Camera CollectionWhen I was 10 years of age I got my first camera: a 1950's Agfa Click. This camera took 120 roll film which gave nice 6x6 negatives. After the camera's shutter gave up I didn't have any camera until I was 20 years old and decided to buy myself a small black box with a big red button on top, a very simple Minolta point-and-shoot. Since I took so many pictures with it in Australia I wanted to get a better quality camera, not a simple blurry lens but something much sharper. Going around the shops while in Adelaide I decided to get a Canon EOS 500. Of course the pictures taken with that camera were so much sharper and I got hooked on photography.It's nice to have one good camera but what happens when you got of roll of Black and White film in your camera and want to shoot colour? That's asking for a second camera so I got a second hand Canon EOS 650 in 1999. While in the shop in Munich, Germany I also had a look at an 100-300 USM lens and it looked so much sharper than the standard 35-80 zoom they sold with the camera that it just had to be bought, a few weeks after I read a raving review on the 50mm/1.8 lens and since it was pretty cheap the 35-80 zoom was swapped for the very sharp 50mm lens. Since the 650 felt so much better in my hands as it's a much heavier and stronger all metal body I decided to buy another 600 series, a Canon EOS 600, also second hand as they went out of production 10 years before. Having three cameras and a traveling girlfriend without a nice camera I gave her the EOS 500 as birthday present and was left with only two cameras... ... until I discovered eBay and the Kodak Brownie box cameras. For the full story read my Kodak pages. So within weeks I got 2 working pre-1940 120 roll film cameras plus two more box cameras which take different film (620 and 616 roll film). After the first test shoot I just loved the large negatives you get with the 120 film format, back to the old days when my first camera gave large pictures like that, it's such a difference looking at a 35 mm stamp or at a 6 x 9 cm negative. As box cameras with their fixed lens don't give you the sharpness of 'real' camera's I was looking for something better and came across nice bellow cameras and TLRs. As usual I wanted to go for the cheaper options and found that Agfa Isolettes seem to be good value for money but then again I didn't like the look of them. There are some nice bellows cameras out there but it seems that the good ones are expensive so I decided to try to get a cheap Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera. Rolleiflex seems to be the camera to get but since it has that reputation prices are accordingly. Mamiyas with their interchangeble lenses seem to be nice as well but their price tag is way over my buget and lenses are also pretty hard to get by. The Yashica TLR series seemed to be both good value for money and a nice design so after a long wait on ebay I finally got two, a Yashica D and a Yashica A. Read all about them on the Yashica pages. The TLRs are great cameras but their problem is that they only have an 80mm fixed lens. Usually not a real problem but since I re-discovered wide angle photography when I bought a 28mm/2.8 lens for my Canons I wanted to play with another all manual camera. My sister Sonja has a Praktica MTL5b camera for a few years already and just got herself an Canon EOS 650. For me it worked the other way around, got a Canon 650 (and a 600) and bought an MTL5b as toy-camera. Something completely different. Check my Praktica page for more info. |
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