Mike Novak is a Fort Dodge based photographer, camera collector, and film enthusiast who lives in Fort Dodge, Iowa. For the past several months, Mike attended several town hall events for a number of candidates prior to the Iowa Caucus and brought with him a selection of film cameras, vintage lenses,…
As 2019 comes to a close, it seems like only yesterday I was writing last year’s Happy New Year post (on January 28th) where I covered some of the big changes I made to the site at the beginning of the year. The two most obvious were a switch to…
On December 12, 2014, I published my first film camera review on Mike Eckman dot Com for the Argus C3 Match-Matic. At the time I wrote the review, I thought I would just share some information I had learned about a cool old camera I had picked up on eBay.…
Today, I have a quick post about five things you can buy online that come in 120mm sizes, and one that isn’t. Lets take a look shall we? Case Fans If you’re looking to build a PC, you’ll definitely need some case fans. Don’t settle for just any old 80mm…
The late 1930s were an exciting time for Kodak. In 1934 the first commercially available day-light loading 35mm film was released, and was off to a great start as the most popular film format for “miniature” cameras. The German made Kodak Retina series was doing well and was establishing Kodak…
Film is back! Well, sorta. OK, film never went anywhere, but like vinyl records did in the early 21st century, the steady decrease of film usage seems to have bottomed out and has started to increase again. According to Ilford in an article published in February 2015, 30% of people…
The famous American actor Johnny Depp is often seen with cameras. The cameras are of a wide ranging styles and brands, but since people seem to really like looking at pictures of Johnny Depp with a camera, here are some great examples! Do you like pictures of Johnny Depp with…
Here at Mike Eckman dot com, I like to ask the tough questions. Questions other camera review sites are unwilling or unable to answer. One day, while listening to some Kid Rock, drinking Budweiser, eating McDonalds, and shooting off fireworks, I thought to myself, “Gee, what was the best American…
Depending on who you are, eBay is either the best thing since sliced bread, or it’s the Devil…for many camera collectors it can be a bit of both. eBay has been around since 1995 and since then has become the defining source for online bargain shopping. You can buy everything…
One Hour Photo is a series of casual one on one conversations with a variety of people I admire who in one way or another have helped me along the way collecting or repairing classic film cameras. Each article is a summary of a roughly one hour conversation with the…
Nikon is not only one of the most successful camera companies of all time, but they also have one of the most fascinating histories of any modern company, in any industry today. In 2017, Nikon celebrated it’s 100th anniversary with a pretty cool anniversary website (which has since closed) and…
The following article was written by Dr. Jeffrey Alexander as his masters thesis while he was studying at the University of British Columbia in 2001. It originally appeared on the university’s web portal in text format but has since transformed into a PDF only that can be read in the…
