Camera search notes
Broad search
– search for a camera per a key word
Enter a search term into the search field and hit ‘search’. A list showing all entries that include the term will appear. Find the item your looking for and click on the blue link to open the specific product page. Note that this will return many results where you’ll have to sift through. If you know the brand best to use ‘name Search‘ form for faster results.
Broad search retrieves data from several fields, so you may try a camera nickname or part of its name.
Search term needs to be three characters or more. Search field can not be left blank.
Visual search
– search for a camera from pictures grouped by camera brand
If you know the brand but not sure about the model. Select a brand from the drop down menu, wait couple of seconds until the CCBRID field populate and hit search. This will open a thumbnail gallery of cameras made by the selected brand, sorted by style. Click on the thumbnail to open the detailed camera page.
Search field can not be left blank.
Select a brand from the drop down list.Then select the specific model from the ‘Model’ dropdown field. If you know the model name you may type several letters in this field to bring up matching selection. If there are models with similar names you will get a short list, select the desired name by clicking on the blue link.
Neither fields can be left blank.
Detailed brand search
– same as above, optimized for phones or tablets
Wait for all the data to load, depends on your connection speed. Once all loaded you’ll see a search box at top right corner of the data table. Begin with typing the brand name, which will be filtered in the data table. Click ‘info’ for brand information, ‘list’ for models list of this brand, or ‘images’ for thumbnails of the models.
General search notes
- Some camera variation names contain Roman numerals and some Arabic. Watch for ‘Name II’ and ‘Name 2’.
- Same are written as ‘Name 1b, ‘Name 1-b’ or ‘Name 1 b’.
- When translated from Russian or Slavic languages there is a possible mix between phonetic name and translation.
- Same, spelling of phonetic names can vary as Elicon / Elikon, Salut / Salyute, Symbol / Simvol. Watch for K/C, B/V, C/S. In most cases we marked variations in either ‘Name” field or the ‘Other Name’ field.
- Same for Japanese and Chinese names, can appear as name translation or in a creative phonetic spelling versions.
- To nicely play with our database engine and possibly search engines we have converted all accented letters into plain English equivalent. We apologize in advance, no malice intended.
- In the East Block camera manufacturing was shifted through different facilities under different plant names so same models may appear under different brands. We have endeavored to match the brand with the correct years, but might have missed in some cases.
- You may find an “NS” in the camera description. It appears where there are several versions to same camera, and sale transactions recorded did not specify which exact model it is. We just lumped all under one item, marking it as “NS”.
- Search options available at home page may not be mobile friendly. Alternatively you may try the detailed brand search. found on under more menu.
Vintage camera pricing notes
- Online sales transactions recorded over a three years period.
On open online auctions we have little way to establish condition and quality of camera offered, so we trust that at large number of recorded transactions the average will yield a meaningful value. - Auction prices at the high end auction houses largely differ from price paid for the same camera at say eBay. Could be ten times over. We trust that once we arrive to a critical entries number, say 30 entries for same model, outliers at either end, too low or too high, will have little effect on the average price.
- Camera price cited here is a recommendation only, based upon median of prices recorded. A top condition equipment can cost many folds over, while a poor exemplar could go for a fraction. This is especially true with rare or high value cameras. With cheap cameras price gap would be smaller. Further, a cheap vintage camera body coupled with a quality lens will attract much higher value, where the body could is negligible.
- We use auction results from three continents. Some cameras fetch more in certain markets. As before, we trust it evens out.
- Price quoted are dynamic and are updated on the fly permarket trends.
- We would suggest researching prices at other sources such as collectiblend, KEH or Pacific Rim camera; all having own opinions on vintage camera prices.
