Today is Earth Day, your annual reminder that this planet is all we’ve got. For Earth Day 2022, all of us—businesses, governments, and citizens—are being called on to “act (boldly), innovate (broadly), and implement (equitably)” with “everyone accounted for, and everyone accountable”. It’s a big mission statement, but one way that photographers can step up is by buying more used gear instead of new. 

Peak Design, the camera bag company out of San Francisco, is making things easy. For Earth Day it is redirecting its full site to its pre-owned market place. It got us here at PopPhoto thinking about why buying used makes so much sense. 

Upfront environmental costs

Unlike, say, cars, almost all the environmental cost of photography gear is front-loaded. The environmental toll of extracting the raw materials, manufacturing them into a camera, and shipping that camera around the world to the store where you buy it far outweighs the small amount of electricity it takes to charge the battery or the tiny amounts of extra fuel it takes to carry its weight with you on an airplane. 

What this means is that the environmental cost of used gear is essentially nil. In fact, it can even be net-positive as improperly disposed of e-waste is “polluting the planet,” according to the UN. By buying used—or by keeping your own gear for longer—you’re taking a very real (albeit small) step towards helping the planet. 

Used gear is good gear

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest and greatest cameras and lenses. Here at PopPhoto, we’re at least partially guilty of fuelling it. But the reality is that you don’t need a $3,500 mirrorless camera—like the Canon EOS R5 or Sony a7S III—to take incredible photos. I still shoot with a Canon 5D Mark III and, a few weeks ago, Kaiman Wong posted a video extolling the virtues of the 14-year-old Canon 5D Mark II. Old cameras—whether you’ve had it for years or bought it used—can still be great cameras. 

And it’s not just the high-tech stuff. In fact, there’s an even greater case to be made for buying things like camera bags, tripods, and the other accessories used. They still have a front-loaded environmental cost—and, as long as they’re well maintained, they can’t go obsolete. (Hey, they can even go vintage!) 

Used can be a great deal

Let’s ignore the planet for a second—used gear can be great for your wallet too. 

In our article on the best used cameras to buy right now, gear editor Stan Horaczek points out that an older professional full-frame camera that’s built like a tank can cost less than a new all-plastic APS-C camera—and will still take higher quality pictures in most situations. The majority of photographers aren’t buying the most expensive high-end cameras so, when it comes to low- and mid-range stuff, the potential to get a better used camera is very real. 

Where to buy used gear

The internet has made buying used gear easier than ever. The internet’s big-box equivalents including Amazon and ebay have dedicated shops for refurbished goods. Reputable photo-centric sites like KEH, or the used departments at B&H or Adorama, also make it possible to buy used gear transparently—and often with a warranty. Lensrentals also has a cool program called Keeper where you can buy its used gear. You can even rent something and, if you like it, keep it and have the rental fee deducted from the purchase price. 

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In an online auction, Christie’s is offering over 140 photographs in 139 lots from actor Richard Gere’s incredible photographic collection. Although Gere is best known for being in front of the camera, starring in classic movies like An Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman, his photographic collection is arguably more impressive than his leading roles. Some incredible works from the 19th and 20th Centuries are going under the hammer right now. 

What’s in the Richard Gere Collection? 

Gere’s collection features “works by some of the greatest exponents of the medium,” according to Christie’s. It includes images from “pioneers” like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, as well as “later giants” like Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, and many other important photographers, including Gustave Le Gray, Carleton Watkins, Tina Modotti, Herb Ritts, Irving Penn, and Sally Mann. Although there are a few landscapes, it is “dominated by people and glimpses of everyday life.” 

Darius Himes, Christie’s International Head of Photographs, says the collection has “a level of aesthetic attunement and sophistication that you rarely see”.

While Christie’s is trumpeting the caliber of the collection, Gere is more reserved. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter he says, “I just started buying things that I liked… and I suppose it’s a collection, but I don’t see myself as a collector.”

