Camera Collecting, The Incurable Passion, How to know if you’re a camera collector and what you can do about it.

Vince Lupo said:
When I was about 17 one of my brothers-in-law asked me: "Do you want to be a photographer or a collector?" Well I guess I know how that turned out :)


Vinny and His Cameras1 by Vince Lupo, on Flickr

But the above was long ago -- things are sooo much different now!

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Nice collection! Except for too many damn Hasselblads-:) However, I do like the pristine Rolleiflex New Standard in the lower right-hand corner and hope you run some film through your treasures from time to time. Cheers.
 
1. Following your posts Vince Lupo hints at what you now reveal but I wonder about the missing dimension of the collector that has not yet been considered. Because long before any of this on RFF most here would know you for some very fine photographs. Where does being any good at photography itself put a would-be collector? is that part of the syndrome?

2. Behind every great man there is a great woman. Or as my wife informed me, a surprised woman. The indulgence of our spouses seems to be a default requirement.

My cameras and lenses have never been seen massed on the border for an all-out assault like Vince’s. One quiet corner of storage is camouflaged by multiple rolls of unfiled negatives thrown (lightly tossed actually) over less often used lenses. Another row of lenses is in front of some books in a lockable bookcase with just two lenses similarly shelved behind glass above that. Bringing out a recent M acquisition hardly lets slip an extravagance when my M9-P looks much like the M2, or an MA or a number of others, which I don’t have. Even I have mistaken an X100 in the field for a Leica, for a moment. And same goes for another silver or black Leica lens.

But none of this might matter. I had formal permission, like instantly, for the M9, and the Monochrom eighteen months later. And this from the spouse whose two refrains are “And don’t bring a camera” (which is why I needed a couple of Barnacks) and “I’m not waiting“, As she strides on the pressure forces out of me a better shot.
 
I was disheartened to realize that I have way more cameras than in either of Vince's "environmental self-portraits." On the other hand, I have taken lots of pictures with pretty much all of them at one time or another, as witnessed by the many scores of developed rolls I pitched out last week <sigh>.

But I came across this quote by Winston Churchill last night. Replace "books" with "cameras" and I think it's apt:

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”​

 
Ah you can’t have too many Hasselblads, especially where 1000f’s are concerned. And that’s an Old Standard Rollei - my $65 ‘as-is’ special from KEH (which turned out to be a beautiful camera).
 
Ha! Should have read page 2 before replying! I've just bought my Old Standard with Christmas money, and so far it's looking like it might prove a bargain... of course I have to finish the roll and develop it yet, many a slip twixt cup and lip...
 
KoNickon said:
I was disheartened to realize that I have way more cameras than in either of Vince's "environmental self-portraits." On the other hand, I have taken lots of pictures with pretty much all of them at one time or another, as witnessed by the many scores of developed rolls I pitched out last week <sigh>.

But I came across this quote by Winston Churchill last night. Replace "books" with "cameras" and I think it's apt:

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”​

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Wonderful to see this again. I live like this. Many books I haven’t yet read but have looked at, and will read when I retire; others I know when and where I read them and there is great pleasure in just seeing them and being reminded. I have photography sections scattered through the house. My wife had the genius idea of a wall of books opposite the foot of the bed. The photography section of that has the only very larger books top shelf and the most visible section all have similar colored spines and heights. It’s a bit like fondling Leicas, verging on the obsession of not having silver lenses on black cameras.
 
Good to know you are using your cameras as well as writing about them...

When I came to Australia in the '70s, Pentacons, Prakticas, Paktinas et al were thick on the shelves in many pawn shops, going at almost giveaway prices. For a month's tour of Far North Queensland in 1974 I bought an Exakta (I've forgotten the model but it was old) with the stellar f/1.9 standard lens, which did me well for (mostly B&W) shooting of almost every pineapple plantation, bamboo grove and billabong I came across. Ditto the beautiful beaches, then all but deserved, now sadly awash in residential complexes and retirement villages. I think I paid AUD $60 for the camera which in those days was half a week's take-home wages for most workers. How times have changed.

I used a Pentacon 6 a few times, courtesy of a friend in Perth who was addicted to the superb optics (I believe East German Zeiss), he did mostly nature studies and landscapes and his results were to me good enough to be reproduced as color spreads in books, which as I recall he did, a few times. All now long gone. I wonder what happened to his film archives and also his cameras.

