Digital photography has spoiled us rotten because it's so easy, but it's a fraud in some ways. Digital is better in terms of getting the really good pictures, those snapshots that count, and you don't need to spend a lot of money to get there. No film to buy, no processing time lag, and in the end a really good visual image of the shot you snapped. What's been lost is the photographer's touch. These days, it's all about the camera itself and the computer you use to enhance the pictures. Shop carefully and buy decent stuff, and you're almost there when it comes to getting good pictures. Oh, there are still some things a photographer needs to know, but the learning curve is almost a straight line compared to what it used to be.
I own around 300 cameras and only two of them are digital. Almost 100 percent of the pictures I take these days come from those two cameras. So, why the old cameras? I love the old stuff, and I can list off dozens of reason why. I'm against the lightweight plastic revolution, for one thing. I love holding in my hands a piece of equipment that's got some heft to it. I feel the same way about the pistols I own. Don't want no wussy space age material gun. Gimme something made of steel, and with nice carved handles on it. Maybe that's the good old boy who can't adapt coming out in me, but that's how I feel. And feel is important.
I started off collecting cheap vintage cameras, and most of them were plastic too. Then I got into the Kodak Retinas, those nice German made American cameras. They're small but heavy, and they're not the easiest of cameras to use. I've got about forty Retinas, and I've used some of them. And I've got some SLR cameras from the 70s and 80s that are nice pieces of equipment - Canon, Minolta, Miranda, and the like. I've been interested in photography and cameras for a long time, and many of the cameras I now have in my collection were too expensive for me to buy when the first came out. I had a nice Nikon back in those days that served me well, and it costs plenty back then. Now I can buy a really nice older SLR for less than fifty bucks on ebay, and that put me into the collecting game.
But tinkering with older cameras is irritating to someone who got comfortable with the digital cameras. For one thing, I've lost my touch with using them. I forgot too much about them, and if I decide to use one of them, it takes me a few days to get up to speed. And then you have to trust some developing company to do a good job, and they're getting scarce these days. So is the film you need to shoot in them. I own a lot of cameras you can't even buy film for. I don't need to use them to appreciate them because I'm a collector, not a professional photographer. My collection, by the way, also includes lots of old home movie stuff - cameras, projectors, all that. And I never use it. I just admire it.
My wife once looked at a camera I was holding and asked, "So what's that worth?" I said, "Oh, probably three to four hundred bucks." She looked gutshot. "You pay that much for those things?"
I said no, much less, but I get lucky sometimes and come up with something actually worth real money. Then I smiled and said, "And when I'm dead and gone, whoever gets my cameras should be very careful about how they dispose of them. There's probably a new car in what they're worth."
We won't talk about that, though. That's another blog. I can say this much, though, about collecting vintage cameras. Sometimes I buy one that never got used, or if it did, it wasn't used much. But I often buy one that was used a lot, and I see that it was used carefully. Somebody loved and looked after it, and in my way of thinking, I owe it the same consideration.
I bought a violin on ebay many years ago. It wasn't in good shape, needed some refurbishing, and I took it on as a project. Once I got it apart, I found a hand written note inside it. The note said the violin had been built in a small shop in California back in the 1930s, had the man's name, address, and phone number. But numbers like that haven't been used in half a century at least, and the buider had likewise been dead many years. What got me was the message he left. He wanted the violin to go to his granddaughter, and he listed her address too, also outdated. Perhaps she too had passed away by the time I found it, or maybe she didn't appreciate the gift, or at least someone didn't . . . or maybe nobody ever found the note inside the violin. That bothered me enough to make me want to treat that old violin with love and care. I restored it and still have it displayed on a shelf here at the house. And even though I don't know the story on my cameras, I figure they deserve to be showed too . . . and they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment