Somebody's Trash is Someone Else's Treasure: Analogue Cameras Retrieved from the Dumpster

Listening to Garbage’s album “Not Your Kind of People” and thinking about the meaning of their name (garbage is trash, but the band sounds great) I got myself remembering how many times someone threw away a camera (or any analogue device) believing it was trash at the same time that, for us, it’s a treasure! Definitely, they are not our kind of people!

Countless times I got surprised by how some people neglect our analogue treasures. Simple devices that once were largely used and caused great joy are now treated as trash and waste. If by one side this is sad, since most people don’t care about them, by the other, this can be a great opportunity to put your hands on little analogue treasures from the past, that on the right hands will get the treatment they deserve and go back to their glory from the past!

I have myself some stories of this kind.

Because it’s a sin to let cameras gather dust in some dark and sad place, it’s worth to remember the stories of some of them, that got out of someone’s negligence into the hands of someone who likes to use old cameras full of stories to tell!

I found this one at an antiques fair in São José dos Campos – SP. The seller couldn’t imagine that was a Soviet camera and that there were many people who still look for them. The lens was exchanged with another Smena, but it was very stylish, all made in black bakelite. A true archaeological discovery!

Definitely, it must have been thrown away by a heartless grandson who treated it worse than trash, leaving it in a dirty and abandoned place. Actually who found it was my cousin. He called me telling that he had a very old and rusty analogue camera and he had no idea if it would work. He gave it to me and I found out it worked perfectly. I had many films shot with it. Gorgeous.

This came straight from the USSR through mail, it took aaaages to arrive and I did find out that the photometer wasn’t working. Getting something like that fixed is complicated, but at least it worked well on manual mode, plus the name is in Cyrillic, the smell of grease, and its Soviet aura conquers everyone. At least it wasn’t thrown away when the photometer stopped working. Today it can still be shooting and making someone happy.

Do you have some rescue story to tell too?

written by dux_x on 2012-06-01 #lifestyle #russian #agfa #vilia #belomo #smena #trash #cameras #antiques #rescue #clack #agfa-clack #smena-8 #past #belomo-vilia #treasure #colection #recovered