UKH

I bought a 1920s bureau with cabinet last week. The cabinet was ideal for displaying most of my higgledy piggledy collection. The layout is not finalised yet, I thought it best to hurry and get it started and then worry about the details later, rather than fuss and overthink 

Three shelves (or five if you count the white wire rack dividers)

Top one here

In reply to Blue Straggler:

middle 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

bottom

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Good effort. Looks like a miniature Cambrian Photography (Colwyn Bay) shop.😊

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Excellent, though I never had you down as a brass knuckleduster type of person.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

that’s a mobile phone holder that a friend from Australia, visiting the UK for a few weeks, bought here. She was travelling hand-luggage-only and figured that it would be confiscated by security at Heathrow, so gave it to me! It happens to fit my phone but I’ve never fitted it. It was just lying around and I needed to prop up the front end of a camera and it did the job! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yeah, right...   mmmm.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

What a lovely collection. It's surprising to me now to see how many of those I once owned, or still have: 

1st pic: Zeiss Ikon 4th from L, with identical leather case. Still have. Belonged to my mother.
2nd pic: Top L, Olympus - don't think I still have, though may be in a box somewhere. Main camera in Alps 1970 to 72. Top R, identical? early Nikon (I think I sold, but may be in a cupboard). Bottom L: Pentax. My father had one identical or very similar to this. We used it in Norway in 1969. I think my brother may still have it. 3rd pic: L: Olympus Pen. I don't think I ever owned one, but was fortunate enough to borrow one once in early 70s.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Thanks Gordon. I have a few more and this is not the definitive layout/display. There are a couple that I need to dig out of storage and I might take away some of the "unremarkable" ones from here. Might even sell a couple

That's not a Zeiss Ikon, maybe hard to see to in the picture. It's a Kodak Rapide Brownie B (I don't know which order those words should be in!). I've never put a film through it; it was a birthday present 5 years ago. 

That's impossible. In the pic that's an Olympus XA-2. The XA range was introduced in 1979. I am struggling to imagine which <= 1970 model you could be confusing it with! 


A Nikon EM introduced in 1979 as a "beginner's model". 

Nice. Probably not showing well on these quick photos but that is the original 1964 Pentax Spotmatic. 

Nice. Mine is specifically the PEN EE-3, not because I wanted that specific model's features but just because it was on the market stall. A real fun camera, probably the epitome of "point and shoot" because it is fixed focus and just assumes that you vaguely know what you are doing, which in tandem with its half-frame shooting (*), encourages you take more fun snaps.
* this must have a been a genius idea at the time, I know that colour film especially was ludicrously expensive but someone somewhere must have worked out that most people were not blowing their pictures up large but just making albums of quite small snapshot prints, so getting twice as many pictures from a roll, was more important than absolute "grain quality", plus the composition was only using the presumably sharper centre of the lens image, no concerns about vignetting and loss of sharpness at corners etc  

In reply to Blue Straggler:

The Olympus 35RC was my climbing camera in the 70's - brilliant bit of kit.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Nice. I had a Nikon EM and also an Olympus XA which was a terrific little camera. Unfortunately a friend dropped mine down the Penon. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes, couldn't see it well enough in the picture. It looks almost identical in every respect, including the leather case. It was an OK picture for black and white, but useless for colour as the lens was not 'coated' in the same way as a modern lens. V poor quality pics.

Well, it had a sliding front just like that. Looking virtually identical. I'm possibly confusing it with an earlier small camera which did not have a sliding front. ... I think it may even have been a Hanimex I used in the Alps in 1970 and 72. Ridiculous how I can remember something as basic as what camera I was using in the Alps. ...

Yes, I bought both a Nikon EM and an FM some time in the early 80s. I didn't use them much. Just a bit in the Cuillin on some harder scrambles, and where I was not going to use the picture for more than half a page (wanted to keep the grain the same size). For a double-page spread I'd use either a Fuji 690 or my Wista 5 x 4 field camera (rare ... just too much of a hassle ... unlike the dear old Hasselblad) 

Yes, that was what he had.

Yes, they became rightly popular for all the reasons you say. Plus the camera was very compact.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

It’s one of the most pleasant cameras to actually USE, and the only “rangefinder” I’ve ever really got on with (partly due to only having tried a few rattly old ones where the “yellow” coating in the viewfinder has faded so much that it becomes hard to line up the two images for the focus).

One minor shortcoming of the Olympus 35RC was its limited shutter speed range, but otherwise, near perfection.

My first one died after only two films, sadly, and it’s the only camera that I was bothered about enough to enquire about repairs, and nobody wanted to touch it - too fiddly and it worth the bother! Something mechanical had come loose in the top and I couldn’t pin down what it was. Bizarrely some years later literally on my way to a “team dinner” during a work trip to Stuttgart, I found one for 50E in an excellent high end camera shop attached to the railway station; judging my the prices of other second hand gear there, I expected they should have priced it at 130E! I’ve put a film through it (mostly on a trip to Italy) but haven’t developed it yet.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I haven’t used the EM much (my top choice of 35mm SLR to use, is the Minolta7) but I do like the stripped down minimalism of the EM which actually hasn’t removed all the functionality of its more sophisticated brethren, it’s more like it has “disguised” some (eg exposure compensation has gone, but you can just change the film speed for the same result ) 

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Gordon I have it my head that you had an Olympus XA, in fact I think it was you who influenced me into buying one. I might be wrong though.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Here is a 3D x-ray computed tomography tour of the Olympus 35RC. Cello by David Darling, over field recording of Aka pygmy chanting, from Graeme Revell's score to Wim Wenders' film "Until the End of the World"

Each time the animation pauses and becomes more sharp, it's switching between two different scans, the sharper one is showing off a facility that our x-ray systems have, for reducing image artefacts due to scattered radiation. 

http://www.blue-straggler.net/RC%2035%20SC%20and%20no%20SC%20with%20music.m...

