vintage camera user from Seattle

[dbailey56]

Was looking for someplace to talk about vintage cameras and found you folks. After reading several posts I knew there were some SMART people around here! I look forward to the exchange.

I'm an architect, living in Seattle WA. My main passion is street photography, although I have the good fortune to be "in" with a film company here in town and get paid to do their Behind The Scenes stills each time they film a new movie. Got to love getting paid for your hobby!

I'm totally infatuated with shooting with vintage cameras, but I'm not a collector. I buy them, clean them up, often doing some semi-serious repairs to get them working again, shoot with them for a while then sell them back so I have money to buy another. So far in the past few years of doing this I've owned right at 300 different cameras, the oldest being from 1902. But my collection of keepers is now at 8 (so that isn't so bad is it?).

If you're interested in seeing my cameras I keep a log of them here:
https://dbaileyseattle.smugmug.com/Lo-Fi
...nothing fancy, just a few thoughts about the camera, a photo of the camera, then some shots taken with it.

Anyway, thanks for being here. I look forward to getting to know you better.

--Douglas

 

[Designer]

Welcome!

 

[vintagesnaps]

Great!! now I'm not going to get anything done (because I started looking at your cameras...).

 

[dbailey56]

Great!! now I'm not going to get anything done (because I started looking at your cameras...).

Yeah that still happens to me a lot, lol.

 

[limr]

Was looking for someplace to talk about vintage cameras and found you folks. After reading several posts I knew there were some SMART people around here! I look forward to the exchange.

I'm an architect, living in Seattle WA. My main passion is street photography, although I have the good fortune to be "in" with a film company here in town and get paid to do their Behind The Scenes stills each time they film a new movie. Got to love getting paid for your hobby!

I'm totally infatuated with shooting with vintage cameras, but I'm not a collector. I buy them, clean them up, often doing some semi-serious repairs to get them working again, shoot with them for a while then sell them back so I have money to buy another. So far in the past few years of doing this I've owned right at 300 different cameras, the oldest being from 1902. But my collection of keepers is now at 8 (so that isn't so bad is it?).

If you're interested in seeing my cameras I keep a log of them here:
https://dbaileyseattle.smugmug.com/Lo-Fi
...nothing fancy, just a few thoughts about the camera, a photo of the camera, then some shots taken with it.

Anyway, thanks for being here. I look forward to getting to know you better.

--Douglas

Welcome, Douglas!

Like Sharon, I had to go peruse the cameras

It seems we have three in common:
--the Holga (not a big surprise - many vintage camera shooters make their way to one at some point )
--the Yashica D (mine is grey)
--and the one that surprised me was the ONDU pinhole. Fun little thing, isn't it? And yes, it's a gorgeous piece of work. I learned about them because my boyfriend's father is Slovenian. Last time we were there, we almost met up with Elvis but the timing didn't work out. Really nice guys. Did you know they have updated versions of the pinholes, fixing a few little bugs from the first run?

Edit: I spoke too soon! I also have an Olympus 35RC, Pentax K1000, a Land Camera 100 Auto, and a folding SX-70 I see the Land Camera is part of your permanent collection. I adore mine. It was my father's, bought it 1965.

 

[dbailey56]

That's a lot of overlap! We're almost related, lol.

A Holga lens on my DSLR was my gateway drug. Had so much fun shooting with that I decided to get the real thing and off I went.

The Yashica D was the first TLR I had ever looked through and was hooked immediately. Even though I still turn the wrong direction more often than not.

I was so impressed by the craftsmanship of the ONDU pinhole. But I did have to draw a little arrow on the film advance knob because I kept forgetting which way to turn, lol.

Sad news about my Automatic 100. I took it out to shoot 3 days ago and realized it was turning out solid black prints. Which I believe means it's not getting juice to run the shutter. I'm terrible at soldering but guess I'm going to have to try my hand at Polaroid repair.

Loved your blog Leonore, some great images and thoughts there.

 

[limr]

That's a lot of overlap! We're almost related, lol.

A Holga lens on my DSLR was my gateway drug. Had so much fun shooting with that I decided to get the real thing and off I went.

The Yashica D was the first TLR I had ever looked through and was hooked immediately. Even though I still turn the wrong direction more often than not.

I was so impressed by the craftsmanship of the ONDU pinhole. But I did have to draw a little arrow on the film advance knob because I kept forgetting which way to turn, lol.

Sad news about my Automatic 100. I took it out to shoot 3 days ago and realized it was turning out solid black prints. Which I believe means it's not getting juice to run the shutter. I'm terrible at soldering but guess I'm going to have to try my hand at Polaroid repair.

Loved your blog Leonore, some great images and thoughts there.

Thank you!

There really was a lot of crossover, wasn't there? Camera soul siblings I also had to put a mark on the knob of the ONDU, not just for the direction, but to mark the film advance. I found one rotation was usually enough to not overlap frames, so I heated a paper clip and burned a mark on the knob and on the camera so I could match them up and know when I'd made a full turn. I also put some tape on the inside where the film touched - I found the advance to be really tight on mine and my film would get scratched.

It's always heartbreaking to peel back some instant film and see that black print! The soldering for the Pola isn't too bad. This solution worked well for me for a little while:



It was tricky to keep the contact steady, though, and it was a PITA to change the batteries, so I eventually did the soldering conversion.