Sunday, February 11, 2007

"New" Cameras

So my grandfather died on October 9th, and ever since then the family has been trying to get the estate settled and sell the house. My grandparents had lived in that house for over 50 years, and they accumulated a lot of "stuff" ovet those 50 years. A couple weeks ago Nikkala and I helped clean out the house... well, a few of us were trying to clean, and the rest were just picking up stuff they wanted and leaving. It was really interesting to see who got busy and worked and who sat upstairs and had story time with the little trinkets and doilies. Anyway, that isn't the purpose of this post.

So I was cleaning and found this box of old camera stuff. I asked who was getting the cameras (so I could get it out of the house) and they said no one had asked for it yet, so I walked it out to my car and went back to work. When I got home, I pulled the cameras out and found 8 cameras and 1 movie camera. Well, there were two poloroid cameras and I didn't think they would be of much use since I don't have any film for them. But I'm excited about a few of them.

The first camera that I'm excited about is the F. Deckel Munchen - Compur bellow (accordian) style camera.


This camera is fun to play with and even comes with film. I don't know if you can read it in the photo, but it says something about develping before July 1961. Yeah, I hope it is still good. Anyway, I looked on ebay to see if it was worth anything, and it's not really worth a lot other than a good old camera to use for the fun of it. It has 6 film holders, and I think they are all good, so if anyone wants to use it for some photo class and can find 2-1/4 X 3-1/4 film, come and borrow it.

The other camera I'm excited about is the Viscount rangefinder camera. It is the only one that takes 35mm film, and it is in good shape. It is completely manual and has a good lens. It is fun because you can hear the shutter wind down when you press the release.



The Viscount is the one on the right. The other two are a Kodak Brownie and an Ansco Cadet -- both take 127 film and would be fun to use if I was into photo art and had access to 127 film.

The last 2 cameras are Kodak Instamatics, and they came with boxes of flash cubes...that's right, FLASH CUBES!!! (I'm excited for these) And the one on the right still has film in it (partially used).. so I've been trying to finish using it up and take it over to Rite-Aid and see if they will develope it. I may need to take it to a real photo place... but we'll see. Hopefully some of the photos that were taken before will be good (probably not.. but who knows... my parents develpoed some film a couple years ago that was like 20 years old, and only the colors were messed up).



There was also an old movie camera. I don't know anything about it, but I think there is still film in it, so I want to run it out and get it developed as well. But where do you take old 8mm film in to get developed? Any suggestions?



It's a Keystone.. and it is the K8 model. I can't find any other info on it, but I think it looks cool.

Well, it wasn't much, but I'm excited. I guess it is worth the trouble of cleaning out the house. And It is something that I can remember my Grandpa by, because he really did like taking photos and developing the film himself... luckily, the old photo chemicals were already taken away so I didn't have to find a home for them.

Praise Jesus!