Vintage Camera Sightings

[Jeremy Z]

She's holding a Seagull TLR. I was intrigued, and opening to the first page, I find they have them for sale, for the amazingly expensive price of $295. B&H sells them for $139.

Yes, and even that is too much. I'd pay maybe $25 for one. They can get away with it because it is the only new TLR made these days. I bet Yashica would make a killing if they brought back the Yashica-Mats at a reasonable price.

When I worked at Central Camera Co., we had students coming in all the time buying the damned things. We had a whole rack full of nice Yashica-Mats and Rolleiflexes, but the worry about them needing repair, parts, and their slightly-higher price always a deal-breaker for the starving students. These kids are spending all of their money, and some of their parents' on tuition and rent.

I tried hard to sell the proper 6x6 TLRs, but only managed to sell one for every 5 Seagulls. It was a personal defeat for me.

The cameras don't have to be particularly good. The mechanism is simple, the lens is cheap, probably even plastic. The fact that the negative is 2 1/2 times bigger than a 35mm neg means better enlargements anyhow. They wouldn't hold a candle to a Yashica-Mat, but they're good enough, and will last through a 16 week course. By golly if the Chinese didn't crack that formula.

 

[montresor]

Regarding "Fur," didn't Arbus use a Mamiya C-series for most of her square shots? Every picture I've seen of her with a TLR, it's that big hulking C around her neck, with a flash bracket making it even bulkier. Later a Pentax 67, but that was like in the last year of her life.... Her first shots were 35mm, almost always composed vertically. Maybe there was a Rollei in there somewhere, I dunno!

 

[ksmattfish]

Regarding "Fur," didn't Arbus use a Mamiya C-series for most of her square shots? Every picture I've seen of her with a TLR, it's that big hulking C around her neck, with a flash bracket making it even bulkier. Later a Pentax 67, but that was like in the last year of her life.... Her first shots were 35mm, almost always composed vertically. Maybe there was a Rollei in there somewhere, I dunno!

She used both. Lisette Model turned her onto the Rolleiflex, which was Arbus' first venture into medium format. Later she also began using a Mamiya TLR.

 

[montresor]

I stand corrected!

 

[usayit]

Not exactly vintage but did anyone see the movie "Pecker". Great movie with lots of screen time for a Canonet.

 

[markc]

Hehe. Yeah, fun film.

As an aside, did you see John Waters in that recent episode of "My Name is Earl"? He played the mortician.

 

[malkav41]

Originally posted by usayit
Not exactly vintage but did anyone see the movie "Pecker". Great movie with lots of screen time for a Canonet.

It's a pretty good flick. I blame that movie for the 8 Canonet's, along with the 8 other rangefinders, and 8 SLR cameras I now own. :blushing: :banghead:

 

[montresor]

Just watched "The Notorious Bettie Page" last night and was amazed at the number of vintage cameras -- and alarmed at how they depicted so-called photographers using them. Speed Graphics with the bellows extended way, way past the infinity stops, as if they were getting inside three feet of the subject; a guy with a cruddy little Ansco TLR on a tripod clicking away like it had a motor drive on it; a woman using a Speed Graphic, hand-held, like a 35mm with a motor drive, not bothering to do anything with a film holder; another woman with a Crown Graphic on a tripod taking shot after shot while just yanking the dark slide in and out (okay, maybe a Grafmatic pack on there?), and some guy with a Rolleiflex who never bothered to advance the film but shot, in quick succession, way more than 12 negatives. I'm no great photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but this seemed beyond incredible.

Anyway, I only rented it because I was interested in the photography angle. Yeah, that's it!

 

[malkav41]

Originally Posted By montresor: and some guy with a Rolleiflex who never bothered to advance the film but shot, in quick succession, way more than 12 negatives.

I find that cameras in movies have a lot in common with revolvers in westerns and gangster movies of the 30's, 40's and some of them in the 50's. You can shoot the thing waaaaay past the 6 rounds it will hold w/o reloading. Same with cameras in some movies. The things have unlimited sized rolls of film in them I guess.

 

[Mitica100]

In Hollywoodland I saw an Argus C44 with a tele lens being used.

 

[usayit]

It's a pretty good flick. I blame that movie for the 8 Canonet's, along with the 8 other rangefinders, and 8 SLR cameras I now own. :blushing: :banghead:

Hey you pack rat.... I'm in the same boat. I used to have 7 Canonets that I obtain for next to nothing over the years. I cleaned them and changed their seals... worked good as new. I ended up needing the space so I gave some of them away as gifts to my friends. I'm down to 2 good examples... which are all mine! 2 other Yashica GSN also share the same shelf...

 

[montresor]

Just dragged out my old C44 to have a look at it -- how they got a tele lens on it escapes me, but I bet it involved Gorilla Glue....

Sort of sad, I rather liked my C44, it was my first experience with a vintage camera. Kind of a good-looking camera. Shutter speeds seemed accurate, rangefinder clear and on, didn't mind the two-stroke advance/shutter cock, but the rewind gears were stripped and it shredded the sprocket holes on the second roll of film I tried in it. Wah! :cry:

(Of course maybe I could just shoot with it and rewind it onto a tank reel in a darkroom. Oh, who am I kidding? I can hardly get away from my job to shoot with the cameras that are working just fine.)

 

[blackdoglab]

There's a spainish/italian film (The Witch's Mountain) in which a charecter uses a Zenit E Photosnaiper.

 

[Mike_E]

Just in case you all really wanted to know, Spiderman used a Canon New F1.. http://imdb.com/title/tt0145487/trivia. And ye the Canonettes were great cameras!

 

[blackdoglab]

Might I add two new sightings? In Mermaids, Christina Ricci uses a Brownie Hawkeye Flash. There is also an Edgar G. Ulmer film called The Naked Venus in which there are a coupla' rolleiflexes.