Vintage Cameras

Recently my grandpa passed away, it’s bittersweet because now he’s no longer in pain & healed, and I believe with my grandma who passed a few years before him. For my mom’s family it means the beginning of an end, the property and home that they have lived in since children will now be leaving the family. Though the physical property will have a new owner we all have tons of memories that will last forever from our time there.

They had to go through the whole house and 70+ years of stuff in it, which you can imagine was quite the task. Since I don’t live near Idaho I wasn’t able to be there to help with any of it. They did a great job making sure all of us grandchildren got something that we can remember our grandparents by. When my mom asked me what I would like to have, I wasn’t sure. I mentioned a few small things that I’d played with as a kid, but those were unable to be located. Then my mom came up with a great idea. She ran across these vintage cameras and knew that I’d love to have them since I’m a photographer and love vintage stuff. Little did she know that for the past year I’ve been wanting to buy some vintage cameras from the local flea markets to have to display before we left Alabama, I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Now I not only have vintage cameras to display but ones that make me think of my grandparents when I see them! That’s an added bonus to have family history tied to these display pieces!

My mom said one of these is the very first camera that they owned, although I’m not sure which one it is for sure. These are what I proudly display and get to use as a conversation piece 🙂

A Polaroid SX-70 camera, the neat thing about this camera is that I can remember it been used at their house when I was little. I grew up in the 80s & 90s so by that point polaroids weren’t being used as often. I remember being so excited to see a picture coming right out of the camera instead of having to wait to get it developed.

Side view

This is how I received, it flat and folded up. I’ll be honest it took me a good while to figure out how to open it up! I LOVE Internet and was SO excited to find a website that had the original manual available! It just blows my mind that this stuff is even available on the Internet!

It even has a polaroid pack left in it, but I’m pretty sure it’s no longer good. I was looking all over for a place to put batteries in the camera and low and behold the batteries come in the polaroid pack, would’ve never guessed that!

This may have been their first camera, theModel AF Univex, it was an apparently inexpensive camera to buy starting in 1935. Mine is missing some parts but that doesn’t bother me!

I also have the Brownie Flash Six-20 with flash. I love this camera and it’s awesome light bulbs!

My mom even found these extra Sylviana soft white light bulbs and sent them along!

How neat is all the ‘stuff’ inside the bulbs?!

There is also this Baby Brownie, which blows my mind that this is how they used to take pictures!

Now I no longer have to worry about finding ‘just the right’ camera at the local flea markets, and instead of 1 vintage camera I now have 4 to display!