It’s a thin line that divides the photography enthusiast from the camera collector. Believe it or not grown men (and it is mostly men) often sign off their forum posts with a list of their camera kit. Often they are quite long lists, too. I always wonder how often this equipment gets used.
I don’t have a collector’s instinct. I can understand that taking all those cameras down off the shelf and dusting them down and playing with them and examining them may give a lot of satisfaction – particularly if it is backed up by deep knowledge of the subject. But I like to keep things light. I get rid of most of my books when I’ve read them and I don’t much like owning anything of great value. It’s not my philosophy, it’s my experience: expectations run too high. I once bought a brand new BMW motorcycle and had such high hopes of the pleasures that it would deliver that I was inevitably disappointed. It’s the reason I’ve never bought a Leica.
So when I looked around and realised recently, with something of a start, that I had seven film cameras I knew I had to have a clearout. The first two to go were ones which had been given to me but which I had never used. One was a Nikon (I’ve forgotten the model but it wasn’t one of the classics). The other was a nice little Yashica SLR. Off they went to the charity shop.
Zorki 4K
Next on the hitlist was the Zorki 4K that I bought last year and wrote about in April. It wasn’t a bad camera but was prone to light leaks and always had that edgy feeling that I remember so well from my Russian motorcycles. Reliability was always just over the horizon. I had also bought a Fed 2 – another Russian rangefinder – which turned out to be a dead loss: a squinty viewfinder and light flooding in from every angle. (I should have smelt a rat. “All our cameras have been checked, cleaned adjusted and tested using laser technology by our factory-trained technicians in Lithuania” or somesuch said the ebay advert.) Both of them went to Oxfam with a note of their shortcomings. I showed the young assistant how a film camera works and it was such a surprise to him that he went off to check with the manager whether or not they took such antiquated technology.
Fed 2
That left me with an Olympus OM1 SLR which I like a lot and wanted to keep, and two medium-format cameras: a Hasselblad and a Rolleicord.
Hasselblad 500
I like medium-format and have been thinking recently about making it my default mode. The Hasselblad however was problematic. It cost me £1000 from a friend and that would probably put it into most people’s definition of ‘a thing of value’. That had always been at the back of my mind when I used it and perhaps for that reason it had been languishing in a cupboard for several months . I had also bought the Rolleicord (the poor person’s Rolleiflex and a snip in my view for £250). Two medium format cameras is perhaps one too many and so I thought I would see how much I could sell the Hasselblad for. Now I wouldn’t ever sell (or buy) anything of much value on Ebay – it’s a shaky platform in my view and distorts the market by reversing the traditional legal presumption of caveat emptor. (In disputes Ebay nearly always sides with the buyer.) So I contacted three dealers and sent them photos of the camera, two lenses and a spare back. The first offered me “up to £1500 subject to inspection”. The second offered £1100 and the third a complicated commission deal or £1200-ish subject to inspection. I had doubts about the first one since I imagined that they would beat me down once I was in the shop. Nonetheless they were local so I took the kit in determined to negotiate with steely resolve.
Rolleicord Vb - a cracking camera about which I will write a post before too long.
Imagine my surprise then when they stuck by their figure. At this point I am ashamed to say, my steely negotiator persona morphed into complete timewaster. I suddenly felt that I was making a mistake and said I’d think about it. They were very gracious – so stand up and take a bow The Real Camera Co. in Manchester. I’m still thinking about it but I have the feeling that I haven’t even scratched the surface with this camera yet, so for the moment it stays.
What was interesting was that the guy told me the economics of the deal for them. It broke down to £1200 for the camera and lens for which I had paid the original £1000; £200 for a 150mm lens that had cost me £400; and £100 for the rest. They would price the camera and lens at £1800 for sale and the other lens at about £300 or so. So the mark-up for them is about 50%. I would have roughly broken even.
So my seven cameras are now down to three: the Olympus, the Hasselblad and the Rolleicord. I feel a new man already. Having been brought up a Catholic I recognise this feeling. It’s like when I used to come out of the confessional. My sins had been washed away and, refreshed and renewed, I could go out and commit them all over again with a clear conscience.
(All photos taken from Wiki/Creative Commons sites)