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My camera collection

Welcome to this website about my camera collection

The first camera in this collection was a decorative wooden camera of an early deceased uncle, that I got from his widow and that has been an ornamental object in our living room for many years. A picture of this camera you see at the top right of this page. My father in law has encouraged me to a further extension: from him I got a couple of camera's that he had used himself en together with a small collection of Dinky Toys, these ended in a show case. I myself could add a simple Kodak box to it, with which I did make my very first pictures. Visitors, who saw my small collection, loved these camera's and some of them came with old camera's from their own, which they didn't use anyhow. In this way my collection was growing and my Dinky Toys gradually disappeared to elsewhere.
In a local newspaper I once red that a fair of old camera's and other "photographica" was going to be held nearby and when I came there, I was amazed about the enormous rush of people; I had not expected that there were so many collectors of old camera's and other photographic stuff. On that fair I could not stand the temptation to buy some wooden camera's that would be very decorative in my show case; I din't have any knowledge about what I was realy buying. These purchases were indeed a succes and the gifts of family, friends and acquaintances kept on coming, making it necessary to get a second show case and even a third one later on. I continued to purchased some more camera's on camera fairs, but not in large quantities. In my collection there are also a couple of Polaroid camera's, which I got during the period of my employment with Polaroid in the Netherlands.
In July 2004 a large extention was added via the take-over of a collection of 26 camera's and some accessories from a camera collector in The Hague, who had quit with this hobby. On this site I give a complete overview of all camera's and accessories which I have collected over the years. In this collection I did not limit myself to a specific theme; I collect anything in the field of traditional photography and I strive after an overview of an era, that after about 160 years has been almost fully replaced by digital techniques. Digital photo equipment will not be part of my collection.
In 2003 I published the first version of this site, build with the help of a special program, Dreamtoolz, but this program had its limitations and was no longer supported, so in the course of 2007 converted it to an application in standard Microsoft Word. By doing this I was satisfied with the possibilities of Word and I did not miss a special web building program at all. I hope that you will find my website interesting and worth reading. I appreciate your remarks, advices and additions. A link to my e-mail address you will find at the left side of this page. And if you want to encourage me or critizise me you can also do this in my guestbook. Please appologize me for any errors in my use of English; keep in mind that this is not my native tongue.