Despite Gere’s humbleness, Christie’s conservatively expects the whole collection to fetch $2 million.

Why does Richard Gere have a huge photography collection?

Gere is far from the only actor with a passion for photography. In an interview with Christie’s, he explains that his interest in photography started when his mother gave him a Kodak Brownie camera when he was a boy scout. 

As he transitioned from stage to screen in the 70s, he began to develop a professional appreciation for how cameras could tell a story. His friendship with fashion photographer Herb Ritts also led him deeper into photography. He both modeled for Ritts, as well as spent a lot of time on shoots where he wasn’t the subject. The pair also went to exhibitions and auctions. “It wasn’t necessarily to buy,” Gere explains to Christie’s, “It was like going to a museum. It was about seeing beautiful stuff.”

Over the past 40 years, Gere has seemingly built up an incredible photographic collection, a few works at a time. According to Christie’s, he often acquired them directly from the artists, many of whom he counted as close friends. 

How to see or bid on photos from the collection

The online auction is live until April 7, 2022. You can see all the available lots and place bids on Christie’s website. 

The post Richard Gere’s $2 million photo collection is up for auction appeared first on Popular Photography.

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The 40th Leitz Photographica Auction (which also celebrates the auction house’s 20th anniversary) is taking place this June. It’s the biggest opportunity for photographic collectors to drop five-, six-, and seven-figure sums on important, weird, and otherwise wonderful camera gear. At the 39th Leitz Auction, for example, the headline Leica MP Black Paint No. 55 sold for a cool €1.2 million (~$1.34 million), which is especially wild given that it was only valued at €300,000 to €350,000 (~$334,000 to ~$390,000). 

The catalog for the latest Leitz auction is up online now, so let’s look at some (incredibly unaffordable) artifacts of historic photographic significance. 

Leica 0-series no. 105 ‘Oskar Barnack’

Related: You’ll need a goldfinger to afford the new Leica Q2 ‘007’ edition

Two years before the commercially produced Leica A kicked off the 35mm film revolution, Leica produced around 23 0-series prototypes to test the market. Only 12 or so are still in existence today, so any 0-Series is obviously a rare camera. One sold at auction in 2018 for a record-breaking €2.4 million (~ $2.67 million).

What makes this 0-Series (serial number 105) extra special, though, is that it was the personal camera of Leica founder Oskar Barnack—his name is even engraved on the viewfinder. The lot also includes a “heavily-modified Nettel camera that Barnack used for his photographic research” and documents and letters related to them. 

Given the price of the last 0-Series to come up for auction and the historical significance of this model, in particular, it’s no wonder that Leitz Photographica has set the valuation high. The start price is €1 million (~$1.11 million) while the expected final price is between €2 million (~$2.23 million) and €3 million (~$3.34 million). Don’t be surprised if it becomes the most expensive camera ever sold!

Leica MP Black Paint No. 26

If you just missed out on the Leica MP Black Paint (serial number 55) which went for €1.2 million (~$1.34 million) at the last Leitz Photographica auction, the good news is that another one is up for sale. Only 412 Leica MPs were produced with only 141 of them being so-called “black paint” models. So despite the back-to-back auction showings, these are incredibly rare cameras. 

According to Leica, serial number 26 is in “original condition showing a patina of years of professional use,” which basically means it’s a bit beaten up. Still, it’s expected to fetch between €300,000 and €350,000 (~$334,000 and ~$390,000).

If that’s still a bit steep, Leica MP Chrome No. 191 is also going under the hammer. Leica expects it to fetch just €80,000 to €100,000 (~$89,000 to ~$111,000).

Leica MP Unique Gold

This Leica MP is a little different since it’s not a vintage camera from the ‘50s (nor a Leica M-P digital camera), but a specially made, gold-plated, and ostrich leather-coated version of the currently manufactured Leica MP analog film camera. (Yes, Leica’s naming protocols are confusing).

