Brian Byrd's Photo Blog — Vintage Camera Collection

Without really consciously setting out to do so, I've now arrived at the point where I’m putting together a little camera collection. At the end of 2011 some pieces fell into place, and now I've got five cameras that I have some sort of sentimental attachment to.

On the left is a 1939 Kodak Special Six-16, very much like a camera that my grandfather used around that time. Next is a newly-acquired Pentax Spotmatic F, which, as you can read in Part 2 of My Photographic Journey, is the first SLR I owned, when I was 14 years old. Next to that is the very same black Olympus XA that I took on my trip to the U.K. and Belgium in 1986, as mentioned in Part 3 of My Photographic Journey. In front is a newly-acquired silver Minolta 16 II spy camera, like the one my uncle gave me while I was in junior high school, as mentioned Part 1 of My Photographic Journey.

Last, but not least, all the way on the right, is my grandfather’s old camera, a Miranda D from 1960, with an optional Tamron telephoto lens. You can see a picture of him holding this camera (with the same lens!) on the Web site I created to honor his memory and photographic skill: DavidKaukonen.com.

I guess that, for me, photography is not just something that I passionately enjoy in the present, but it is also very much part of who I have become over the past three or four decades. It involves sentimental childhood memories, and it even intertwines with the history of my ancestors. The art and science of photography means all this to me, and more!