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Retro 35mm cameras.

Excellent condition and bought for £1.04 :)

a560_1.JPG


That little 'J' star logo will count for lots soon.
 
fat Andy said:
I've got the Rollei 35LED (similar to the S, but the entry level) had it since new, still boxed and with the boxed Rollei flash as well. Trouble is, the lens won't twist out of the body and lock, and no-one wants to fix it. Except for Rollei who want £100 to tell me that "the lens won't twist out of the body and lock":mad:

Any ideas??
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Currently ripping apart a 35S. Think I can help you. All looks very simple.

Anyone with Lomo or, Olympus XA probs should also contact me :D

PM me!
 
When I was in the States in the mid-80s and cameraless I borrowed a 1937 Kodak to take pictures with, and my dad's Olympus Trip the next time I went over. Both good cameras except that the Trip doesn't have any mechanism for precise focusing.

I expect someone's still using them somewhere (the Trip was sold on ages ago). I'd quite like an Olympus Pen half-frame camera now - 72 shots from a 36-frame roll of film, and it fits easily in your pocket.
 
Stanley Edwards said:
I've been buying up loads of old 60's and 70's quality 35mm rangefinder cameras :cool:

Just missed out on an immaculate Ricoh ME 500 for a tenner. Currently have bids on Yashica J's like this one;
a560_1.JPG


Also buying old Konica, Rollei, Olympus etc. They are so fucking cool and take great pic's if you get a good clean one. I'll be selling them on in about Two years time at around £60 each when they have become indespensible fashion accessories for Dazed & Confused reading idiots.

Reckon I'm right or, well off the mark?

:D
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I reckon that as long as you don't buy ones that take obselete mercury cells (the alkaline equivalents have a different discharge curve so give false meter readings as they age), and you teach yourself to replace deteriorating light seals (the major fault that causes people to flog 60s and 70s rangefinders, IME) then for the better ones (German rather than Singaporean Rolleis, Voigtlander VSLs, Olympus RDs and SPs, Konica C35s etc) you're probably looking at closer to £80-£100 if you sell judiciously on ebay, especially if you have original e/r cases, snake chains etc too.

Mind you, the Ricohs, Yashica G35 family, Fujicas and various Canons (QL17s and 19s especially) and Minoltas and Petris are good too.

You can do plenty of research on the net to find out what faults are generic to certain models, and how to repair or avoid them.

I recently CLA'd an Olympus ACE (interchangeable lens rangefinder) that I paid £20 for, and sold it for £75, so there's plenty of scope to make money if you don't mind fidgety work.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
I have two Olympus OM1s an OM2 and Rollie B35. When I bought them they were brand new. I won't be selling them. I also have a wonderful Edixa SLR without a light meter. It had been around the world before I bought it and did me good service for about five years before I got the Olympus.

The Edixa is not small and was very heavy to carry all day. It needed a separate light meter bigger than my current digital camera. It had a means of optionally cocking the shutter by hand-rotating the film speed dial without winding on the film so that you could do double exposures. The lens aperture control jammed up eventually. Those were the days of standard Pentax screw thread lenses and I could have replaced it but by then I had other cameras. That one is also not for sale.

If I was buying an old camera I would want to get a Kodak Pocket Folding camera from the thirties. I wouldn't expect to be using it though. Holy bellows Batman!
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heh, I've got an Edixa Kadett (max s/s 1/500th rather than the 1/1000th on the Edixamats and Edixa Standards) with waist level finder and pentaprism. Weighs a ton, as you say, but I like it. :)
 
Hocus Eye. said:
If I was buying an old camera I would want to get a Kodak Pocket Folding camera from the thirties. I wouldn't expect to be using it though. Holy bellows Batman!
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You can still use them! I was taking pictures of my dad's garden recently using 120 Velvia respooled onto 620 spools, with a 6x4.5cm Kodak Duo Six20 series 2 (the Zeiss Tessar/Compur model rather than the Kodak Anastigmat/Compur one). Lovely sharp trannies even using a loup to view them.
 
