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Krafty5260
Tinkerer
Username: Krafty5260
Post Number: 40
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 07:33 am: | 
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Hey Friends,
First, let me say I'm feeling fine. Nevertheless, I'm a hopeless strategist, as well as a maniacal camera and photography enthusiast. After 300 plus cameras, my sister asked, "What are you going to do with all these cameras?" That got me thinking. What am I going to do with all these cameras?
When I read the ads on Ebay, some of them are really depressing - "From the estate of a long time photographer and camera collector." The other one is, "My Dad collected cameras for years and I don't know anything about them. . . " Going on 50 years old, I find myself thinking about things I've never considered before. I'd never be able to rest thinking that my beloved Burke & James Press turned up on Ebay again with the same, or similar, sad description.
My first choice would be to bequeath my collection to a young person who has the passion. Alternatively, if I knew of a museum that would preserve and display them, I'd arrange for my collection to be donated. It got me thinking. Am I the only one who has considered such things? I hope this message doesn't engender sadness or repulsion. For one, I'm enthusiastic about the notion that someone, or people, a hundred years from now could enjoy the same magical experiences I've had preserving images with only glass, springs, gears, levers, and cables.
Light meter? We don't need no stinkin' light meter.
Whaddayall think?
Michael |
Finnegan
Tinkerer
Username: Finnegan
Post Number: 6
Registered: 09-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 02:15 pm: |
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Well, um, I just got past 50 but, thankfully, also got past the notion of saving or preserving anything for the future. I also have lots of old cameras. Too many for that matter. Boxes and boxes of them laying around here.
My intention is to sell them but keep my favorites for myself. Very hard to think of being without my Rolleiflex or the few cameras of sentimental value. My reasoning on this is that most young people don't care about the past or the future and film won't be available in 100 years. Collectibles have value while the generation that remembers them are still alive and nostalgic. After those people are gone, collectibles values of the era fall sharply. Then, after a long while, the prices rise again as whatever collectible it is enters into true "antique" status.
As for museums, in fact, most museums have tons of stuff donated to them but no space to display it all so, sadly, some very nice items sit in storage for years and may never be seen again. It is a huge financial burden for museums to keep things clean and in a proper state of preservation. And how many times have news stories appeared saying how museum workers suddenly discovered a rare artifact that was sitting in a crate for years that they kicked going back and forth everyday?
But, yes, it is a downer to get old-er and all that. I'm more worried about what will happen to the cats than the cameras actually.
Ok, plan #1 is to sell them all, including the Burke & James Press (or is it a Busch PressMan in that big case?) and look up all the old girlfriends from high school (except for the ones who have gotten too ugly) and have a good time.
Amazingly, even with all these cameras, there still is one or two I would love to have just to have it and I'm not even referring to anything expensive. If you have a list, please let me see it. |
Glenn
Tinkerer
Username: Glenn
Post Number: 710
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 05:05 pm: |
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I seriously doubt that any of us has that unique £100,000 rarity in our collection - these when they do appear, seem to have been living unloved and unrecognised for decades in some dirty attic. Anyway I would hope that with our 'expertise' we would have recognised the rarity long ago, auctioned it off, then put the money to some good use.
This means that our collections of the mundane and fairly common, fall under the 'one person's treasure is another person's junk' label. Anybody who collects and does not bear this in mind, is being very naive in my opinion.
Being well past the aforementioned 50 - I reach my alloted three score and ten in 2013 - getting older does not worry me or pray on my mind. However, my wife and I are not going to burden our son with our vast collection of books, photographic items and antiques - he can have his choice of our collecting pastimes, but all the rest will be sold so as not to become a burden on him. Anyway I am sure any monies made will be well spent on his family's hobbies.