Leica made this over-the-top camera—as well as the included Elmar-M 2.8/50mm lens with gold-filled accents—to be auctioned off for charity. All proceeds will go to non-profit organizations in Austria and Germany. 

While a regular MP will cost you a little less than $6,000, Leica hopes that someone will spend between €16,000 and €20,000 (~$17,800 and ~$22,300) on this gold-plated version.

How to bid

If you’re interested in (and can afford) any of these cameras, or the other cameras and lenses that are up for sale, the auction takes place in Leitz-Park (or Leica World) in Germany on June 11, 2022. All the information you need to bid is on the Leitz Photgraphica Auction website.

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Here at Popular Photography, we love a good oddball camera with a bit of history. So, Comrades, we obviously have our eye on a Soviet spy camera that has just popped up for auction. Full credit to Kosmo Foto, makers of one of our favorite films, for finding this gem. 

The spy camera

The Krasnogorsk C166 Nimfa-3 is described by the seller as being “extremely rare” and in “good” condition.

The Nimfa-3 is a 35mm rangefinder camera, designed to be embedded into a wall or ceiling so someone hiding in the next room (or a hidden room!) could take photos of whatever secret deals were going down, whether that be covert plans to sell nuclear blueprints or illicit operations to undermine the USSR. It’s based on the reasonably common Soviet Zorki-4 rangefinder, though there are some fairly major modifications so it can do that whole shoot-through-walls thing. 

How it works

The Nimfa-3 is, supposedly, in working order and comes with all the accessories you need to set up your own spy station (though it is almost certainly illegal to do so). 

The idea is that you drill a tiny hole in the wall of the room you wish to spy on and a larger hole in the adjacent wall to fit the lens through. A peephole-like attachment goes on the end of the lens and lines up with the tiny hole. The lens is described as having a wide-angle field of view “like the view through the peephole in your door”. 

Obviously, it’s pretty hard to use a rangefinder with a wall blocking your shot. So that you can see what’s happening and know when to push the shutter, the camera has a reflex-style prism and viewfinder.

The various included extension tubes allow you to spy through different widths of walls, so really, it’s quite flexible. The auction also includes the original wooden box the camera came with, along with a cool-looking pistol-style grip.

The auction

The Nimfa-3 spy camera is up for sale on Catawiki (think of it as a curated European eBay) with a starting bid of €2,400 (~$2,700). But it already has some interest from buyers and as of writing, is sitting pretty at €4,000 ($4,530)

The anonymous seller in Bulgaria apparently inherited the camera from his parents. We’re sure there’s a story there! And that it’s probably still classified.

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Vintage lenses can command huge prices for a number of reasons. Maybe they belonged to a famous person, or perhaps they’re super-rare specimens that are hard to get hold of. Later this year, when the Canon EF 1,200mm f/5.6 lens hits the auction block, it will certainly command a six-figure price. While that’s a massive amount of money, it’s not all that surprising for a lens that cost almost $100,000 brand new three decades ago.

Canon’s massive glass cannon debuted back in 1993 ,when the EOS-1 film SLR was still at the top of the company’s autofocus SLR lineup. The gigantic lens was a super-limited release–DP Review suggests that there were maybe a dozen of them ever produced. Each one carried with it a retail price in the neighborhood of $92,000. This kind of lens typically ends up in the arsenals belonging to agencies like the Associated Press who then loan it out to their shooters for specific assignments.

The absurd retail price stems, at least in-part, from a massive fluorite element inside. Older fluorite elements were finicky and extremely sensitive to heat, which is part of the reason that Canon made its lenses white in the first place. They don’t absorb as much warmth from the sun during a long day on the sidelines of a major sporting event.

