There was a time when LIFE Magazine was one of the most highly respected news publications in the world. Originally started as a humor magazine in 1883, the magazine published humorous articles until an ownership change in 1936. In that year, Henry Luce, owner of Time Magazine bought the publication…
This is a KMZ Iskra, a folding medium format camera that shoots 6cm x 6cm images on 120 format roll film. The Iskra is a copy of the AGFA Super Isolette first introduced in 1954, and was made by KMZ (Krasnogorsky Mekhanichesky Zavod), just outside of Moscow starting in 1960. …
One thing I’ve noticed that’s true about people who love old cameras, is that they also love lists. Specially lists of the “best” of stuff. Articles such as 8 Great Vintage Street Photography Cameras, Five Best Medium Format Cameras for Beginners, and 24 Great Vintage Cameras You Can Still Buy…
This is a Leica Model A, made by Ernst Leitz GmbH of Wetzlar, Germany. The serial number of this particular camera means it was made in 1930, but the earliest Model As were first introduced in 1925. The Leica Model A is one of the most historically significant cameras ever…
The first consumer camera made by Hasselblad was the 1600 F that first went on sale in 1948. Due to the high price and some significant growing pains of the design, especially in the shutter, not many were sold. It would not be until the release of the 1000 F…
This is a Hasselblad XPan, a 35mm rangefinder camera that exposes 24mm x 65mm panoramic images on regular 35mm film. The Xpan was made in Japan and was a name variant of the Fujifilm TX-1. The Xpan was an extremely expensive and high quality camera with a focal plane shutter,…
When you collect old cameras, sometimes you want to send them in for repair. Depending on the type of camera you have, the number of options for where you can send the camera varies. If it’s a Leica rangefinder or a Nikon SLR, there are usually quite a number of…
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…
This is a FED 2, a 35mm rangefinder camera made at the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Labour Commune in Kharkiv, Ukraine during the reign of the Soviet Union between the years 1955 and 1970. The FED 2 was an upgrade to the original FED camera which itself was a copy of…
This is a Mercury II Model CX half-frame 35mm camera made by the Universal Camera Company out of New York, NY. The Mercury II was an update to the original Mercury Model CC that added support for normal 35mm film rather than the proprietary Univex film used in the original. …
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.…
This is a Tenax II, an interchangeable lens 35mm rangefinder camera made by Zeiss-Ikon in Dresden starting in 1938. It shot 24mm x 24mm square images on regular 35mm film and was created by famed designer Hubert Nerwin who previously designed the Contax rangefinder. It was an unusually designed camera…