I found the Pentagon not to my liking in ergonomics altho' the results were fine. I had a Rolleiflex TLR which I still use, and found it much more to my liking as it was easier to carry and simpler to operate. Fast track 30 years and I had, courtesy of my architectural practice which gave me good credit if not great amounts of ready cash, a Hasselblad ensemble consisting of a 500, a 501 and no less than FOUR ELs (I plead temporary insanity here, but back then they were dirt cheap) with five Zeiss lenses and a good-sized box of accessories. All now sold as again I found the 'blad ergonomics didn't suit me. Let me hasten to add this is an entirely personal, well, "prejudice" I guess, and very much one user's opinion. Many friends have Hasselblads and will never ever part with them, so I am very much on my own in my "unliking" for them. My excuse is that I'm basically a TLR shooter, which could mean I tend to look down at the world rather than up or at eye level...

I still have film cameras and I enjoy using them. Sadly, the cost of film in Australia is now so high, and my pensioner's budget is now so low, that for me buying a five-pack of anything analog is more an investment than a splurge. I have a few dozen 120 rolls left in my darkroom fridge and when I've used those up, well, a hard decision will then have to be made, as to whether I dispose of the cameras (either sell them or give them to family members, none of who are showing any particular interest in film or photography) or just put them on the shelf to collect dust and be disposed of in time by my partner.

We all get to the point of having to make those "hard" decisions, but for now, the pleasure of taking a camera down from the shelf, loading it with Ilford or Adox or Rollei 120 film and going walkabout with it, continues. So a collector-user I am. Truly in the middle...

PS On a related post, I remember Vince's photos from an earlier post of his. Question for you, did you take them all to New Mexico with you? That must have required a small truck! Me, I would have left behind the pre-1920 gear, not that it would have reduced the load by much. As disposing of equipment goes you seem to be getting there, (for me) parting with any one of them would be like having a tooth pulled without any anesthetic...
 
KoNickon said:
I was disheartened to realize that I have way more cameras than in either of Vince's "environmental self-portraits." On the other hand, I have taken lots of pictures with pretty much all of them at one time or another, as witnessed by the many scores of developed rolls I pitched out last week <sigh>.

But I came across this quote by Winston Churchill last night. Replace "books" with "cameras" and I think it's apt:

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”​

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You “pitched out scores of rolls of developed film?” While I subscribe to Ecclesiastes’ pungent observation that “all is vanity” and even our precious negatives will not last forever, I thought that one of the main advantages of analog photography is that it creates a physical record that can be scanned or photographically printed well into the future irrespective of any changes in future information retrieval technology. I sure hope that my negatives outlast my aging carcass and I would never consign them to a “bonfire of the vanities” or the tender mercies of the town dump. As for Winston Churchill’s thoughtful observation on interacting with books I agree that it certainly applies to cameras as well. Winnie was a great man, a brilliant wartime statesman, and an incisive wit, but that didn’t prevent him from also being a world class SOB.
 
This is a wonderful thread, Jason. I guess I am a collector since I don't know how many cameras I have. I have not counted them in years, but it has to be well over 200. I've shot most of them except for a sub-category of plastic promotional (advertising) camera. I've got about 50 of those colorful beauties. My favorite to collect and shoot are Barnacks. I shot 170 rolls of assorted formats last year so I am a user-collector, too. (Of course you have to test each new camera, even it requires slitting film or using adapters.)
 
Jason Schneider said:
You “pitched out scores of rolls of developed film?” While I subscribe to Ecclesiastes’ pungent observation that “all is vanity” and even our precious negatives will not last forever, I thought that one of the main advantages of analog photography is that it creates a physical record that can be scanned or photographically printed well into the future irrespective of any changes in future information retrieval technology. I sure hope that my negatives outlast my aging carcass and I would never consign them to a “bonfire of the vanities” or the tender mercies of the town dump. As for Winston Churchill’s thoughtful observation on interacting with books I agree that it certainly applies to cameras as well. Winnie was a great man, a brilliant wartime statesman, and an incisive wit, but that didn’t prevent him from also being a world class SOB.
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To be clear, developed and printed so I knew whether they were worth keeping or not. The vast majority, not. And the ones that predated electronic files (photo CDs mainly) got more summary treatment. Bottom line was (and is), are these worth seeing ever again?
 
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I used to collect Leicas. It got too expensive. So I concentrated on factory converted black ltm Leicas. That got too expensive. So now I collect clockwork 8mm movie cameras. They are cheap, consequently I have too many.