Hey Freidaweed

Thanks for mentioning the Beirette. My very first camera with adjustable f stops and shutter speeds was a Boots Beirette. It was a variation on the one you illustrate. It was very small and light and had a Meritar f/2.9 lens which looks unusual as f/2.8 was the standard maximum aperture in those days. I guess they were pushing at the limits of the lens without having to put that much more glass and optical correction into it to go for the bigger aperture. Somewhere I still have some colour slides I took using that camera with a cheap plastic light meter which also came from Boots who in those days were known as The Photographer's Chemist. I learned about apertures and shutter speeds on that camera. Nostalgic memories flood my mind. :) :)
 
friedaweed said:
OK Stanley i'm taking over the east german market in retro:cool:
58342792_70dfb97263_m.jpg

Beirette VSN £1:D

The Mrs will kill me:mad:
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:D

Crazy isn't it - quality cameras going for £1!

You can have the East German market. I'm buying Canon, Yashica, Konica, Ricoh, Olympus and Rollei mostly. Cheapos at around a tenner max. Although I have my eye on a very special Ricoh for personal use that I may stretch my budget for.

I think Ricoh offer the best scope for profit. It's a growing brand name and the old Ricoh RF's are excellent mechanically and have top lenses.

Don't buy anything less than perfect condition mind.

Like Violent Panda says; the seals are relatively easy to replace. Other faults could be more tricky to fix.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
Hey Freidaweed

Thanks for mentioning the Beirette. My very first camera with adjustable f stops and shutter speeds was a Boots Beirette. It was a variation on the one you illustrate. It was very small and light and had a Meritar f/2.9 lens which looks unusual as f/2.8 was the standard maximum aperture in those days. I guess they were pushing at the limits of the lens without having to put that much more glass and optical correction into it to go for the bigger aperture. Somewhere I still have some colour slides I took using that camera with a cheap plastic light meter which also came from Boots who in those days were known as The Photographer's Chemist. I learned about apertures and shutter speeds on that camera. Nostalgic memories flood my mind. :)
Click to expand...
It's another teaching aid for the nipper so it won't be boxed away in the attic;)

There's a few places showing pics taken with these.:cool:
I like this one taken from a para-glider (I think)
07-st.leonhard.jpg

courtesy of http://www.wolkerstorfer.at/index.html
Anyways I'll run a film through it and scan some of the results it they're not too embarrassing:D
 
Stanley Edwards said:
Crazy isn't it - quality cameras going for £1!

You can have the East German market. I'm buying Canon, Yashica, Konica, Ricoh, Olympus and Rollei mostly. Cheapos at around a tenner max. Although I have my eye on a very special Ricoh for personal use that I may stretch my budget for.

I think Ricoh offer the best scope for profit. It's a growing brand name and the old Ricoh RF's are excellent mechanically and have top lenses.

Don't buy anything less than perfect condition mind.

Like Violent Panda says; the seals are relatively easy to replace. Other faults could be more tricky to fix.
Click to expand...
Just remember comrade the USSR and anything East of Berlin is mine :D

Did you miss the Ricoh FM35 that went for £2:25? Looked a bit grubby in the back;) The prices they go for are silly really. I bagged that Beirette last night and even with postage it was less than the price of 10 cigs. Mind you the postage on a Zenit with a telephoto lens is almost as much as their original selling price.:D

Being a bit of a cutthroat bastard i like to exploit sellers who've guessed too low on the postage costs:D

Now enough of the niceties,


Stay out of Eastern Europe:mad:


ETA so is the Ricoh 35mm GR1s any good. They seem to demand some bucks.
 
friedaweed said:
...


ETA so is the Ricoh 35mm GR1s any good. They seem to demand some bucks.
Click to expand...


Considered to be THE best 35mm compact ever for the money. Ricoh have built their name on 35mm compacts. The EM 500 and 500G are classics. The GR1 is rapidly becoming a modern classic. It is a cracking little camera. Doesn't yet have retro cool mind.

Ricoh also made stunningly good for your money 35mm SLR's. The KR5, KR10 and KR10 Super are excellent cameras. Take Pentax K mount lenses as well as Ricoh's own very good lenses.

For me, the ultra, ultra, ultra cool 500G is an absolute gem in performance and retro cool looks.
 
Stanley Edwards said:
<snip> I think the old Rollei's and original Qlympus Trip's are very cool looking.
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Olympus Trip was the first camera I ever used. It was a chunky little beast from what I can remember.
 
