Free search engine for vintage cameras

[Dany]

I would like to bring your attention on the existence of an amazing search engine on the web.

Dedicated to fans of vintage cameras, this tool is the fruit of a tremendous work and allows everyone to identify, date and document a camera by finding and displaying the associated pages of resellers catalogs of the time.

The search is made simply, by entering into the search engine every known parameter as, for example, the type of camera ( SLR, TLR, folding, etc), the format, the lens maker and/or model, the shutter maker and/or model etc...
Then the engine searches in catalog pages and displays the pages showing the cameras matching your search criteria.

Thanks to deeply involved people, this database is growing continuously and is addressing today more than eighty thousand models of camera.

You may help to the enhancement of this fantastic and free tool by sending scans of old camera resellers catalogs you may possess. (proposals for catalog scans to be done by a simple thread in the forum of the site. A section of this French forum is dedicated to non speaking French people www.collection-appareils.fr • Voir le forum - About camera collecting : for people who don't understand french. ).

Resellers catalogs are preferred to camera makers catalogs

NB: The list of camera types of the search engine is still in French on the site but type names in French are close to English ones and therefore easy to understand to anyone with the exception of "chambre" which, in French means large format plate camera.

The URL of the search engine page is:

Camera Search in reseller catalogs

 

[webestang64]

Thanks for the info Dany! Going to go there and check it out.

 

[Dany]

Thank you Webestang64 for your interest.
For the time being, the catalogs addressed by the search engine are mostly European. It is why scans of American or English resellers catalogs would be mostly appreciated because they could give a wider view on the photographic market of the time.

To document a new camera entering in a collection, looking at ressellers catalogs provides more accurate and sure information than ones collected in some website that may be sprinkled with errors.
Catalogs are providing useful information as the date of release, the technical characteristics, the different variations offered (e.g. proposed lens /shutter combinations), the accessories to fit on the camera and the price at the time.