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Anybody Miss Film Cameras?
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271 Posts
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March 23, 2011 - 12:10 pm
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For some 30 years, I used a succession of 35mm film cameras: Minolta, Canon, Nikon, and Leica. (It helped that, for some 7 or 8 years, that I sold the stuff, so I could buy it at great prices! In fact, I just eBayed the Leica for almost three times what I paid for it!!)

I shot, almost exclusively, transparency films (slides), because you got what you took; there was no "middle man" fiddling with colors and printing exposures to alter things. It was a great learning tool, and, once I had -- more or less -- mastered the process, a great way to record what I saw.

Alas, in early 2005 I made the change to digital. In some respects, it's wonderful (e.g., on my honeymoon to Costa Rica, I took almost 1,000 shots in 10 days), but the challenge is gone, and I sorely miss that. Now, we can set our cameras to bracket the hell out of every shot, and then dump what we don't like. (In the business, when they first came out, we called them PhD cameras: Push Here, Dummy.)

Maybe I'm just old and crotchety, but I do miss those days. Anybody else?

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March 23, 2011 - 1:09 pm
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I still have my trusty Canon AE-1. Can't remember the last time used it but it just feels so good in your hand, winding up the film advance lever, manually focusing, and pressing the shutter button and hear a real shutter click sound. I wonder how much that thing is worth these days.

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March 23, 2011 - 6:28 pm
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I took a 35mm camera to Disney in 2007 with my niece who was 5.  She didn't understand why she couldn't automatically view the picture I took. 

I used to put my pictures in an album as soon as I got them developed.  I haven't put a picture in an album in years.  I feared loosing them but my wife just found a way to have all of our kodak gallery pictures put on a disc. 

Matt O 2006 Skyline Nomad 27' travel trailer.  Previously owned 1986 Coleman Columbia / 1992 Coleman Senecca / 1989 Born Free Class C RV.

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March 23, 2011 - 6:56 pm
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I used to run a b/w darkroom facility for work, it was a ton of fun and i used to print whatever i wanted for free.  Miss those days.

TKnecht, or anyone, no any good sites that i could use to get selling prices for older camera equipment?  I've got quite a bit and we're cleaning house so...

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March 23, 2011 - 8:55 pm
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I don't miss the wasted film.
When I had my AE-1, I didn't really try to take good pics, I just took pics. My camera was stolen many years ago and I just got my DSLR a couple years ago.
My D80 can be set to full manual. I try to compose pics as if I cannot just delete them by the hundreds.
I don't take 40 pics of a flower knowing I can delete 38 or 39 of them.
What would be the point in that?

I took some 400 pics on vacation and I still kept well over 300.

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271 Posts
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March 28, 2011 - 10:41 am
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[quote author=Full Circle link=topic=695.msg4968#msg4968 date=1300920985]
I used to run a b/w darkroom facility for work, it was a ton of fun and i used to print whatever i wanted for free.  Miss those days.

TKnecht, or anyone, no any good sites that i could use to get selling prices for older camera equipment?  I've got quite a bit and we're cleaning house so...

eBay the stuff. World-wide audience. My Leica went to a guy in japan. I've got 2 Nikon bodies and a ton of lenses and other equipment I'm going to eBay this summer. Check out what's currently on eBay that's similar to what you want to offer. You can see what the asking bids (prices) are, and you can see what sold and what didn't, so you can judge accordingly.

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May 28, 2011 - 3:26 pm
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Actually I do not miss the film! It was just a pain carrying all the film on vacation and then we would end up buying more while on vacation. Then coming home we had all this stuff to have developed. It would cost a fortune to get it all done!! Then you would see how some of the shots were just bad! Now I just shoot all the shots I want and no more worries about wasting film and no more developing fees! The DW would print the pictures for the albums she would make and I would make DVD slideshows.

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271 Posts
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November 2, 2011 - 2:37 pm
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I broke down and sold my film cameras on eBay. I actually got almost three times what I paid for my Leica; a guy from Japan bought it.

I've also bit the bullet and bought a Nikon D3100 with a Nikkor 18 - 55, and a Tamron 70 - 300.

I still miss the old days, though.....

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