Pál_K
Cameras. I has it.
That’s likely what I will do - provide instructions for them to be donated and I have someone in mind who could distribute them. That is, of course, only in the case that my cameras don’t follow me on my journey into the Afterworld - my backyard Pyramid is nearing completion…
Fortunately I don’t have to re-create my collection - because I still have every camera I’ve ever bought (except for an Argus C3 which I had no interest in).
Here you see them - at least two of the four wall’s worth. It’s blurred because I had to screenshot an iPhone panorama and then resize it to the atomic level.
That is great. I am sure many NYers can donate there. I live in Chile now, so most likely it will be where I would donate. And, arguably, they might be more cherished here since it would not be the normal Chileans collection.
580/Q
200 frames a day
Bill,
I think of all the cameras and lenses that I've sold, traded and given away and one event stands out from that background.
My father gave me two Pentax Spotmatics and three lenses when he saw that I was serious about the work and later, in a phase of my life that can only be described as extended callow ignorance, I sold them back to him. I had hit a wall and rather than confront that wall, I deviated, much like running from a heartbreak straight into the arms of another.
He, of course, barely twenty years older than I, recognized this and simply waited for me to pull my head out and re-engage. A year later I bought them back and started chipping away at that wall. That interlude still makes me cringe more than a half-century later. Many years later I sold them and now that my father has passed and I am confronting my own mortality, there is a peculiar nostalgia for those cameras and lenses.
Writing and photography were our lingua franca. He made some impactful images and wrote some important books. We both recognized that it was the work and not exactly the tools that were important, but after the images and the words, that kit we both used has a powerful totemic presence in my imagination. They are apart from the relationship between me and my father, yet they help me remember some of the aspects of our relationship that would maybe be submerged beneath the long continuum that is our idea of the past.
I often wonder about our perception of the world and I am reminded that the map is not the terrain. Words and phrases are not the subtext. The memory of that kit triggers other memories - ideas - that are far more important.
Best,
Shane
I think of all the cameras and lenses that I've sold, traded and given away and one event stands out from that background.
My father gave me two Pentax Spotmatics and three lenses when he saw that I was serious about the work and later, in a phase of my life that can only be described as extended callow ignorance, I sold them back to him. I had hit a wall and rather than confront that wall, I deviated, much like running from a heartbreak straight into the arms of another.
He, of course, barely twenty years older than I, recognized this and simply waited for me to pull my head out and re-engage. A year later I bought them back and started chipping away at that wall. That interlude still makes me cringe more than a half-century later. Many years later I sold them and now that my father has passed and I am confronting my own mortality, there is a peculiar nostalgia for those cameras and lenses.
Writing and photography were our lingua franca. He made some impactful images and wrote some important books. We both recognized that it was the work and not exactly the tools that were important, but after the images and the words, that kit we both used has a powerful totemic presence in my imagination. They are apart from the relationship between me and my father, yet they help me remember some of the aspects of our relationship that would maybe be submerged beneath the long continuum that is our idea of the past.
I often wonder about our perception of the world and I am reminded that the map is not the terrain. Words and phrases are not the subtext. The memory of that kit triggers other memories - ideas - that are far more important.
Best,
Shane
Last edited:
pluton
Well-known
EDIT: I have no rangefinder cameras currently. On film, I had several Leica M4 variants and an M6, and they were nice cameras. I kept that last M6 for a bit when digital arrived, but sold it when I knew I didn't want to use film again.
Since then, it has been DLSR and M'-ess cams for me.
Lenses are the magic objects, to me. Lenses that have mechanical focus and aperture actuation have some appeal as long-term objects of possession and use. Heavily electronically enriched lenses, especially focus-by-wire lenses, of which I own several, have no appeal and are likely to fail within 10 years or less. I've already had a FBW lens fail at 6 years, and the manufacturer's service couldn't fix it, and then supplied defective units as replacements.
Since then, it has been DLSR and M'-ess cams for me.
Lenses are the magic objects, to me. Lenses that have mechanical focus and aperture actuation have some appeal as long-term objects of possession and use. Heavily electronically enriched lenses, especially focus-by-wire lenses, of which I own several, have no appeal and are likely to fail within 10 years or less. I've already had a FBW lens fail at 6 years, and the manufacturer's service couldn't fix it, and then supplied defective units as replacements.