People tend to forget that much of the pleasure in collecting is the actual acquisition, many of our books bring back fantastic memories when we handle/dust them. Thus passing one's collection on in a bequest to some young person, actually diminishes their pleasure of building a collection - replacing it with the worry and responsibility for housing and maintaining the collection. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 42
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 06:02 pm: |
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A thought provoking thread. I can speak from some experience here... My father died back in '98, and my mother was trapped in the house for years getting rid of his stuff. He was a life-long collector of all kinds of stuff, some valuable and some not. Guns, coins, stamps, books, beer cans, etc, etc, etc. The guns were the biggest problem. After myself, by brother, my sisters, and two brothers in law had taken everything we wanted, there were still about 450 left. I could tell stories... best not to get me started.  (I shoot, and I could have taken much more than I did, but as Glen points out, the fun of a collection is building it.) My mother finally solved the problem by wholesaling them to Dixie Gun Works. At least she didn't have to take a tax hit that way.
I guess what all this comes down to is that after we are gone, our collections will scatter. We are the temporary stewards of our stuff as it passes into the future. Give your kids plenty of time to take what they want after you're ready to let go of it, and sell or give the rest to people who will enjoy it.
As for myself, I'm 59 and a cancer survivor, but I'm doing good and expect to become a much older man. I'm telling my kids though, to think about things they might want to keep. |
Harryrag
Tinkerer
Username: Harryrag
Post Number: 127
Registered: 05-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 01:13 am: |
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"I guess what all this comes down to is that after we are gone, our collections will scatter", I pretty much guess you are right on that, Marty.
So what? The houses we live in are ours, but even if they are among what we call property only as long as we live. Before that rather short lifetime of ours they were in somebody else's possession and will find new people who then own them after our final departure. This is what life is like, and I am not a bit puzzled. There is no existence after life, i.e. no final stage after it has ended, as an end is something definitely terminal, so why worry about what may become of our personal legacy? I am here today and will be gone tomorrow, addressing the past is nothing more than forgetting what life's ups and downs were really like, in a sometimes confusingly slow manner. We are, on the other hand, hopeless romantics, from time to time, and are being nostalgic beyond reasonable measure. |
Puderse
Tinkerer
Username: Puderse
Post Number: 38
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 06:13 am: |
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Back in another century I went on a family vacation with my 3 adult children. The youngest took quite an interest in using the Nikons and lenses that I brought along and appreciated the results. Recently when I began discussing what I had and offered them to her she responded with "they use film and don't auto-focus, right?" That did it.
Gradually pulling hundreds of cameras out of the boxes, trunks, and closets. Setting the more beloved ones behind glass and putting the others on a well known international on-line auction site.
I'm over 60 and using the spare change generated to fix or repair the ones that deserve it. TV sucks and the workbench has good light and a good stereo (with turntable). |
Glenn
Tinkerer
Username: Glenn
Post Number: 712
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 10:19 am: |
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Marty,
I sure would have liked to spend some time with your father and his collection of firearms! I also shoot; however,the good old UK Government solved bequest problems this area of collecting and handgun ownership some while back - banned handguns and made collecting of long guns problematical too. The Law will require my executor to immediately lodge any firearms I may still own at the time of my demise, with the local gunsmith for future legal sale/disposal. If I ain't very mobile when the time comes for me to shuffle off this mortal coil, I doubt there will be anything left in the gun cupboard to dispose off - so problem solved. At the moment though, I still enjoy being taken out on the moors everyday by the four Spaniels! |
Krafty5260
Tinkerer
Username: Krafty5260
Post Number: 41
Registered: 02-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 02:11 pm: |
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Don't do anything rash, Sid,
In high school, I took my first photography class and the madness set in. I told my father I needed a camera in order to take this class. He had a 1951 Ikoflex from before the dawn of time. Oh My God; at 15 I just couldn't be seen with a TLR among my friends with new Minolta SLRs, Nikons, Canons, etc. I told Dad the camera had to be 35mm (not exactly the whole truth and nothing but). He trumped me again by borrowing an Argus C3 Matchmatic from a Shutterbug client. Sigh. Yes, it was 35mm.
I learned photography - it was me, not the electronics.
Dad had the last laugh, though. I've probably bought 30 TLRs since becoming a grownup camera geek. So, don't be in a hurry to dispose of your collection. Your daughter may come around yet.
I can't think of much that's more fun than looking at the sky and the shade, making a half-educated guess and wondering if I'll have a photo at all. The exhilaration is renewed when something actually turns out!
