Intro Last week, I bought a roll of found film negatives at an antique shop in Ocean Beach, San Diego. The developing envelope was tucked in with them, stamped May 1, 1950, and helped me trace the photos back to Ocean Park in Santa Monica, which at the time was a working-class beach neighborhood that has mostly been erased since. Here’s what’s on the roll and how I placed it! Article Overview What it is: […]
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All photos in this post were shot on 620 film through the Kodak Duaflex III and the Argus Argoflex Seventy-Five, around Del Mar and Ocean Beach, San Diego. Article Overview What they are: two cheap 1950s pseudo-TLR box cameras — Rolleiflex looks, none of the Rolleiflex price What they shoot: 620 film, which is just 120 film on a smaller spool (more on that below) The keeper: the Kodak Duaflex III, for its focusing Kodar […]
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I collect a lot of old things. Cameras & magazines, mostly. But sometimes I walk into an antique store, and something very odd & curious strikes me. And, sometimes, I don’t fully understand why until I take it home and I’m knee-deep in a research spiral at 2am three days later. In Brevard, North Carolina, I came across a Vérascope Richard stereoscopic viewer, a wooden “3D photo viewer” from ~1900, along with a storage box […]
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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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