What is the oldest working piece of photographic equipment you have?

My sensor uses Mk I electrons that are an estimated 30 billion years old.

I also have a Zeiss Contaflex III that is about 50 years old and still in working condition. Cleaning the German marvel is a female doggy though.
My Zenit-E is rapidly approaching 30 years (if not past it) and also seems to be made for eternity (ignoring the selenium light meter that is). Cleaning the pinnacle of Communist Commerce is a lot easier though. Comparing the Zeiss with the Zenit almost reminds me of the Tiger tank vs the T80 - German complexity (it's still a marvel after all those years) vs Russian simplicity ("throw it in the mud and it will still work") - I still don't know which of the two I like more.

 

I have an old Pentax 300mm f/5.6 screw mount lens.

 

Well, my brain is about 38 years old....

Other than that everything I own is failr modern. I have but do not use a Canon Ftb that I used as a kid when I first got into photography.

 

My index finger is a bit older than that ....

 

It has to be the body of my Hasselblad kit that's now 38 years old, 11 years older than me :biggrin:

 

My right index !

:tongue:
J-P.

EDIT: Oooooops ! I haven't read Desmond's post when i put my answer !

 

A Kodak 620 folding camera. It does work I just don't have any 620 spools for it.

Ronnie

 

I collect good examples of old Canon cameras (see link in sig) and still try to use them occasionaly so the oldest I have is a Canon IVSB from about 1952 or 1953

Edit - After checking my own link in sig I see I forgot the Canon III that came in a big box with a load of lenses and accessories from that era. I think this is from about 1951 or 1952

 

I used to collect old cameras back in the late '70s of which I either sold, traded or just gave away. Now my oldest camera is a Minolta X-700 which I bought new back in '83.


MikeT

 

My Ciroflex TLR and my Yashikamat TLR are both pretty damn old. The Ciroflex had a work reciept in it from 1957 (last time used) and it worked pretty well the first time I put a roll through it.

 

My Canon AE1....or Weston Spotmeter..Probaly the Spot Meter

 

My Pentax MX from 1980, with a cloth horizontal plane shutter .... still works very well.

 

I have a Brownie Starflex from the late 50's that still *works* although the quality of it's work isn't so great. It's and old fixed focus *point and shoot* that I use for TtV shooting.

 

I unloaded my old Rolli TLR and other "semi-collectable" junk, so the oldest I have left is my first Nikon - a 1964 F body with 50mm f/2 lens. Back then the first two digits of the S/N was year of mfg.

-- Russ

 

No.1 Autographic Jr. - KODAK [120 format] ca. 1928. It was my mother's and after closing a few holes in the bellows last year, I put a roll of film through it. Despite the fact that it has only one lens element, the result was wickedly sharp.

My second experiment with a Voigtlander Prominent [?][620 format] of the same time period, which had belonged to my father, was a dismal failure. The 120 film spooled on to a 620 spool could not be held flat despite the cardboard strips I had put in the camera to guide the film. In principle though, the camera is in working condition. Doing the math, that makes them some 80 yrs old!

When 620 became unavailable in the early 1950s, the "old" Voigtlander was replaced by my father with a Vitessa L. w/Ultron f2/50.

By the way, yesterday I received a really neat looking Vitessa L bought at KEH. I had been searching for such a camera for several years.

 

Canon AT-1

Canon AT-1 with a Canon 50/1.8 lens on it ... The one I used when I was a kid :biggrin:

 

I have my original owner Leica M4 w/50mm Sumicron I purchased in 1970 - Let's see - that makes it 38 years old?

 

A Calumet CC-400 16" monorail view camera circa 1962. It is a great camera and gives me some really good results as well as questions on "How do you use one of those?"

God Bless,
David

 

Polaroid...but not what you think!

PDC 800 has two position lens (wide/normal), LCD monitor option (yes an option), VGA resolution (wow true 640x480), audio clip recording, and a half way decent built in flash.

Think this is a Ricoh RDC 2 rebadged and sold to real estate agents for taking pictures of properties. This was my first digital and although very low resolution have some pictures from it that are real treasures. Unfortunately, it is a proprietary JPEG format which was common on early digital cameras.