection. Then began selling them off, one by one.

I took up film shooting for a while last year, but at $20 a roll to develop and print them, I decided to stick with digital.  

Thank you once again for taking the time to read my humble words and view my images. It is your kind words and comments that keep me cranking out these articles.

Scott
May 6, 2019
#308