Vintage Watches are great, but let’s see some Vintage Cameras

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When I was a teenager back in the late 60's I was really into the Single Lens Reflex game, it seemed every month Popular Photography and Modern Photography were covering the latest and greatest SLRs coming out of Japan......Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax, Topcon, Miranda and others were coming out with more and more complicated thru-the-lens metering systems which was relatively new at the time. I had a Canon TL which was about $200 at the time, all metal, all mechanical, a great camera. There was another genre of compact 35mm cameras....Rollei was the standard bearer with their Rollei 35S line of compact, full frame cameras. This was way before IC chips, these were full mechanical cameras with a battery operated light meter, and Rollei shoehorned all of this into a relatively compact camera of 950mm x 670mm x 400mm weighing about 350 grams. It was really ingenious, all metal, no cheap plastic parts, very stout, back slid off. Shutter speeds from 1/2 to 1/500 sec, f2.8 Sonnar lens, it was the best compact camera for professionals to carry when they just had to have a camera available to get an image. I dug my 35S today and took some pics of it, it hasn't had film in it for probably 35 years but it still works. Good memories. Now everything is plastic and throwaway.

I love my Rollei 35, such a great camera
 
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I see people showing off their firepower so I thought I'd show my cameras aswell!! If you look past my Significant other and I duck Collection (may get a thread someday) there is a Canon AE-1 program, Pentax P3 and my Grandmother in Law's Camera a Minolta 7000. PSX-20191013-013714.jpg
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There is only one camera that truly belongs on a watch forum. This one.




Made in the late 1930’s by LeCoultre for Compass. Here’s what it looks like all folded up.



It was advertised at the time as being about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Unbelievably complicated to use, but had every feature known at the time.

Please note that I do not own one of these wonderful cameras, but I have witnessed one in action. All pictures from the internet.

There is a great page on this camera at Hodinkee, with a fantastic sales video showing all the features.

A camera made by a watch company. Who woulda thunk it?
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