I'm just not ready to be as sanguine as some of my fellow posters.
Dad didn't do guns. As a WWII combat veteran, he saw enough damage and didn't ever want to touch one again. I can't criticize that decision. But to saddle a 15-year-old with a TLR; that's just wrong.
Michael |
Chiccolini
Tinkerer
Username: Chiccolini
Post Number: 59
Registered: 06-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 05:27 pm: |
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I'd rather go through class with an Ikoflex than try to remember what the numbers mean on the MatchMatic dial. Hate MatchMatics.
I was gifted (not saddled) with a Duaflex as a kid and loved it. Took it one day to the botanic gardens where it did only so-so since it couldn't focus closer than 3 feet but it did an incredible job of driving some other older photog. livid that a kid had a TLR too making his owning a TLR seem not so special. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 43
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 05:52 pm: |
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Glen,
You were saying
I sure would have liked to spend some time with your father and his collection of firearms!
If you'd ever met him, you may or may have not liked him, but you'd never forget him. He grew up poor and hard, the only child of a widowed mother trying to farm in depression era, dustbowl, Nebraska. It made him a driving, domineering, hot tempered, workaholic, with a pathological fear of ever being poor again. He was as honest as he was tough, though, and a good man, although we often didn't get along well. (Maybe I'm my father's son...)
Most of the guns I kept from his collection were guns I personally remembered... The Revolutionary War era Brown Bess that I accidentally bayonetted the ceiling of my mother's Studebaker Commander with when taking it to school in about the 3rd grade... The flintlock blunderbuss that my father had me clean, and I discovered that it was still loaded... Others, I shoot... A 1911 Luger, and a few newer semiautos ranging from the teens on up to WW2. Long ago, he gave me the .22 he had as a boy that he'd take to school so that he could hunt on the way home. It's my least valuable gun, but priceless to me. Sometimes I feel like I'm shooting with my father.
It's too bad that the honest people of the UK have been disarmed. I live in a part of the American Midwest that is awash with guns. Personally, I love the delicate art of target shooting with handguns. (The 1911 style .45 semiauto is my favorite, and my only "new" gun.) There is a free public range a few minutes from my house where I can pop away to my heart's content. The crime rates are very low here, and the streets are safe for anyone at night. If the availability of guns had any effect on causing crime, there would be no one left alive in the entire region. Instead, the cities in the US with the toughest gun laws have the highest rates of violent crime. This doesn't necessarily show that banning guns causes crime, but it does show that it doesn't prevent it. America's crime statistics are inflated by gangs fighting over the illegal drug business in the inner cities, (which often have stiff gun laws.) It is also aggravated by generations of inner city kids being raised with less respect for other's lives than your typical lizard. Cities such as London and Toronto are learning the same difficult lesson. I could go on and on, but I've already rambled off topic for this group for longer than good manners allow. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 44
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 06:07 pm: |
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Krafty,
You were saying
I told Dad the camera had to be 35mm (not exactly the whole truth and nothing but). He trumped me again by borrowing an Argus C3 Matchmatic from a Shutterbug client. Sigh. Yes, it was 35mm.
I took a photography course in college with my father's Argus C3. I asked the instructor if it would do for the course, and he said that it would, but the school would loan me a decent SLR. Instead, I used the old C3 because it was what I had, and I got a good grade. The shutter was so gummy that it stuck open on slow shutter speeds which actually helped with time exposures at night.
Like you, I learned the basics of photography before that without really knowing it by using more primitive cameras. I started out with old Kodak folders like the autographics, where focus, F stops, and shutter operation were so wide open and obvious that you could pretty much tell what the settings did simply by looking at them. Not a bad way to learn, really. |
Harryrag
Tinkerer
Username: Harryrag
Post Number: 128
Registered: 05-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 04:08 am: |
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Huh?
Are we really into discussing the practical use plus the pros and cons of firearms?
What a disillusionment. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 45
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 06:30 am: |
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Like I said, I went on too long already. This is a classic camera repair forum. Sorry. |
Harryrag
Tinkerer
Username: Harryrag
Post Number: 129
Registered: 05-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 08:03 am: |
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On second thoughts, there is absolutely nothing to apologize for, really, the fault is on me, presumably.
