Vintage camera reviews, repairs and photography blog
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.
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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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This post looks at a medium format folding camera which was made sometime around the time of the first world war – the Butcher’s Watch Pocket Carbine. Butcher’s Watch Pocket Carbine Images My Butcher’s Watch Pocket Carbine camera I bought this camera from eBay and was mostly driven to make the purchase by the name, which intrigued me. I could understand why the camera had the Watch Pocket part of the name – presumably it is small enough to fit […]
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The E. Ludwig Meritar 50mm f/2.9 lens was one of a number of standard lenses supplied on several different cameras made in East Germany in the post war years. In this article, I’m going to show a few examples of the sort of performance you can expect with this lens when fitted to a modern mirrorless camera, the Fuji X-T1. My copy of the lens is fitted with an Exakta bayonet mount, and I used a simple Exakta to Fuji […]
Read moreA short post explaining how you should re-subscribe if the email notification is important to you.
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Any regular reader of this blog will possibly notice that it has a different look today. That is because, after thinking about it on and off for a couple of years, this morning I took the plunge and moved my site from wordpress.com to a self hosted site. If your dns settings have updated, you will see this post in the style of the new blog here on the left; if they haven’t you have a small amount of time […]
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A few weeks ago I bought an Agfa Karat Art Deco camera with a few faults, and this post is an update on the steps I took to try to restore it to a fully working condition. There were several faults with the camera, but the first and probably the easiest to fix was the film advance, so this post deals with the Agfa Karat Art Deco film advance repair. I’ve worked on the film advance of the Karat series of […]
Read moreThe Found-Film site is now coming up to a year old, and I’ve got into a routine of adding new photos most days to make sure there is always fresh content on the site. As the months have passed, I’ve noticed that both my approach to the pictures I post and my thoughts as to the purpose of the site have changed. Initially, when I first thought about starting the site it was as a way of showing pictures I’d found on film discovered in my vintage […]
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