Antique Cameras: Zeiss Ikon Super

Series Summary

Photography is an art of making pictures by exposing film or another medium to a timed flash of light. The basic equipment used for photography includes a camera equipped with a flash and film. Mastering the art of photography is a technically challenging experience. One has to learn how to focus the lens, control the aperture of the lens, filter the light, the importance of the focal length and the duration of the exposure among other things. While most digital cameras take care of these adjustments automatically these days, experienced photographers pride themselves in their ability to adjust these settings manually on film cameras, just like the old days when the cameras in these videos ruled the world of photography. In this series of free camera collecting videos, you will learn about vintage cameras, how they were made as well as how to use them. The medium format Zeiss Ikon Super still takes incredible pictures. And Polaroid cameras are still real crowd pleasers, with their folding design and instant photos.

Video Transcript

"What I'm going to talk about right now is a couple of my favorite vintage or antique cameras. Now I am very into as much as I'm into toy cameras I am very into vintage cameras. Just because I feel that they have a look that modern day cameras really still can't capture and a lot of my particular personal work. I like to make work where people or someone looking at that photograph might not even know it was even taken in today, might not know it was taken in 2008. They might think oh that sure looks like it was taken twenty years ago. Yet people are wearing clothes from today. How did you do that or what made you do that? And there's a couple of factors in that. One is essentially how you see things and the other is what kind of equipment you use. And part of my arsenal so to speak to make images look sort of nostalgic is using antique cameras. Now this is probably one of my, this is one of my favorite cameras. This is a Zeiss Ikon Super. It shoots medium format film and it makes square six by six images."