Cameras
April 3rd, 2017
Cameras
The Camera
From its humble beginnings of the Pin Hole Camera to the modern day Digital Full Format Cameras, they have recorded images and memories for millions of people.
From the first snap of your child’s first moments to the iconic images, from the lenses of professionals, they have instilled every emotion known to man.
Some of the most amazing photographs from wars and atrocities to the births of future kings have been taken by professional photographers with their favourite cameras.
The Leica camera was the mainstay utensil used by most of these great people with vision and the luck of timing in the 1930’s and 1940’s the Leica III camera in the hands of these artists of photography have ‘snapped’ amazing images from the D-Day landings to the Nagasaki Nuclear Bombings were taken with these fabulous instruments.
The Leica III was the first usable camera with a range finder, 35mm enclosed film (for quick change) and interchangeable lenses to bring the distant to the fore and the near into sharpness and definition.
For this reason cameras and lenses like these will adorn any camera buffs collection, accessories and lenses also.
We recently sold a Leica IIIa camera, which alone had a moderate value of £200/250, which with a very rare lens with a very small aperture size forced the auction price to £4500. A fabulous example of accessories, all but very rare, having greater value then the main item.
It isn’t just Leica cameras and lenses that have high values at auction. We have also had great results with Hassleblad, Bromica as well as modern and more well-known names in the photographic field like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Mamiya to mention just a few.
We assess and research any item of photographic equipment from individual cameras to large collections, from older film cameras to modern digital cameras.
We have in recent years sold large collections of older photographic and cinematic equipment and even though there wasn’t much value in individual items the collection still made over £3000. The same can be said for the more modern, one collection of film and digital SLR cameras, lenses, flashes, tripods and other accessories made £10,000, although the camera in most instances have some sort of value at auction invariably the lenses and accessories will carry a greater value as I mentioned earlier with the Leica lens, and similar for modern lenses.
A small collection of photographic equipment that came to us from one of our house clearances, the Canon Digital camera from the collection with its stock lens made a reasonable price of £120, but the rest of the lenses made the fantastic amount of £3,600. Notably one telephoto lens made over £2,500 alone, so It always pays to accessorize.
So let’s all have a route around in our attics, garages and sheds, they might be hiding enough money to take you and your family away on a lovely holiday or it might just buy you a nice meal. You never know until you bring it along to our valuation days for us to take a look at.
Please call or come along to The Lichfield Auction Centre, Wood End Lane, Fradley Park, WS13 8NF, for a Free Valuation Every Tuesday 9.30am – 4.00pm
Entries are now being invited for the forthcoming sale Wednesday 29th June, Closing entries Tuesday 6th June.