A 70th birthday gift for my dad.

gad-westy

gad-westy

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After some ideas if anybody has any brain waves.

My father will turn 70 this summer and I'd like to get him a special gift.

He's a big photography nerd and has a nice collection of film cameras, some of which still get used.

I'd love to buy him a camera that he probably wouldn't justify buying for himself and then have it engraved with something personal.

The tricky part to this is finding a camera that is special enough, metal bodied for engraving, that he doesn't already have and is vaguely affordable.

To give you a little background, he's a big fan of Olympus OM stuff but also has a bit of medium format stuff, mainly mamiya. He has some large format kit too and some interesting 35mm compacts.

I suspect whatever I buy it's more likely to be displayed than used but it would certainly be preferable to buy something that is fully working, with a lens and in mint condition.

Budget is probably about £500. To show you the sort of things I'm thinking about here are some current ideas

Olympus OM3 (seem to be too expensive nowadays). Not sure the other OM's would be special enough.
Leica M (I know b****r all about these and I'd probably want a lens, so I guess too expensive?)
Voigtlander Bessa T/R - not sure on the different models
Olympus 35 SP
Intrepid large format camera
 
You could pick up an early thread mount Leica and lens for that money, something like this, boxed with matching serial numbers.

https://www.mwclassic.com/product/l...-marked-with-the-camera-lens-serials-numbers/

It's boxed so makes it easier to wrap :D It's metal bodied so easy to engrave and its a classic camera.

Not suggesting you necessarily go to MW Classic, I know some folk have had a poor experience but it's more for illustration than anything else.
 
The new I intrepid black version which has now gone mainstream after initially being planned as a Ltd edition is a nice little number,very modern and probably very different in materials and some controls to the LF kit that your father presently posses.... the price easily falls within your budget, even with a chheapish symmar s 150mm lens, would still remain about the 500 quid mark.

Definitely worth considering imo
 
Voigtlander Bessamatic.....just a beautiful camera, solid metal, plenty of room for engraving, great choice of gorgeous lenses and has the most brilliant shutter sound of any camera ever. Plus if you have a good look around you can get some minty ones for a lot less than £500 so money saved to spend on the party (y):giggle:
 
Really appreciate all of these replies. I love every idea so far. Not sure I can pick a favourite but it's nice to be spoilt for choice. That leica certainly looks nice I didn't even know the Olympus M1 existed!
 
Why not mix it up a bit and buy him a digital compact ;)
 
gad-westy said:
Really appreciate all of these replies. I love every idea so far. Not sure I can pick a favourite but it's nice to be spoilt for choice. That leica certainly looks nice I didn't even know the Olympus M1 existed!
Click to expand...
Screwmount Leicas are really nice, but you have to be careful if you want to get a fully working camera. Quite a lot of them have dim rangefinders, sticky shutters or other issues after 60-90 years! These things can all be fixed with a service, but that adds to the cost and the expert repairers tend to have long turnaround times. A II, III, IIIa IIIc or IIIf (etc.) plus lens should be in budget, a IIIg with lens probably a bit over.

I haven't shopped with mwclassic.com, but (as above) I see they have some less than stellar reviews on trustpilot. A few shops I have used that stock vintage Leica:

http://www.peterloy.com
https://apertureleica.com
http://www.richardcaplan.co.uk
https://www.reddotcameras.co.uk
https://www.harrisoncameras.co.uk
https://www.ffordes.com
https://theclassiccamera.com
https://www.cameraworld.co.uk
https://www.lcegroup.co.uk

Peter Loy's descriptions are particularly good, and he has very fair prices. Some of these dealers including Aperture and Peter Loy sometimes sell recently serviced cameras, which will be indicated in the description. It looks like Red Dot's mail order service is closed during the lockdown.

You might even be able to find a IIIc or a IIIf from the year of your Dad's birth:

https://www.cameraquest.com/ltmnum.htm

The same site has a lot more information on screwmount Leicas and other vintage cameras:

https://www.cameraquest.com/classics.htm

See also:

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~yue/misc/LeicaLTM.html
https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/leica.htm

Instructions:

https://www.cameramanuals.org/leica_pdf/leica_if_iif_iiif.pdf
(one quirk of these cameras is you need to trim the film leader to the shape in the manual to avoid jamming).

There are fakes (converted from old Soviet Leica copies with counterfeit engravings) but they are easy to spot and legitimate dealers won't sell you one:

http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-213.html
 
Last edited:
Retune said:
Screwmount Leicas are really nice, but you have to be careful if you want to get a fully working camera. Quite a lot of them have dim rangefinders, sticky shutters or other issues after 60-90 years! These things can all be fixed with a service, but that adds to the cost and the expert repairers tend to have long turnaround times. A II, III, IIIa IIIc or IIIf (etc.) plus lens should be in budget, a IIIg with lens probably a bit over.

I haven't shopped with mwclassic.com, but (as above) I see they have some less than stellar reviews on trustpilot. A few shops I have used that stock vintage Leica:

http://www.peterloy.com
https://apertureleica.com
http://www.richardcaplan.co.uk
https://www.reddotcameras.co.uk
https://www.harrisoncameras.co.uk
https://www.ffordes.com
https://theclassiccamera.com
https://www.cameraworld.co.uk
https://www.lcegroup.co.uk

Peter Loy's descriptions are particularly good, and he has very fair prices. Some of these dealers including Aperture and Peter Loy sometimes sell recently serviced cameras, which will be indicated in the description. It looks like Red Dot's mail order service is closed during the lockdown.

You might even be able to find a IIIc or a IIIf from the year of your Dad's birth:

https://www.cameraquest.com/ltmnum.htm

The same site has a lot more information on screwmount Leicas and other vintage cameras:

https://www.cameraquest.com/classics.htm

See also:

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~yue/misc/LeicaLTM.html
https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/leica.htm

Instructions:

https://www.cameramanuals.org/leica_pdf/leica_if_iif_iiif.pdf
(one quirk of these cameras is you need to trim the film leader to the shape in the manual to avoid jamming).

There are fakes (converted from old Soviet Leica copies with counterfeit engravings) but they are easy to spot and legitimate dealers won't sell you one:

http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-213.html
Click to expand...

So grateful for this. Absolutely fantastic. Why did I not think of getting a camera from his birth year?!! So simple. Peter Loy has a IIIc that with 50mm lens that could well fit the bill. It's stated as c.1949 but serial number would suggest 1950 which is what I would need. Could be the one....
 
F1.2 said:
Why not mix it up a bit and buy him a digital compact ;)
Click to expand...

Well funnily enough I did consider a Fuji X100(x). He's always liked mine when I've owned them but nice as they're I don't think they're quite as timeless as I'd like.
 
A Rollei TLR would make a very nice gift. With that budget you could find something like a Rolleiflex 3.5E or a lesser model in absolutely mint condition. They're all fantastic useable cameras, but also lovely things to own and admire on a shelf.
 
Also a posh pinhole as another potential idea. Zero Image offer a hand engraving service (although I suspect you'd need to order from Hong Kong)

http://www.zeroimage.com/

Parallax and Process supplies are the UK distributors. There's even a large format one in the classifieds here.
 
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