{"id":40525,"date":"2025-11-28T14:07:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T19:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=40525"},"modified":"2025-11-28T14:07:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T19:07:55","slug":"estate-find-xlviii-iil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/11\/estate-find-xlviii-iil\/","title":{"rendered":"Estate Find XLVIII (IIL)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sure, fine<\/em>, this isn’t really in the spirit of the Estate Find posts, it doesn’t count much as a ‘find’ if I actively searched for it, and certainly wasn’t found here<\/em> (“Oh, look what I just found in the mailbox!”) but need I remind you that it’s my<\/em> blog that only I<\/em> read anyway? Okay then.<\/p>\n

\"original
But yes, I finally obtained something that I have been after for quite some time now, purely for personal nonsense reasons:<\/strong> my first 35mm camera, which was purchased at a yard sale something like 36 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Wittnauer
Well, it’s certainly not the same<\/em> camera, and in point of fact, not even the same model – this is a Wittnauer Professional and I had a Wittnauer Challenger, which I cannot even find photos of. Yet it’s nearly identical:<\/strong> the Professional had\/has an unlinked light meter, that larger lens up top with the honeycomb pattern, and the lens\/shutter assembly was slightly different in format, but otherwise they were exactly the same. This one is in excellent condition (if you ignore the case<\/a>,) considering that it’s older than I am, manufactured between 1957 and 1960 according to CameraWiki<\/a> – I certainly don’t gleam as much.<\/p>\n

Wittnauer is actually a watch company, and though they branched out into cameras for a few decades, all of them I believe were built instead by Braun and simply rebadged – some of them appeared as Braun models at the same time. There was nothing remarkable about this camera;<\/strong> not a bad lens, but a terrible rangefinder that made focusing tricky (not even a split-image microprism,) and of course no bells or whistles otherwise. Flash units had to be linked through a PC cord. Other lenses, motor drives, and anything else were simply unavailable. A tourist camera, nothing more.<\/p>\n

Yet, a goddamn solid and precision-feeling body for all that, much more substantial than many cameras then or now, and I never had any issues with it, save for the very first use when I failed to ensure that the film leader was engaged properly and shot a whole lot of what would have been very cool photos, had I actually shot them – none of them would have been crap, I was that studious about photography even then. But the film stayed in the can the whole time, and so the goofing around with double-exposures with my cousins was never recorded for posterity.<\/p>\n

Now, this was not my first<\/em> camera – that was some old plastic no-control thing, again from a garage sale;<\/strong> I think it might actually have been an Imperial 127 Reflex<\/a>, but bear in mind, this was a half-century ago when I<\/em> obtained it, and I might have run two rolls through it, though I did indeed experiment with a double-exposure even then. While that linked site gave it a three star “Noteworthy” rating, they’re judging it on its Art Deco aesthetics, since the camera was indubitably a piece of shit.<\/p>\n

Shortly after moving to North Carolina in 1990, I obtained a true SLR camera and thus began my journey into serious photography while the Wittnauer was packed away, to be lost in a storage unit perhaps a decade later. So this new purchase was strictly for nostalgic purposes, and I doubt I’ll run any film through it, but who knows? And while I know that nostalgia<\/a> is a pretty wish-washy reason to do anything, I didn’t pay very much for this at all, well within my stingy budget for it, and I’m pleased to actually be handling it again. Even if it’s not actually “it” – I won’t tell if you won’t.<\/p>\n

And yes, you can see examples of my tenure with it:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Odd memories, part 25<\/a><\/p>\n

Visibly different, part 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Visibly different, part 30<\/a><\/p>\n

Tripod holes 24<\/a><\/p>\n

Tripod holes 35<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sure, fine, this isn’t really in the spirit of the Estate Find posts, it doesn’t count much as a ‘find’ if I actively searched for it, and certainly wasn’t found here (“Oh, look what I just found in the mailbox!”) but need I remind you that it’s my blog that only I read anyway? Okay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[6416,8398,8397],"class_list":["post-40525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo","category-random","tag-nostalgia","tag-rangefinder","tag-wittnauer-professional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}