Today I’m diving into research on a different kind of lens than my usual cameras and photography topics. A few weeks ago I found a pair of Le Roque Paris mother of pearl opera glasses at a local antique store for only $60 — and they came with the original case. Mother of pearl barrels, ornate gilt brass scroll banding, a silver-toned bridge, and an aged leather case with red silk lining and a tiny […]
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All photos in this post were shot across two test rolls through the Yashica Electro 35, around Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach, San Diego. The Backstory My Uncle Jim picked this up his Yashica Electro 35 in the 1960’s while he was on military tour in Vietnam. It was made in Japan, one of the very first Yashica Electro 35s off the line before they moved production to Hong Kong , and he took such […]
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Intro & First Impressions of the Ansco Pix Panorama The Ansco Pix Panorama is one of those cameras that doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. It’s small, plastic, lightweight, and very basic, and that’s exactly why I wanted to try it. I picked it up knowing full well it wasn’t a “real” panorama camera in the traditional sense. There’s no swing lens, no special mechanics, no expanded negative. It’s essentially a simple 35mm […]
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Intro The Gossen Sixtomat is a compact, battery-free light meter produced in West Germany in the early to mid 1950s. I found an ivory-bodied example (serial J226903) at an antique market and was surprised to see that its selenium cell still responds to light. Even with its simplicity, this meter represents a meaningful moment in photographic history (kind of wild that it says “WEST Germany”!). This overview explains what it is, how it works, and […]
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Intro I found this camera tucked away in an antique mall in San Diego, from a vendor I have bought from before. They are usually great about testing their cameras before putting them up for sale, and the tag simply read “working condition.” It is a 1950s Burke & James 4×5 Press Camera, a solid metal large format camera that feels more like a tool than a collector’s piece. It could use a little cleaning, […]
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Intro I found a neat metal photo viewer at one of my favorite antique shops in San Diego last weekend, so here I am blogging about it 🙂 It was tucked in one of those glass display boxes, behind a few old cameras and postcards. It is small enough to almost miss, but once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. The design immediately stood out: sturdy metal, very minimal wear or rust, […]
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Intro Earlier this year I shared a set of early 1900s stereograph photos of Silver Lake that I picked up at a local antique store. On a recent visit back, I came across another batch from the same era (1914–1916). I’m pretty sure these are part of the same set as the ones I found before!! Either I missed them the first time around, or the collector who runs the booth set them out later. […]
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In April 1906, San Francisco was hit by a massive earthquake followed by fires that burned for three days. Entire blocks downtown were destroyed and thousands of people ended up in makeshift refugee camps across the city. Not long after, the H. C. White Company, a stereograph publisher based in Vermont, released a series of stereoview cards documenting the disaster. They produced around 37 cards in total, each showing a different view of the city’s […]
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Intro: How I Found These Stereographs Just yesterday, I was digging through an antique/consignment shop in San Diego when I found a stack of stereograph cards. At first, I thought they’d be the usual Keystone or Underwood & Underwood mass-market cards I always come across, but these were different! No publisher stamps. No world landmarks. Just handwritten notes. When I read the captions, I realized they were from Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and dated around […]
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Introduction: The Original 3D “Virtual Reality” Over the weekend, I came across an 1890s stereoscope viewer and a small stack of stereoview cards at an antique store. It immediately stood out—not just for its age, but because it represents the 19th-century version of 3D viewing, long before VR headsets or television existed. If you’ve ever used a View-Master or tried a modern VR headset, you’ve experienced the same principle at work. In the late 1800s, […]
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