A rare auction

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Image Source: Westlicht Site

You don’t see one of these come up for auction very often! It’s a Leica 0-Series, 1923, no. 122 auctioned at the 32nd WestLicht Camera Auction. The Westlicht site describes it as follows:

Only approx. 25 of these cameras were produced to test the market in 1923, two years before the commercial introduction of the Leica A. The offered camera is in beautiful and fully working condition, all parts including the paintwork are original, with the matching lens cover and the original folding finder. The Leica 0-Series is one of the major rarities in camera history – camera no.116 sold at WestLicht auction in 2012 was the most expensive camera ever sold – the offered camera is probably the most original and best condition example, only about three cameras are known with the original folding viewfinder. It also has the unique film spool and take-up spool. Illustrated in Lager I page 14., delivered to Sauppe from New York. Provenience: the famous collection of Jim Jannard !

It sold for €2,100,000 or about $2,600,000.

A bag full of cameras

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A while back I was contacted by friend and neighbor who knows that I collect cameras. Apparently he was at a flea market somewhere and came across a bag of cameras that the vendor was giving away for free. My neighbor decided to take them in case I was interested.

I didn’t expect to find a null series Leica, or even a less rare classic camera. I did expect to find the kind of thing you find at most thrift stores: cheap, plastic point and shoot cameras and sure enough when I opened the bag that is what I found – specifically:

  1. A Ricoh TF-500. Seems to work. I’ve read that this camera has a reputation for having a very sharp lens, and being a very capable picture taker. I’ll definitely try this one.
  2. A Pentax IQ Zoom60. Also working. Also a decent camera. I’ll be trying this one too.
  3. A Canon Sure Shot Owl. Has one very unique characteristic: an exceptionally large viewfinder – larger than anything I’ve ever seen on a compact camera. At first I didn’t think this was working, but after a bit of fiddling around it now seems to work. Even had an old film in it. I’ll try this one too.
  4. Two Kodak Instamatic 104 cameras vintage 1965. One seems to work. One definitely doesn’t. Kodak made and sold millions of these things. They use 126 format film, which Kodak stopped making in 1999 and other manufacturers in 2008. It’s almost impossible to find nowadays so I don’t think I’ll be using either of these. However, the Instamatic is an important Kodak camera and I don’t have one in my collection. So I’ll keep the one that works and toss the other one.
  5. A Lavec-002. It’s a cheap plastic camera with virtually no functionality that’s been made to look like a more expensive single lens reflex (SLR) camera. It does seem to work though and it’s so terrible that I’m inclined to try it to see if it’s possible to get a decent picture from it.
  6. A Kalimar Spirit 35. Another cheap plastic limited functionality camera. Thankfully it seems to be broken (I can’t find a shutter release anywhere, but there’s an ominous looking hole on top where it probably once was) so I couldn’t’ use it even if I wanted to. If it wasn’t broken I probably still wouldn’t try it. It’s bright, fluorescent orange/red color would be enough to put me off.

Aerial camera

by Posted in Black & White, Cameras, Humour, Things Leave a comment
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A Facebook friend posted the above picture along with the comment: ‘That “serious” feeling when you put down your smartphone and pick up a real camera…’ Although he’s a camera aficianado he didn’t mention what camera it was. After searching around on the internet for a while I found a number of instances where this picture appeared and in them it was referred to as a “Kodak K-24 US Air Force Camera with Aero-Ektar f2.5, 178 mm, 5×5 lens”. I posted this information to a vintage camera Facebook group to which I belong and was soon informed that this was not the case. One member joked “I am fairly sure that is either not a K24 or the man is about 3 feet tall.” Apparently the K24 is a much smaller camera than this one. The post elicited quite a few comments, many of them quite funny, but eventually one of the members solved the puzzle.

The camera is a Fairchild K-17.

Obviously I didn’t take the picture, nor do I know who did.

Serendipity

by Posted in Abstracts, Film, Vivitar 35ES Leave a comment
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In an earlier post (see: Vivitar 35ES – Results) I mentioned that I had inadvertently caused a few multiple exposures by placing my left finger on top of the camera such that it prevented the film from advancing correctly. This is one of them and I actually find it rather interesting. One frame was of a row of trees and the second one was of marks on a tank of some kind (I think. My memory on this one is rather vague. It could just as easily be tree bark). I like the rather abstract composition that was the result of them being combined.

Taken with a Vivitar 35ES.