It really is a marvel of a lens

While this rare specimen gains a lot of its value from its rarity, it’s worth considering just how impressive a 1,200mm f/5.6 lens really is, especially considering that it was built nearly 30 years ago. If you dig into Canon’s current lineup, it caps out with the $12,999 800mm f/5.6L IS USM; it weighs just under 10 pounds and achieves all that reach with a total of 18 glass elements in 14 groups. By comparison, the 1,200mm f/5.6 only utilized 13 elements in 10 groups. That’s less glass for more reach. Of course, the 1,200mm’s front element does measure roughly nine inches across, but that kind of girth comes with the territory.

If you wanted to match the 1,200mm focal length exactly, you could attach a 2X extender to one of Canon’s 600mm f/4 lenses (which will also set you back the better part of a base-model Honda Civic when it comes to cost). Adding that extender, however, cuts the effective maximum aperture of the lens by two stops, which means you’re shooting with the equivalent of a 1,200mm f/8 instead of the very classy f/5.6 offered by the soon-to-be-auctioned classic.

OK, so when can you buy the Canon EF 1,200mm f/5.6?

The auction is happening in Germany on October 6th of this year. The auction house has created a rather slick promo video for the lens, which is worth drooling over. I don’t have a good estimate for what it might fetch, but collectibles and antiques are extremely hot right now, so the final number could be massive. If you miss out on that one, you can always keep an eye out for other classic behemoths, like the three-foot-long, 36-pound Nikon 1,200-1,700mm lens, which also debuted back in 1993. Just remember that you’ll have to manually focus that one.

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One of the interesting things about photography is that any amateur or enthusiast can get the same gear as the top-end pros if they’re willing to spend the money. That wasn’t always the case, though. This all-black Nikon S2 rangefinder camera had to be special ordered and could only be obtained by credentialed professional photographers.

The S2 is a fairly iconic camera in terms of Nikon’s history, and (if I recall correctly) is actually the first Nikon camera to use the standard 35mm image format, rather than the slightly smaller image size they used before that.

The S2 itself is a pretty sweet little rangefinder camera with a 50mm F/1.4 lens and no built-in meter. When looking from a collector’s standpoint, however, you have to take note of the color of the dial, with the black dial being much harder to come by than the chrome dials.

This auction currently sits at $16,000 or so, making it the most expensive S2 on the site currently, with the black and chrome version hovering around $1,000 for a complete or less depending on condition. So, if you’re a collector of very spendy old rangefinders and you’re sick of Leicas, this could be a nice change of pace.

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Lens companies spend a lot of money applying fancy coatings to their lenses for a variety of functions. Most of them do a great job of blocking UV light, which is great for traditional photography, but, as you could probably guess, bad for UV photography. Up for auction right now, however, is a real peach of a UV photography lens in the form of the Zeiss UV Sonnar 105mm F/4.3 for Hasselblad.

UV photography is a highly specialized subset of photography and often involves specific types of modified cameras that can see light from spectrums outside the typical visible wavelengths. In order to facilitate the odd wavelengths, this lens uses elements that are made from quartz and fluorite rather than typical glass. That’s a big part of why it’s so much more expensive than a typical camera lens. As the auction states, it can also be used for extraterrestrial UV photography, which sounds really cool.

Focusing is another aspect of UV photography that can sometimes be difficult, but this lens is built to correct the focus shift so you’re able to use it like a normal lens without having to add a bellows or another focusing mechanism as is required when using an enlarger lens or other popular UV options.

I’m actually a little curious to see what would happen if you shoot through this on a typical camera body. There’s UV protection built in at the sensor level, typically, so I’m guessing it wouldn’t look crazy different, but I would expect some haze and flare from the UV light getting through.

There are cheaper options out there if you’re curious about UV photography, of course. In fact, UV photography and other alternative photographic processes like this can be quite a rabbit hole. But, you don’t have to be a UV shooter to appreciate how cool this pricy piece of photography gear really is.

The post eBay Watch: Zeiss UV-Sonnar 105mm F/4.3 Is a Rare Lens Built for Ultra-Violet Photography appeared first on Popular Photography.

