Between the 1940s and 1970s, a number of camera manufacturers designed lenses employing thoriated glass in one or more elements. Incorporating as much as 40% thorium dioxide (ThO2) in the glass mixture increases the index of refraction of the glass while maintaining low dispersion. Thoriated glass elements allowed lenses to deliver low levels of aberration and distortion with relatively simple and easy to manufacture designs.
The Carl Zeiss Kipronar 120mm f/1.9 is a vintage cinema projector lens that was designed to beam images rather than capture photos, but you can mount it to modern cameras using adapters. Photographer Mathieu Stern created a homemade adapter after buying the lens for $70 and has been delighted by the "insane swirly bokeh" that the lens produces.
David Silver is a San Francisco-based camera collector who began collecting vintage cameras as a young man, eventually amassing over 2,300 of them. He has since developed a focus and whittled his collection down to a little over 200 of them. Here's a 5-minute video by Gizmodo that profiles Silver.
How does a 140-year-old lens perform on a modern $15,000 cinema camera? Photographer and filmmaker Mathieu Stern wanted to find out, so he paired his ancient (by photography standards) lens with a 5K RED camera to see what would result.
A Japanese "machine gun" camera has popped on eBay. The camera, which was used in war-time during the World War II era, can be yours for a price of $4,499.
Camera companies usually limit their repair services to newer camera and lens models that have plenty of replacement parts in stock, but Nikon is doing something different over in Japan: for a limited time, the company is offering to service your vintage, discontinued manual focus cameras and lenses.
Vintage lenses seem to be increasingly popular nowadays, and not just in the hipster crowds. In this 5-minute video, photographer Mark Holtze looks at why some people are picking up (and dusting off) old vintage lenses instead of their more modern equivalents.
Photographer Mathieu Stern has been doing shootout comparisons showing how the same models look when captured through different vintage lenses. For this 5.5-minute video, Stern used the Konika Hexanon 28mm f/3.5, the Minolta 100mm f/2.5, and the Industar 50mm f/3.5.
Rob Gibson is a tintype photographer who works in what he calls "the world's fastest darkroom." After photographing vintage motorcycle and car events, he develops his tintypes in a 1938 Harley-Davidson sidecar that he zooms around with.
Back in March 1843, the sixth US president (serving from 1825–1829), John Quincy Adams, sat for a portrait photo in a Washington studio. Fast forward to the modern day, and the photo is now the oldest surviving photo of a U.S. president. It's going to auction and carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.
Photographer Mathieu Stern recently put 3 vintage lenses to the test in a portrait shootout at 4 different locations. The 5-minute video above compares the Soligor 21mm f/3.8, Canon FD S.S.C. 50mm f/1.4, and Helios 103 53mm f/1.8 with a tilt adapter.
For those in North America, the solar eclipse on August 21st, 2017, could be the most photographed, viewed, and observed eclipse of all time. But back in 1851, cameras were in short supply, and that was the year the very first photograph was taken of a solar eclipse.
A pair of photographers with ties to German lens maker Meyer Optik want to bring the 107-year-old Emil Busch 97mm portrait lens back to life with their Kickstarter project.
Photographer Joey Ready wanted to take his Super 8 film camera into the water to snap some clips of surfers. There aren't any underwater housings designed for his old Canon camera, so he fashioned his own. The video above is what resulted.
Love photography? Love horror films? Maybe this one is for you: Polaroid is a new film -- the kind you watch, not the kind you load into a camera -- coming out this year that combines voodoo, demons, and photography into one terrifying movie.
It's always fascinating when comparisons are made between modern day cities and their days gone by. In this split-screen comparison by The New Yorker, footage from the 1930s in New York has been recreated to reflect the modern day reality.
Need your vintage camera gear fix? This video ought to do it.
Lensbaby's creative selective focus lenses like the Composer Pro will run you around $400; even the relatively affordable Spark costs $90. If all of that sounds too expensive for your taste, you should definitely check out this hacked version Mathieu Stern created for just 30 bucks!
Last fall, in preparation for a fair for my wedding photography business in Helsinki, I wanted to create something out-of-the-ordinary that would attract attention to my booth. A friend of mine suggested a type of vintage camera that visitors could look through.
Vintage camera with a mini slideshow inside? Sounds like a plan!
