Earlier this week, Aidas Pikiotas, the owner of the excellent Soviet camera site, SovietCAMS.com announced he would be taking the site offline before the end of the year.
Aidas first created SovietCAMS in 2006 as a resource for cameras produced in the Former Soviet Union and over the next decade, grew into one of the largest, and most popular resources on the Internet. In the last few years however, as things often do, priorities change and Aidas found himself unable to keep updating the site. A combination of other projects and a loss of motivation has allowed some of the information on the site to become out of date, and without the necessary time or resources to update it, Aidas decided to take the site offline.
When I saw his announcement, I immediately contacted Aidas and asked about hosting a mirror of his site to keep the information available online. I felt that despite whatever lack of updates the site might have had in recent years, the amount of information here was worth saving.
Aidas told me I could host his site, but he wanted to retain the sovietcams.com domain name, so after a short FTP transfer and a little bit of HTML tweaking to fix some broken links, I am happy to announce that Mike Eckman dot Com is now an official mirror of sovietcams.com. The URL should be pretty easy to remember, as it’s just mikeeckman.com, slash, sovietcams.
https://mikeeckman.com/sovietcams
Like I have done with Mike Connealy’s original camera review site which I have maintained a mirror of since 2017, I will keep the site unchanged from it’s original version for all to see. This being my second mirror, perhaps I will soon branch out from collecting vintage cameras, to collecting vintage camera websites!
Excellent outcome, for you, Aidas, and the community. Well done, Mike.
Thank you, Mike. Something similar was done with Capt Jack’s Exakta website when Jack Dugrew passed away. What you’re doing is kinda like keeping the roof over the library in good repair, back in the day.
Thanks Mike for keeping this information available.
That is terrific,Aidas and Mike,for keeping such a great resource alive!
For current and future viewers it will be an important asset for the photo community!
All the best Aidas!
Wayne S.
Well done Mike. That site has been a valuable source of information for me for the last 8 years. So glad you did this, massive props to you.
Thanks Paul! I wouldn’t let that kind of info disappear!
Thanks, Mike. I love the old Soviet cameras and have quite a few. From the IT guys at work, I have learned to view the undesirable behaviors as “features.” While it has done nothing to quell ongoing disatisfaction with many IT changes, it has helped to view these old cameras with a more affectionate eye. It is good you took the measure keep the information available.
Excelente iniciativa, Miguel! Gracias por mantener viva esa biblioteca que, por la generosidad de Aidas, continuaremos disfrutando siempre de ésta, manteniendo información valiosa para todos los amantes de las cámaras analógicas soviéticas.
Oscar