A 1890's photo by Knut Knudsen, of a so far unidentified scene from western Norway. Rapidly followed by several more, mostly by the same artist, from the same region (dead easy, he stayed here all his life!). Then a few others including a 1860's French cyanotype, I guess out of curiosity. All of these have been cheap. Some of them have been ridiculously cheap.
Three stereo cards depicting scenes from WWI. I saw them in an antique store and thought that they needed a good home. They didn't cost very much either.
1/4 plate dag's purchased at a local antique store 15 years ago. i have no idea who they are of, but i liked the portraits and think i paid about $15 each
Good purchase John...try do find a dag for $15 today. My first 'vintage' purchase was a 5x7 glass plate negative for one of my brothers..military portrait, Spanish-American war - around the 1890's. Since then, have picked up several military images for him, here and there - from mid 1880's to WWII. Many historians think that everyone in the military has been photographed - either individual or group - since the Civil War (yes, it is a strange thing to call a war - since no war is civil). Interesting thought, and a great insite to US history...from CDV's to digital...now that's a pretty broad range of image capture.
i was pretty psyched when i snarfed them up <g> after the dags i have an even better 2nd vintage purchase ... manhattan wizard plate camera (4x5) with case/strap/holders together with a boatload of magic lantern slides of early pioneers of the american aviation/air mail scene. ( a lot of the images can be seen here: http://www.airmailpioneers.org/Saga/Sagapage1.htm and in a book that was published a few years back ) ... i have since sold off the slides to a hardcore collector, but kept the camera ..
Hmmm. Come to think of it, I have some glass slides that I bought a few years ago. They were pre-WWII. Guess that's really my first purchase.
Probably a lantern slide of a scene of a rice paddy in the Phillipines. My wife is Filipino, and we liked it. I've tried to dupe and print it, but it is extremely contrasty.
I recently bought a Voigtlander Brillant, circa 1933 (or so the seller said). I still haven't figured out if it works, or how to get it to.
A few negatives from a retiring 3rd generation photographer in my home town. A lot of pictures from the 1910s and 20s, my grandparents/great-grandparents wer in a few of those
It was a Falcon Miniature Deluxe bakelite camera, 127, fixed 50 mm lens, which I still use often...thrift shop, $3.00. I have a Zeiss Box Tengor, an Ansco Shur-Flash, a Rollei 35, Yashica-Mat, Polaroid Land Camera 350, and an Olympus Ecru in rotation too, most acquired in the same fashion.
Mine was a Mamiya C33 and Meopta opemus enlarger(both about the same age as me! )which I bought off a friend for almost nothing!! I bought them because I wanted to get into medium format,but didn't have the money to buy a new 645. I like the camera-although I don't have the time to use it at the moment.
I recently bought a photgravure, The Country Doctor, by Eugene Smith, It was for a wonderful friend of mine who has stuck with me through thick and thin, my own country doctor
4x5 Kodak printing frame. The store did not know what it was, so I bought it as a picture frame for 25 cents. I still have it around here somewhere, some 25+ years later. Tom
Next time I go to the Philippines, I'll take a picture of a rice paddy in Kodachrome 64 (1 roll left in my freezer). It'll be up to you though to figure out how to process it Don't eat too much adobo man, that'll kill 'ya
I purchased an old Norwood Director lightmeter for $10 and collection grew to about 100 vintage light meters of all makes. Most of these old meters still work (if they were kept in the dark) and require no batteries. The Ikophots and Directors and others have a wonderful jewel-like quality to them.
My first antique camera-related purchase was an Exa II SLR, which I bought in about 1972-1973 time frame with money earned mowing the lawn and painting the house. At that time, the camera was close to 30 years old ("Germany, USSR occupied" stamped on the bottom puts it shortly post-War). The first one in a recent time frame was my Kawee Camera, the US sale version of a KW Patent Etui 9x12 cm plate camera. Vintage about 1935, it was also responsible for starting me back into photography on a more serious basis than shooting a roll over the course of a year and letting Costco process it. It's still in my bag, been there just over three years now, 100% functional. Er, wait, you guys are talking about cameras to dust, or cameras to use?
My first "antique" camera was a Zeiss Ikon folder, unless you count the first "real" camera I used - my father's Welta Welti. I sold the Zeiss Ikon when I bought an old Technika, then decided I missed it so I bought a few more But my first really antique camera is the 18x24cm plate camera - German made after the English style, ca. 1910.
"Vintage" is an interesting term - recently I see (presumably young) advertisers offering "vintage" equipment from the 1950s which I remember as new. On that basis my first purchase was a Kodak Junior II 8-on-620 camera, bought with my (10th) birthday money in 1959 - my first new camera, which cost 32/6d or £1.62 1/2. Previously I had had to struggle with various elderly folders which, as they were from the 1920s, were truly vintage - at the time, they were just cheap old cameras. The first camera I bought expressly as an antique was a 5 x 7.5" wooden view camera by T. Algate of Plymouth, England, date approx. 1880. This cost about £100 30 years ago, I would doubt if it's worth a great deal more now, so not a great investment from a financial point of view, but I've had it on display everywhere I've lived in the intervening time and had pleasure looking at it.