I might remake this animation, I have a better understanding of the 3D graphical rendering now. This is my "broken" camera; I fear the x-ray exposure could damage the light meter in a working one. 

In reply to 65:

Yeah, you may be right. The strange thing is that, having spent quite a chunk of my life as a professional photographer - but stopped almost two decades ago, I take virtually no pictures now (occasionally on my partner's iPhone). And what cameras I have left are all in a big cupboard, so it's hard to remember exactly what I had in pre-professional days, and what I've still got in there. Sadly, I sold all my Hasselblad gear because I was no longer using it, and I thought it would be better for it to have a new, keen happy owner. (They got an absolute bargain ...)

BTW, since you seem to know me, I wondering who you could possibly be. Perhaps 65 is your age??

In reply to Blue Straggler:

That animation is amazing, I had no idea you could do that with x-rays. That's a great toy to have at work.

The only one of those that I've owned is the Olympus XA, which I nicked off my dad and then lost. Probably the best camera I ever had, I somehow managed to get some really good pictures out of it.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

From a long time ago, have sent you a PM.

In reply to Hooo:

Yeah, and a snip at only 700,000 Euro (possible cost reduction if we remove a couple of functions)  

In reply to 65:

I had one of each - the EM got dropped a very long way in Chamonix, and the XA got nicked

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Nice collection there, thanks, I enjoyed looking through that

You've got some great kit there

In reply to profitofdoom:

Thanks, I am pleased with it. I have some mundane random crap as well but funnily enough chose not to display it. Every camera shown in this cabinet has something interesting or "classic" about it apart from maybe the Kodak Retinette and Agfa Optima III (never tested the Retinette, iirc it's dead; have put one film through the Agfa and it the contrast was very "flat" although the interesting thing is that that camera must have the greatest ratio of weight to volume, of all of them), sure they were fine cameras in their day but they were just side-models in a long line, I think. Neither flagship, nor "unique" in any way. Ditto the hard-to-see-in-this-pic Canon Sureshot point and shoot at the top of the stack of three point and shoots on the top shelf. Very much a "me too" mid 1990s thing, with an optimistic zoom range of 38-130mm, but compared to the competition, it has beautiful ergonomics and quite nice aesthetics. 
Somewhere I have a somewhat sought-after Fuji Zoom Date / Silvi (the one with the 24mm-50mm lens), in two minds as to whether to sell it if it is still fetching high prices, or keep it as a museum piece. Ditto one of my two Olympus Mju II 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I got a new addition, a proper "Dad Cam", the 1989-90 Olympus AZ-300, a machine so hideous that I daren't post a picture. Google it. 
Funnily enough, curiosity has got the better of me and I am going to run a film through it. It was £8 in a charity shop, I had to get some new batteries for £6 but they could be used across a range of cameras. 
 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Found and added

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Wow, that’s proper cool!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Always nice to see an XA-2 around   I liked mine (though the XA was even nicer, if fiddlier for a climbing camera)

Can I ask what the 1st left on pic #1 is?  Are there two camers just very close to each other or a single one with an articulated lens?

(Edit for dreadful spelling)

In reply to Niall_H:

Sony Cybershot F717A. A camera with a tilting body. Superb lens and superb ergonomics but, being a 2003 camera, the sensor somewhat let things down! 
 

These pics in my gallery were taken with it
Chloe Graftiaux (RIP)
Nice footwork
Romping to the top
Psyching up for the slap
Audrey Seguy on a 6c at Montgaussier
The Cowperstone, Stanage, Sunday 19 February
Panorama from Le Refuge de Couvercle
Concrete Dream, Wen Zawn, Gogarth 15 Marc

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Cool!

In reply to Niall_H:

It was a very cool camera. Was about £1000 18 years ago, I got lucky and found one for sale in 2009 for £55 and it was my main camera for a few years. Interestingly you could shoot infrared photos with it without hacks or modifications albeit with some functionality limitations. Mine sort of died of old age, still turns on and takes photos but they are green! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I can report that this camera is also hideous in operation, the zoom buttons are really really hard to press. Did an early rewind after 7 frames and will probably put the film into the Nikon EM or the XA2 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

That really is ugly!  Even the Olympus E-300 isn't that bad.

In reply to Niall_H:

How odd, I totally do not remember the Olympus E-300. I kind of like it. It looks militaristic. I have to hand it to Olympus, they were "bold" with trying out all different kinds of styling and ergonomics. When they are good, they are maybe the best. When they are bad, they are really spectacularly bad!