The Shelf
A brief history of how I've displayed my vintage camera collection
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When I was seven, my family moved across the country to a suburb of DC. We tried almost every tourist attraction around, and that is where I found an interest in history. We went to every historical park, including Williamsburg and Yorktown. We'd always save time by stopping at antique stores, so my mom could look at vintage glass and jewelry. When I was thirty, my mom wanted a new hobby and got a Canon camera. Very quickly, that camera became mine. It wasn't until I was 16, when my sister was touring college that I found an interest in vintage cameras. Every small college town had at least one antique store with a locked glass cabinet filled with photography equipment. I felt that old broken cameras would make for nice room decoration for a photographer. It quickly became much more than that.
The Start
A couple of months in and I started into collecting. I started to go out of my way to visit thrift and antique shows. I also started shooting a lot more films and getting a better understanding of the history of my collection.
Finally got a shelf
Already need two!
Wanted to display some negatives and transparencies so I built a light table into the shelf.
The collection keeps growing and the shelf has to keep up.
Smaller collections grew faster as I ran out of room for cameras and moved to eBay to find things that would never be in an antique store.
Starting fresh with new ideas to make it better!
I used YouTube and Home Depot to learn everything I needed to make an upgraded lightbox.
The most recent update is upgraded lights with color and that can be removed and fixed when needed.