I am now trying to sell off my collection, haven't the time for actually taking photographs
 
DownUnder's post raises the difficult question, for those of us getting along in years, of where our beloved analog cameras will go when we're gone. I'm thinking of making mine a donation to any higher education institution that has a good photography program as part of their Fine Arts Department; for me, the University of New Mexico is in my back yard and would be a great choice.
Now, the thought of some 18 year old photo student manhandling my precious Hasselblads and Rolleis makes my stomach churn, particularly as I manned the Photo Dept. tool crib in college; many a student-mangled Leica passed through my hands. But if someone could develop a passion for analog photography by using (and even abusing!) those cameras, I suppose it would be for the best. Better than the dumpster, for sure, but the time to make those arrangements is now.
 
I've been taking photographs since the early 70's and have been a full time pro since the 1990's along with teaching photo classes at my local community college. The first serious camera I bought at the age of 15 was a Contax III with uncoated f/1.5 Sonnar from Olden Camera by mail order. The shutter died within a few days and they refunded the full price. I then moved on to SLRs which were a lot more practical for the work I was doing. Contax Post War.jpgContax II,III w:lenses 2.jpgA little over 10 years ago I got back into Contax cameras, this time with a Contax IIIa and f/2 Opton Sonnar. Shooting film again was fun and a break from all the time in front of a computer that digital work entailed, so I have gone into user/collector mode as the following two photos will show. Like Jason Schneider, I look for cameras and lenses in decent condition that are fully operable and I do use them regularly. Since I tend toward the obsessive and lack a rich uncle to leave me millions I have limited myself to Contax and accessories, although I do own a couple of Rolleiflexes that I used professionally in film days.
 
I think a distinction may be made between a camera collector and a camera enthusiast. I have over 80 cameras, but really wouldn't consider myself a collector. I would say that collectors generally have an aim, they're after a specific brand, looking for particular models, value rarity, condition, etc. Whereas enthusiasts tend to just grab whatever catches their fancy. I don't like to have non-functional cameras, regardless of how rare they are. If I can't take pictures with it, I don't "collect" it. A collector on the other hand will be perfectly happy to have a rare camera locked away in a display case.

I did once receive the most rude and idiotic treatment from a camera seller, who got irrationally angry at me for looking at various cameras he was selling "Nobody collects ALL those different brands!" he shouted, and told me I was "tire kicking" and wasting his time. Meanwhile at home, I have Altissas, Brauns, Certos, Dacoras, Exaktas, and so on... I guess he was right, I'm not a collector. I'm an enthusiast. He didn't make a sale after that outburst, by the way.
 
Mos6502 said:
I think a distinction may be made between a camera collector and a camera enthusiast. I have over 80 cameras, but really wouldn't consider myself a collector. I would say that collectors generally have an aim, they're after a specific brand, looking for particular models, value rarity, condition, etc. Whereas enthusiasts tend to just grab whatever catches their fancy. I don't like to have non-functional cameras, regardless of how rare they are. If I can't take pictures with it, I don't "collect" it. A collector on the other hand will be perfectly happy to have a rare camera locked away in a display case.

I did once receive the most rude and idiotic treatment from a camera seller, who got irrationally angry at me for looking at various cameras he was selling "Nobody collects ALL those different brands!" he shouted, and told me I was "tire kicking" and wasting his time. Meanwhile at home, I have Altissas, Brauns, Certos, Dacoras, Exaktas, and so on... I guess he was right, I'm not a collector. I'm an enthusiast. He didn't make a sale after that outburst, by the way.
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I’m kinda like you in this regard - maybe we should call ourselves ‘accumulators’?
 
Age has a lot to do with it, your age that is, not the equipment's. As Retro Grouch says, it becomes important to get rid of stuff because the next generation will not attach the same value to it as you did. Sell, donate or whatever, just don't imagine your children will cherish boxes full of equipment that is no longer relevant unless it has a very close family provenance.
 
I intend to have a spreadsheet that my son and gf can access that will have a listing of items, good places to sell, and minimum acceptable prices to accept. That won't be much for some (ok, most) of my things, but the Leica stuff and some of some of the earlier Nikkor stuff has at least enough value to warn them not to be ripped off.

But realistically, my collection will not net them much - if they get lucky on the M 240 & the LTM & M mount lenses, perhaps the whole pile might get a them a few grand. I'm no Jason or Brian so nothing exciting here. The only thing of any real value is hopefully what I've done with them and I've still got a couple of years to prove that.
 
I don't think I fulfil all the criteria for the diagnosis of collectivitis - I'm more like "photographer with symptoms of collecting".

I have an interest in AF SLR cameras from the 80s and 90s - that's when I was corrupted by the photographic press.

Here's everything I have, there is just a Minolta X300 and a Nikon F801s added since that video (and a couple of lenses too).

 
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