Why? You already have lomos, slrs, dslrs and god knows what else that you rarely use :D
 
There are several unusual cameras from the past which might be worth looking out for. For example, there was an Olympus half-frame camera I think called the Pen F or something which gave you 72 frames on a 36 exposure film. I think that would be quite collectable.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
There are several unusual cameras from the past which might be worth looking out for. For example, there was an Olympus half-frame camera I think called the Pen F or something which gave you 72 frames on a 36 exposure film. I think that would be quite collectable.
Click to expand...

All the Olympus Pen cameras (about 10 different models IIRC) are "half frame". The difference with the "F" from the other models is that it's an interchangeable lens SLR.
 
friedaweed said:
Stay out of Eastern Europe:mad:
Click to expand...

You want some, do you, comrade? :mad: :mad:

Just checked my catalogue (yes, I catalogue all my photographic gear, so that if I lend someone summat, I know who's got it and/or whose legs to break if I don't get it back :) ) and I've got 15 Eastern European cameras at the mo.

Zorki 1 Leica II copy r/f camera
Zorki 4 r/f camera
Zorki 4K r/f camera
Zorki 6 r/f camera

Fed 1 Leica II copy r/f camera
Fed 2 r/f camera
Fed 3 r/f camera (fitted with Industar 35mm lens and viewfinder)
Fed 4 r/f camera

Zenit 3M SLR camera

Praktica L SLR camera
Praktica B200 SLR camera

Chaika IIM half-frame camera

Kiev 4A Contax II copy r/f camera
Kiev 35A Minox 35EL copy scale-focus camera
Kiev 30 Minolta 16-II copy 16mm "spy camera"

All of them get used, either by me, or by friends and relatives who borrow them.

The great thing is, of course, comrade frieda, that many of the capitalist scum don't realise just how sharp the lenses (especially the ones made to pre-war Zeiss specs) are. :cool:

Of course, Soviet photo-technology is no good for a running-dog lickspittle lackey of Capital like Stanley Edwards, there's no profit (hawk-spit) in it!
 
ViolentPanda said:
...

Of course, Soviet photo-technology is no good for a running-dog lickspittle lackey of Capital like Stanley Edwards, there's no profit (hawk-spit) in it!
Click to expand...


:D


Your collection ain't a patch on mine. I grew up (photographically) on 'cheapo' Prakticas (especially the ones that came with Zeiss lenses).

However, I will not deny that I'm buying for profit as much as fun and copies are just copies of the real thing that will always command the real price :o
 
Stanley Edwards said:
:D


Your collection ain't a patch on mine. I grew up (photographically) on 'cheapo' Prakticas (especially the ones that came with Zeiss lenses).
Click to expand...

That's only my "eastern european" cameras listed above. I've also got about another 80 or so European, early post-war Japanese, 70s Japanese and pre and post-war US cameras of various formats. :o

However, I will not deny that I'm buying for profit as much as fun and copies are just copies of the real thing that will always command the real price :o
Click to expand...
Not quite. I know a good few folk who'll happily use 1950s Nikon copies of Contax r/fs in preference to "the real thing", and the same with Reid and canon copies of Leica IIIs, both of which TOP the real thing in the price stakes. :)

You should stop making these snap statements that aren't based in fact, Stanley! :p
 
ViolentPanda said:
All the Olympus Pen cameras (about 10 different models IIRC) are "half frame". The difference with the "F" from the other models is that it's an interchangeable lens SLR.
Click to expand...

Right, it's the non-interchangeable one I'd be interested in (money willing). Also, perhaps a Ricoh, a big Yashica or one of the other RFs (I've got a Canon Sureshot at present).
 
Meltingpot said:
Right, it's the non-interchangeable one I'd be interested in (money willing). Also, perhaps a Ricoh, a big Yashica or one of the other RFs (I've got a Canon Sureshot at present).
Click to expand...

If you're considering one of the viewfinder-type Pen half-frame cameras, have a look here under "Olympus" and see which one suits your needs best.

If I were going for a half-frame I'd probably go for a "Canon Demi" of "Fujica Half", as they tend to have a better range of shutter speeds than the Olympus Pen models. If you're after a "user" rather than a "collector" camera you'll probably be able to pick up a very good one for £20-30 from ebay.co.uk, maybe cheaper, even with shipping from the US, from ebay.com.
 
king hell!

A mint Canon AE1 went for just £14 yesterday.

Also missed this beauty:
29bb_1.JPG


Went for £13.51. 51p more than I was prepared to pay. Wish I had gone higher.
 
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