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| Nguyen Ngoc Long, collector of over 1,500 old film cameras - Photo: My Tran |
Nguyen Ngoc Long loved taking photos when he was a kid but now he is obsessed with old film cameras.
He owns a treasure chest with more than 1,500 cameras which took him 16 years to collect.
His house in HCMC’s District 11 looks like a mini museum of old film cameras collected from all over the world with brand names such as Canon, Nikon, Contax, Olympus, Leica, Rolleiflex, Carl Zeiss, Zenit and Compur.
“I buy them from everywhere, whether I go to vendors, old camera shops or studios when I go around the city or travel around the country,” said Long, who even rummages in antique markets and border gate markets. He added that he also asks old people in the city, workers in museums or antiques markets to save them for him.
To have more diverse types, brands and models, he also asks relatives and friends who live abroad to bring him cameras from the U.S, Japan, German and Cambodia. Long insists the cameras don’t need to be new or usable, he just needs film cameras which are not broken or have lost components. Of course, most of his collections can be used.
Some of his cameras are over 100 years old, such as the Korona Victor produced in the U.S. in 1891 and Regina produced in Germany in 1914, a camera made of carton paper made in 1912, an Agus made with a plastic body was made in 1925 or a Zeiss Ikon made in the 1920s.
“My first camera was an Olympus which my parents bought for me with their savings of about one tael of gold, so since then, I have preferred Olympus cameras to other names as it recalls my parents’ love and first days when I was able to own a camera,” said Long. Now he has over 300 Olympus models.
Long arranges them into glass cases with a warm-light system and anti-dust device. “There are too many to display on the glass case so I have to cover some with plastic bags and put them in carton boxes,” Long added. He also has large volumes of lenses accompanied with cameras.
Can you really put a price on antiques? Well Long is not sure. He said: “Some of my cameras are only worth a few hundred thousand dong, but some are priced at over US$1,000.”
Long admits that if he sees a camera and can’t buy it that day he cannot sleep. That is why Long even exchanged his Galaxy Tab to get an old camera. “Sometimes if I can’t afford to buy a camera, I borrow money from my friends,” said Long.
He added that after the appearance of digital cameras, people flock to change into digital ones due to its convenience and modern technology, but he still prefers film cameras as he likes the fluttering feeling of shooting, of waiting for filming and looking at the photos. Long admitted that this is the ideal time to collect film cameras.
Now, the pleasure of taking photos with film cameras is popular with the younger generations and thus, old film cameras are becoming more expensive. Long said: “I will collect until I die or run out of money.”
