What do we do with old 35mm camera bodies? One is my old camera and I will most certainly will keep it, but I have two bodies acquired for their lenses. The bodies are beautiful but I have absolutely no use for them. Throwing them out seems wrong. What do you folks do?

Take pictures of them. ;) Use them as mounts to take pictures of the lenses. :)

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cyclopsphoto.ca

I was planning on using my old minolta srt super, since it works without batteries without using the light meter, but the view finder has some weird dust in it, nothing to impact shooting just annoying.

I bought an x700 cheaply for the lenses it came with and to use it, but it has the dreaded cap problem ugh.

Yes! The dreaded cap problem. (Body cap, right?)

See if there's a high school or college photography program that still teaches darkroom. We do where I teach and we get lots of donations of film cameras which we then lend to students.

Or give them away on Craigslist. Throwing them out just seems wrong.

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jlabate

I've sold all my Nikon F3 bodies a few years ago, together with a whole lot of lenses. I'm now collecting Minolta SR-mount lenses and they sometimes come with a camera body attached. I kept an SR-T 101b which is fully functional apart from the deteriorated seals and mirror damper, but I never use it, I don't do film anymore.

I've had a number of Minolta XG-M bodies, every one of these had at least one flaw. I was walking to the bin with two of them, saying to my daughter: "Look what I'm doing, I'm throwing cameras away!" And she replied: "Oh, can I dismantle them?" And we had a few hours of fun, I now realize I had to have taken pictures of that . Three other bodies, an XG-9, XG-M and X-700 were sold as a lot for 15 euros, quite surprised as I was to be able to get rid of them, flaws and all.

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Best regards, Ad.

Pictures | Equipment | Minolta collection | All lenses

You could try turning them into lamps (like the old Maquarium for old Macs but not as wet)

Vintage Polaroid Land Camera Lamp

I have a number of old camera Boddies dateing back to the late 1930's. I still shoot them. there a lot of fun. If I must have a shot I use my digital equiptment. I find the old cameras to be a lot of fun. Also sometimes doing things the hard way has taught me a lot about photography. Each camera has it's own quirks, with something to learn. I feel it has made me a better photographer, also I have gained a lot of respect for the old timers that only had this equiptment. They made beautiful pictures with minimalist equiptment. As long as i can get film I will use my cameras. Anyway thats my 2 cents..

Sell them on ebay if you're looking to get money for them, although you likely won't get much. Don't throw them away; at the very worst just give them to some starving student as mentioned above, or give them to your local camera repair shop. The extra parts will be useful to them. Or, try selling them on these forums! I think it is good for all of these "new" photographers that have only ever used digital to experiment. They're going to have a collection of MD/FD/F/OM lenses anyway.

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Panasonic G2 - The "mini-SLR" for me. Panasonic 14-42mm, Olympus 40-150mm. Many Nikon lenses, but most often 24mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4, 55mm macro, Tamron Adaptall 90mm and 180mm lenses.