Old Camera Advice

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DominicDominic Frets: 16010
edited October 2018 in Off Topic
I keep bumping into a tidy Cannon A1 SLR in my drawers.............it's sat there untouched since the late 80 's.
 It has a dusty patina but is in good order and simply has it's original 50mm lens....no case, box or spare lenses.
What is it worth ? , is there much of a market in the digital age for something like this ..........was a great camera in it's day but it's not exactly an old Hasselblad .
Anybody interested in buying it ?
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Comments

  • The older Cannons are a bit heavy to carry around I find. 


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  • FunkfingersFunkfingers Frets: 14321
    Dominic said:
    Canon A1 SLR ... original 50mm lens ... no case
    Might appeal to somebody with an existing collection of Canon FD-compatible lenses. 

    Adapters may exist that would make the 50mm lens compatible with a Canon digital camera back.
    Be seeing you.
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  • Have a look on eBay.  Prices seem to range between £40 - £150 depending on condition and how greedy you are.

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  • hywelghywelg Frets: 4302
    edited October 2018
    I got rid of my A1 + 50mm f1.4 a few years back. Not worth much at all. I have however keep my dads Bolex 3 lens Standard 8 cinema camera. It's a beautiful piece of German engineering, even though I'll never use it. 
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  • mattdavismattdavis Frets: 840
    I doubt it’s worth a lot but there is a steady core of film SLR fans who still love these old cameras. I was looking at AE1s and Pentax k1000 a while ago and there are quite a few on eBay. Should get a good idea of price on there. 
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  • RiftAmpsRiftAmps Frets: 3113
    tFB Trader
    Stick a roll of Ilford HP5/ in it and go out shooting for an afternoon, especially this time of year. You might find you enjoy using it again. I have an AV-1 that I use occasionally when I need a photographic reset.
    *I no longer offer replacement speaker baffles*
    Rift Amplification
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    edited October 2018
    There’s still a market for 35mm cameras, you just have to know where to sell. You could join the Talkphotography forum for instance and sell there, although you’ll have to jump through several hoops to get classifieds access.

    The main problem will be condition: if someone wants to actually use it rather than having it as a shelf ornament, it needs to be clean and in good working order : the lens needs to be clear with no scratches or fungus on the glass, the shutter needs to work accurately at all speeds, the metering needs to be spot on and it needs to be light-tight or the film will get fogged. The foam seals round the edge of the film door perish and crumble with age. You can buy replacement seal kits, which are about £10-12 and it’s a reasonably straightforward job to install them, but it is quite fiddly as you’re dealing with 1mm strips of foam. 

    Even after all that, it still won’t be massively valuable. I sold a Canon AE-1 recently. It was immaculate, the lens was clean as a whistle and I’d put in a new battery and a set of light seals (about £15-worth all told). I got £60 for it, including about £10 for p&p. 
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  • JezWyndJezWynd Frets: 6021
    hywelg said:
    I got rid of my A1 + 50mm f1.4 a few years back. Not worth much at all. I have however keep my dads Bole 3 lens Standard 8 cinema camera. It's a beautiful piece of German engineering, even though I'll never use it. 
    Fabulous cameras. My first foray into movie making was using standard 8. So much more flexible than super as you can run the film through the camera for dual exposure/layering. Kind of hit and miss but the joy you experience when it all comes together briefly...

    As @boogieman says, condition is the thing; lens fungus and seals are the most common problems but once addressed you have an excellent bit of kit that could work for years. I found a really clean Pentax ME that just required new seals to get it fully operational again.
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  • Winny_PoohWinny_Pooh Frets: 7731
    edited October 2018
    I'd flog it. Too much hassle and a fixed 50mm lens is nowhere as useful as a 35mm IMO. They are worth relatively little too.
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  • They're worth more than they were 5 years ago, when I got an fl19mm lens for a tenner (sold a couple of years back for 350 quid) and an ae-1p with a tamron adaptall 35-210mm zoom lens (an oddity  and good quality 80s zoom with a bit of a following) for twenty quid. My ae-1 is probably worth about 50 now despite having the squeaky "Canon cough".

    My suggestion? Use it. Film is having a continued revival, and I have a stock of about 50 rolls of agfa 200 speed negative from pound land. You might find it's quite fun, and that 50mm 1.8 lens is good. 

    If you're not using it, and you're not much of a photographer, have someone who is check it out for things like fungus, oil spots, slow aperture blades, helicoid issues, slow shutter timings (cloth shutters can get a bit tired) then you can say this in the listing (which will get much higher money for you!).

    Nice little camera though. I use an ae-1p to this day (was out shooting yesterday with it) with a 24mm f/2.5 adaptall lens and it's fantastic. One day I'll have it serviced to fix the shutter squeak.
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    The film stock might be cheap but printing and developing is getting quite expensive. A quick google says developing a 24 shot film with a set of 6x4s is getting on for £8 and that’s a high street turn’em round quick place, not a high end lab. I do like the quality of some film shots but the price and inconvenience has killed it for me... digital all the way. 
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  • boogieman said:
    The film stock might be cheap but printing and developing is getting quite expensive. A quick google says developing a 24 shot film with a set of 6x4s is getting on for £8 and that’s a high street turn’em round quick place, not a high end lab. I do like the quality of some film shots but the price and inconvenience has killed it for me... digital all the way. 

    Me too, to be honest. I still shoot film, but not nearly as often. however, if you really enjoy it, spending £1000 on medium format gear, film and development will probably get you something quite different than spending 1k on a camera and lens.

    But yes, digital is convenient and if you're not experienced, much easier to learn on. 
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    boogieman said:
    The film stock might be cheap but printing and developing is getting quite expensive. A quick google says developing a 24 shot film with a set of 6x4s is getting on for £8 and that’s a high street turn’em round quick place, not a high end lab. I do like the quality of some film shots but the price and inconvenience has killed it for me... digital all the way. 

    Me too, to be honest. I still shoot film, but not nearly as often. however, if you really enjoy it, spending £1000 on medium format gear, film and development will probably get you something quite different than spending 1k on a camera and lens.

    But yes, digital is convenient and if you're not experienced, much easier to learn on. 
    Yup, it definitely does give a different look. PP software can get you close but you can still spot the difference. One of mate’s sons did a degree course in photography and they used nothing but medium format film gear and developed and printed their photos in-house. Makes you weep when you see how relatively cheap film stuff is, especially compared to the cost of it new. Now he’s out of college he’s switched to digital for the majority of his work, unless it’s a really special project or he’s submitting work for an exhibition. The cost of large format high quality prints is pretty eye watering. 


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  • DominicDominic Frets: 16010
    Thanks all for the tips
    I don't do photography - 20 shots a year on a mobile phone at most
    Can't be bothered with all the checking out palaver ..........first £75 gets it
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  • Dominic said:
    Thanks all for the tips
    I don't do photography - 20 shots a year on a mobile phone at most
    Can't be bothered with all the checking out palaver ..........first £75 gets it

    Without checking it out at all you'll find it quite difficult to sell I imagine - people want to know the shutter speeds are accurate, the film winder correctly winds with no skipping, the lens has no fungus etc 
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  • 57Deluxe57Deluxe Frets: 7329
    here's some old camera advice: Keep your fingers away from the lens when shooting.
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