Vintage camera reviews, repairs and photography blog
The picture below is another of my favourite pictures which I’ve not published on this site before. It’s a picture of my daughter which I took several years ago when she was only a little girl. I think the think which most strikes me about the picture, and which marks it out as one of my favourites, is the light in the picture. It was a very bright day, which led to a very high contrast picture and it particularly […]
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The Nikon Coolpix SQ was one of the last in the Coolpix series of cameras to feature the split body design where the lens unit can be rotated about an axis with the display unit. My copy was purchased as a rather battered, but still functional camera, and in this post I discuss it’s design and the main feature set. Nikon Coolpix SQ images My Nikon Coolpix SQ camera My Nikon Coolpix SQ was purchased from eBay for the sum […]
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I’m continuing my archiving of photos to recover disk space, and I came upon this picture of a lemonade bottle sitting on a table which had been caught in a shower. It was taken on Fuji Superia 400 film (which I believe is being discontinued this year) using a Minolta 505 Super si camera. This is actually another picture from the ones I took on a visit to Snowshill manor but although it was included in those pictures, it hasn’t […]
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For anyone who owns a Pentax DSLR there are a whole host of K-Mount lenses available to use on it dating from the very first Pentax cameras to use the K-Mount, as well as lots of third party lenses which were also made with this almost universal lens mount. I have used several of these lenses and published the results on this site, but they have mostly been manual focus, prime lenses. I thought it would be interesting to see […]
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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been evaluating a copy of ON1 Photo Raw with the thought of switching to it from Lightroom and I’ve written this post so I could share my thoughts. First some background. I didn’t actually decide to look around for a Lightroom replacement because I’m dissatisfied with Lightroom. I received a promotional email from ON1 about a discount being applied at the moment because a new version has just been released, and I thought […]
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This is a picture which I took a couple of years ago of Snowshill manor in Gloucestershire on Fuji 400 Superia Xtra 400 film with a Minolta X-505 super camera. Although I’ve published a group of pictures from this location before, I was sorting through some images to decide which could be archived to save some disk space. and I was struck by how good this looked. There is a brightness and clarity in this image which I didn’t manage […]
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This post is meant to be an index of camera types which have been produced over the last hundred or so years. It will be added to as I get time and as I acquire new examples of the different types in my collection. Viewfinder camera The viewfinder camera, of the type show to the left, is a basic camera which was normally sold as a snapshot camera. The actual name ‘viewfinder camera’ just refers to the fact that the […]
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This is a short pictorial post describing the Kodak Retinette type 22, 35mm, viewfinder camera which was made by Kodak between the years 1954 and 1958. Kodak Retinette type 22 Images. My Kodak Retinette type 22 camera As with many of my camera collection, this was purchased from eBay as a non-working vintage camera, but unlike many of them there isn’t much wrong with this unit except for a problem with the back film chamber door which doesn’t lock. Ok, […]
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A couple of weeks ago I picked up a Beauty Beaumat rangefinder camera from eBay which had a variety of faults. Today I decided to see if it was repairable and so this post covers the procedure I used whilst stripping down a Beauty Beaumat. Striping down a Beauty Beaumat Images. Normally in these type of posts I would write a description of what I did and try to point out any particular areas of difficulty to look out for […]
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The Beauty Beaumat is a 35mm rangefinder camera with a few rather interesting features which set it aside from some of the more ‘run of the mill’ rangefinder cameras which were produced around the same time, which was about 1960. Images of the Beauty Beaumat My Beauty Beaumat Camera I bought the Beauty Beaumat because I’d not seen one before, and it seems to be one of the more exotic models. It was bought from eBay for a few pounds from […]
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This is a descriptive post on the Eumig Electric 8 cine camera which was produced by Eumig in Austria in the late 1950s. It is an electrically operated, 8mm home movie camera and is a step above the mechanical, clockwork models used by many home movie enthusiasts at the time, and therefore had a slightly higher price than simpler models. Eumig Electric 8 Cine Camera Images My Eumig Electric 8 cine camera I picked this camera up from eBay as […]
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This is the first part of a series which may take several months to complete, but which I hope will eventually describe the process I’ve used to build an 8mm telecine machine from an old Eumig dual format projector. The driver for doing this is the failure of the Winait machine which I bought in September, which has proved to be defective and which I’ve subsequently rejected via the Amazon A-Z guarantee. Since I can’t use that device to convert […]
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This vintage camera repair index page lists all the repair posts on the site which deal with vintage cameras and lenses. I’ll just point out that I am not a professionally trained repair technician, so although I hope you find these articles helpful, please read them in light of that information. Related Posts:Winait film scanner problemsSite Navigation for Simon Hawketts’s Photo BlogTrying to improve SEO ratingsMoving found film from multisite to single siteI’ve moved simonhawketts.com to self-hostingDecision made – […]
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This is a review and description of a Rodenstock folding camera which I recently bought from eBay UK. Rodenstock has a good reputation for producing lenses, being the original manufacturers of some of the lenses in the Kodak Retina series of cameras, but this is the first camera I’ve seen made by the company. Rodenstock Folding Camera Images My Rodenstock Folding Camera This is the third folding camera I’ve bought in the last few weeks. The other two were a […]
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This is a look at a Voigtlander Bessa folding camera which was made in about 1930-34 and takes 8 large negatives on a roll of 120 format film. Voigtlander Bessa Images My Voigtlander Bessa camera This camera was another eBay purchase although it was a little bit of a blind purchase because the seller described the camera simply as ‘old camera’ and only included two pictures of if. Since both the pictures were fuzzy and indistinct, I couldn’t really make […]
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