November approaching is a reasonable time, at least over here in Europe, to ponder things over, like man's last affairs, the apprehension of one's passing away and what to do with all those gadgets that mean so much, perhaps firearms included. I was just disappointed to learn "the hard way" that what is anathema to me can elsewhere be among a fair range of topics suitable to be chatted about in a conversational tone. |
Rlc
Tinkerer
Username: Rlc
Post Number: 89
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 01:50 pm: |
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Marty I enjoyed your Post #43 a great deal. It brought back some meaningful memories for me in my 79 years of life.
I am at a stage where I also ponder the disposition of my considerable collection of cameras and firearms. While it was off the subject of cameras, I found your discourse quite refreshing.
Richard. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 46
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 02:28 pm: |
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Actually, Harryrag was right. The thread went into the direction of firearms when my father's collection related directly to the topic at hand, and my mother's having to deal with the problem had direct implications. My relating why I kept a few of my father's guns to Glen was probably within the bounds of friendly conversation among interested members of the group.
AFTER THAT, I went beyond where I should have gone in my rants about freedom to keep and bear arms and related government interference. I've seen good groups destroyed, including an astronomy group that had become an important part of my life for 10 years, due to people failing to police themselves within reasonable limits.
This is a good group with great people. I got out of line. |
Glenn
Tinkerer
Username: Glenn
Post Number: 713
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 31, 2009 - 03:51 pm: |
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Marty,
Like Richard I also found post 43 very interesting - given complete freedom of choice ( the law and the good lady) my ideal dwelling would consist of a kitchen cum living room cum bedroom situated between a gun room and a library. With the contrivance of the aforesaid good lady, I/we already have the makings of a large library, so if I win £12 million on the lottery tonight I might just emigrate across the pond!
Whilst your 'policing' comments are very true and something that we should all be aware of, in no way do I personally feel that you even approached the boundaries - never mind going beyond and getting out of line. After all this is the Lounge and perhaps a glimpse into our personal frailties and foibles is not only allowable but is no bad thing.
As you say, this is a good group of people, but sometimes I find it interesting to see beyond the printed name and their repair bench/collection. |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 47
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 01, 2009 - 09:40 am: |
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OK Glenn... we're all waiting... Did you win the 12 million pounds? |
Glenn
Tinkerer
Username: Glenn
Post Number: 714
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 01, 2009 - 05:03 pm: |
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No - Sod It! Seriously though; do I really want to win that amount of cash, would this obscene amount of money actually make me happier, or cause even greater worries? The questions are hypothetical, Lady Luck and I never have walked hand in hand, so why should things alter now at this point in my life?
Anyway, I learnt many years ago that money was not the driving force in my life - perhaps Marty will understand following his battle with Cancer - so I shall be very content to just continue as I am now. |
Nsurit
Tinkerer
Username: Nsurit
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2009
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 02, 2009 - 07:08 am: |
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There is good news and bad news for this new member of this site. I'll be eligible for "full" Social Security on my next birthday and I have no where near 300 cameras. Probably pushing 50 or so, but who is counting. I just asked my wife, who is sitting across the table from me, what she would do with my camera equipment were I to go to my greater reward before she made her transition. Her answer was, "I don't know." Hmm, kind of makes you think. A darkroom full of stuff and a cabinet loaded to the gills with stuff I've bought, sorted through and accumulated in some order and for some reason and that she has no idea about. Guess my job is to enjoy it while I'm upright and sucking air and to make a plan to send it to other caring hands when I die. Bill Barber |
Marty
Tinkerer
Username: Marty
Post Number: 48
Registered: 11-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, November 02, 2009 - 08:39 pm: |
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Guess my job is to enjoy it while I'm upright and sucking air and to make a plan to send it to other caring hands when I die. Bill Barber
That seems to about sum it all up.
Marty |
Paul_ron
Tinkerer
Username: Paul_ron
Post Number: 175
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 12:43 pm: |
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Well you know you've had it when you see your own old cameras that were sold years ago start showing up in your shop for CLAs n reapirs. |
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