Lose yourself for a while in this fine collection of vintage film cameras of the 1930s at the Living Image Museum. [via Hacker News] "Their true value lies with the images they recorded for posterity, but they do have a beauty and charm of their own,
write the curators. "We keep as many cameras in working order as possible."
1930s cameras, an era of fundamental changes to camera design, despite the Great depression. Wood has all but gone except for the cheaper cameras and some of those hide it. Thousands of differing designs come and go as a public hungry for pictures continue taking up photography en masse. The folding bellows lens bed camera with lots of black paint are still very much in vogue but now chrome plating supersedes nickel plate. Many cameras of this period and before, were just light tight assembles to which third party lenses and shutters were attached, these being the hardest components to get right. Roughly in the middle of the period 35mm cameras, the so called miniature camera, with daylight loading 135 cartridges begin to appear and rapidly gain popularity. Bakelite is used for some cameras and aluminium continues to be used for some parts. Die cast metal bodies are used increasingly as the era progresses. The Twin Lens Reflex camera matures and the birth of the modern Single Lens Reflex arrives in the form of the Exakta VP. The Leica comes of age now accepting the 135 cartridge, setting a style trend for satin chrome plated top housings and black covered bodies. The style would predominate within a decade and influence camera styling to this day. There has been a shift in the manufacturing centre, the majority of high quality equipment is now coming from Germany, although mass market cameras are produced in many countries.
It's also a fine example of a vintage website! It's old-fashioned and has contrast problems but is otherwise simple, fast-loading, easily-navigated and informative. The BBC profiled the museum's founder and operator, Keith Smith, in 2015.
Clearing out an attic after his grandfather's death, South found an old shoebox with negatives of shots taken with the 1927 camera. Among them is one of his grandparents, Ted and Lily, on honeymoon, when they asked a passer-by to take their photo.
The shot is displayed online in South's Living Image museum in which, poignantly, he recounts placing the negative in the camera exactly where "the light from my grandparents had struck it and altered it forever. I do so wish I could shine a light back through that negative, out of the same lens to have them back again."