Jollylook is a new vintage-style folding camera for shooting Fuji Instax Mini instant film. It's also the first camera of its kind to be made of cardboard and recycled paper.
Those who have known me long enough are aware of my passion for Rolleiflex cameras. Back before I got deeper and deeper into alternative photography I used to shoot my TLRs all the time.
Back in 1984, Minolta launched a camera called the Minolta AF-S V. Marketed in the United States as the "Minolta Talker," the camera would actually speak to the photographer using it.
Light meters aren't nearly as popular these days as they once were, but even if you have one in your bag, it's probably nothing like what you're about to see here. The meter in this video by YouTuber Mind Splurge is a vintage 'Walz Coronet' mechanical light meter, and it's dripping with hipster allure.
One of the most amazing camera shops in all of the world is London's Grays of Westminster. The place is absolutely iconic—it has its own coat of arms for crying out loud! It also houses one of the most incredible collections of rare Nikon gear in the world. Now you get to see it up close.
Here's a camera that provides smooth results... on your taste buds. Over in the UK, the chocolate shop The Amazing Chocolate Workshop is selling a vintage Nikon SLR camera created entirely of luxury Italian chocolate.
Cokin's new Riviera Classic tripod is a long time coming. It was only a matter of time before the "retro" craze hit the tripod market, leading to the Riviera Classic's tagline: "A modern tripod for retro cameras... and visa versa."
Several years ago, I bought an old Soviet camera that I found in a London flea market. It cost me £4, so every time I put a roll of film in the camera, it multiplies its cost.
Check out this tin that's designed to look like the vintage Leica M3 35mm rangefinder camera. From a distance it may be mistaken for the real thing, but the storage tin simply has the design printed flat on the surface.
The Tessina is a vintage Swiss camera that was created by an Austraian chemical engineer named Rudolph Steineck and introduced in 1957 in Switzerland. What's neat about the camera was that one of the accessories was a special wrist bracket that allowed you to wear the camera on your wrist like a watch.
It's easy to forgot how easy we have it shooting digital in 2016, because when digital cameras first started picking up steam they were not easy to use. How difficult were they? Watch as Jared Polin of Fro Knows Photo takes the 15-year-old Nikon D1X out for a modern day on-location portrait shoot.
Here's an amazing find: the George Eastman Museum has announced that it has acquired two unopened boxes of 1880s Kodak film.
The Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube has amassed over 1 million subscribers by sharing videos of various objects getting crushed by a powerful hydraulic press. For its latest video, the channel decided to crush some vintage Canon and Nikon SLR camera gear.
In the 1970s and 1980s, photographers on a budget had help from an unlikely corner. While the West may have faced occasionally tense stand-offs against the Eastern Bloc, two of the Communist world’s biggest camera makers made millions of cameras that helped amateur shutterbugs get on the first rung of proper picture-taking.
A rare Nikon 1200mm f/11 lens recently appeared on eBay. The earliest Nikon non-refractive long lenses were the Nikkor-Q 400mm f/4.5, Nikkor-P 600mm f/5.6, Nikkor-P 800mm f/8, and Nikkor-P 1200mm f/11. All of them were on the market around 1964 and withdrawn in the mid-1970. These lenses are actually lens heads and require a focus unit to be functional.
About a year ago, Levi Bettwieser of the Rescued Film Project won about 20 auctions for the undeveloped work of a 1950s photographer. What he received was 66 bundles of film containing a staggering 1,200 unprocessed rolls.
Photo projects usually are planned, researched and given approval to. This one just kind of fell into my lap after a single day of shooting on a bunch of expired film on a whim at the Daytona 500.
Colorizing retoucher Jordan J. Lloyd of Dynamichrome took vintage photographs of global landmarks under construction and added color to them to give us a different look at history.
Here's an amazing short film titled "The Old New World" by photographer and animator Alexey Zakharov of Moscow, Russia. Zakharov found old photos of US cities from the early 1900s and brought them to life.
My name is Dewey, and I work at a newspaper in Texas. Our building is from the early 1950s, and recently I discovered a camera graveyard in our basement.
Here's a short 2.5-minute video in which photographer Mathieu Stern reviews the Lomo T43 40mm f/4, a cheap $5 manual Russian lens that has surprisingly good image quality (given its cost).