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Surf photography is a difficult thing, even with a digital camera. But, Scott Aichner spent a large hunk of his career doing it on film. Now, in order to fund the purchase of some pricy new slow-motion video gear, he’s selling off some prints of his most iconic images and he’s including the original slides with them.

Aichner was a prolific surf photographer, spending a decade covering the sport for Surfer magazine, where he had several covers. He has also worked with a number of big-name companies in the surfing and action sports space. He’s the real deal.

Lots of photographers sell prints of their old work in order to fund their upcoming ventures, but it’s very rare to see a photographer selling their original slides. The presentation looks rather awesome with a print and the slide mounted into a box frame that’s backlit using an LED.

The photos that ran in the magazines start around $1,300, but if you don’t mind an unpublished frame from the same series, the price can go down around $800 or $900.

I’m sure it hurts to have to give up original negatives, but Aichner is extremely talented, so I hope he reaches his goal and gets to move on to his next project.

Check out the listings here

From: PetaPixel

Lots of photographers sell prints of their old work in order to fund their upcoming ventures, but it’s very rare to see a photographer selling their original slides. The presentation looks rather awesome with a print and the slide mounted into a box frame that’s backlit using an LED.

The photos that ran in the magazines start around $1,300, but if you don’t mind an unpublished frame from the same series, the price can go down around $800 or $900.

I’m sure it hurts to have to give up original negatives, but Aichner is extremely talented, so I hope he reaches his goal and gets to move on to his next project.

Check out the listings here

From: PetaPixel

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Many of the super-expensive auction items we write about here on the site are collector’s items that aren’t really meant to be used for photography anymore. This massive collection of Canon manual-focus bodies and FD lenses, however, looks like it would be a ton of fun to run some rolls of film through.

The auction has a handful of bodies, including a pair of F-1s and an A-1, but the interesting part is how many accessories come bundled with them. That beautiful monster up above is an F-1 Los Angeles that was released for the Olympic Games. It’s a veritable Voltron with the motor drives, high-powered battery packs, extended film chamber, and even alternative screens and finders. The other bodies have a similar suite of awesome accessories.

On the lens front, the auction has some real gems, many of which come from the original L-series manual-focus line-up. The massive FD 800mm F/5.6 alone is quite a find. The auction has everything from wide angle primes like the 24mm F/1.4L to some classic zooms like the 80-200mm F/4.

The rest of the auction includes extenders, converters, caps, original battery packs, a couple old flashes, “more than a hundred original Canon filters,” and tons of documentation.

Sadly, since Canon changed the flange distance when they went from their FD mount to the EF mount, none of these will work easily with modern Canon DSLRs. However, it sure would be amazing to grab a brick of film, load up the bodies with the big lenses and pretend it’s the good old days.

The post eBay Watch: This Massive Canon Manual Focus Collection Costs a Cool $100K appeared first on Popular Photography.

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After becoming the first international fine art auction house to open doors in China in 2012, Sotheby’s is now claiming its ground in the virtual space of the web. Today, eBay launched it’s brand new Sotheby’s live streaming auction platform, paving the way for “casual collectors” around the world to be able to bid in real time, just like the brokers that rich people pay to bid on their behalf in person at the brick-and-mortar house in New York. Sotheby’s announced plans for the joint venture last July, presumably to get in on some of the action online-only auction houses like Paddle8 have been seeing, and maybe get ahead of Amazon’s own foray as popular merchant of fine art.

The site—which has a nice, responsive design, high resolution images, hosted video, and eBay’s first live audio and video streaming capabilities—is up now and taking advance bidding until the first auction kicks off on April 1, 2015. Under two themes, “New York” and “Photographs,” the auction features prints by Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lee Friedlander, László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Paul Strand, and Edward Steichen, among many others.

Sotheby’s COO anticipates reaching “an exponentially larger audience of millions more collectors around the world.”

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