Old School Camera Equipment Finds

I've been out of the camera/photography end of my blog topics for a while now, but I recently jump back into it in a big way! Along with the misc digital camera items that I buy and use, I've also been accumulating a sort of "ad hoc" collection of old photographic equipment. This stuff has ranged variously from rather ancient selenium light meters all the way to "user-grade" film cameras. I won't say SLR (although the vast majority have been 35mm cameras of the that type). There have been the occasional 35mm "rangefinders", vintage flash units and even some old little 16mm ultra-compact "spy cameras". However, the majority of my energies have been put into acquiring Tamron Adaptall lens. Why those you ask?

The Adaptall-ness of them of course!  Yes, some of it has to do with the fact that they are very fine lenses and in some cases (particularly the zooms), stack up quite nicely against the far more expensive OEM brands such Nikon, Canon, Minolta etc. However, it's really their unique Adaptall/Adaptall-2 system which allows these lenses to be used on a wide range of cameras made by a variety of manufacturers. .....And since my collection includes (among others); a Minolta XE-7, a Konica TC, and a Contax 139, I'd like to have one set of lenses that I can use with everything. The Adaptall lenses allow me to do this.

 

I had already found a couple of the Adaptall-2 lenses (the 28-50mm, 70-150mm) that I've been very happy with; then a couple of weeks ago; this happened.....

 

These 3 lenses (along with a Soligor 28mm/f2.8 in M42 threadmount) appeared on the Goodwill Industries auction site listed as a "untested" package. So $20 later with $10 of it as shipping, I more than doubled my Adaptall-2 inventory without even duplicating any of the lenses that I already had! The top one 35-135mm/f3.5-4.2 CF zoom, the bottom one an 80-210mm/f3.8 CF zoom, and the capper in the middle..... 60-300mm/f3.8-5.6 zoom from the SP (Super Performance) line! They all work fine and came to $5 per lens including the Soligor and a whopping $$6.67 per if we just count these Tamrons. Wow! Granted, one came with an Olympus OM mount and two came with Canon FD mounts, so I'll have to buy some more Minolta, Contax mounts if I don't want to switch out, but that's fairly inconsequential considering.

 

 While I was on a roll this week, I also scored a Vivitar 285 flash from a local charity resale store for $5...... no, you did not mis-read that. It was $5.... well, actually $4.99, but who's counting that penny anyway! When I got it home, put new batteries in it to check for function, I also pulled out the voltage meter to check out the trigger voltage. These can range from 6v all the way up to 300v+ which will kill modern digital cameras; my unit came in at 6v! Score again!!! I'd say it was a pretty good photographic equipment week.