OT A1 Canon Camera

I'm cleaning out 70 years of accumulated item's I no longer use and need to know if a film camera has any value now, or is it just junk. I have a 50MM, and a 85-210MM, and a 500MM lens, can anyone tell me if the mounts are the same as used on the new digital cameras? If anyone here is interested in it let me know, it's sat on the closet shelf long enough, I did pull the battery so it never leaked in the camera so it should function fine with a new battery installed.

Limited value.

Special cameras sure. Old Leica, Hasselblad, antique "view" cameras, that sort of thing.

Standard, mass produced consumer grade cameras, not so much. I've got a large number to get rid of, and most are worth less than scrap.

Lenses may have more value, IF they do fit anything. See what you can find out from Canon.

You couldn't give me a film camera.

Aside from being big and clunky, the cost to have film developed is ridiculous. That's if you can even find anyone to do it.

Find a young kid and let them play with it until it's junk. Sad as that is, it's reality.

Some lenses interchange with digital. I went to KEH camera at keh.com and researched. They buy old equipment also. I was able to use all my old Minolta 35mm lenses with a Sony digital body.

GregSY said:

You couldn't give me a film camera.

Aside from being big and clunky, the cost to have film developed is ridiculous. That's if you can even find anyone to do it.

Find a young kid and let them play with it until it's junk. Sad as that is, it's reality.

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People who "do film cameras" usually also have darkrooms and develop their own. And a substantial number are doing black and white photography, which is where film is usually miles better than digital for most.

For "commodity" cameras, you are correct regardless.

For "quality" cameras, the situation is somewhat different.

" Big and clunky"? You have obviously not seen digital SLRs. Add the various lenses professional photographers often use, and it would be easier to carry around a shotgun.

I agree. Film cameras, when used properly, give a better result. But....there's too much inertia behind digital photography.

I guess when you get down to it....you only need a photograph to be so good. Aunt Edna at Christmas eating a turkey leg next to Cousin Johnny? Maybe a little less resolution is good for all concerned.

I think high-end cameras still have value....but they represent .5% of what's out there.

A-1 is a nice camera, I have some. A quick look at Ebay shows plenty of them sold for $75 to $200 for a body with 50mm lense, your lenses should sell well also.

The A1 will be the old Canon mount - not the same as the EOS mount that came with autofocus - so it doesn't even fit later Canon film cameras. Worse, while EOS can be adapted to R (flange distances) I don't think Canon bayonet can be adapater to Canon EOS (at least not without losing focus at infinity.)

Might be best to sell the whole kit together - as they work together.

[Bryan - who has a giant pile of fancy EOS digital gear which he ought to sell because he only takes pix with his cell phone these days... My how the world changed...]

I sold 2 Minolta XE-7's along with 4 quality lenses, all in like new condition, on FB market place. I had trouble getting $100 for the lot..........Bob

Thanks everyone for the replies, I was afraid it was just junk, kind of hoped the lens might fit newer cameras but even that doesn't work, just hard to throw something this nice in the garbage.

ronf said:

Thanks everyone for the replies, I was afraid it was just junk, kind of hoped the lens might fit newer cameras but even that doesn't work, just hard to throw something this nice in the garbage.

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Donate it to the local high school for them to use in photography class.

Students in a photography class will use those cameras. If you have the time to sell it. There is nothing close to film.

Not sure if yours is one, but you can get digital backs for some?

If the lens has a mechanical lever that mounts onto the camera it will not interchange with digital versions. Digital lens are all electric connection to the body, no moving parts in the interface.
Bill D

Do tell us more. What Sony digital body? I have a case full of Minolta lenses and would love to get some service from them. I could really use a digital that accepts changeable lenses.

MilGunsmith said:

Some lenses interchange with digital. I went to KEH camera at keh.com and researched. They buy old equipment also. I was able to use all my old Minolta 35mm lenses with a Sony digital body.

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Hi, daily lurker here. Believe it or not, I still enjoy shooting with 35mm film. For a while it was a little difficult get film and developing, so I used digital like everyone else, but now there are quite a few labs doing business. I still take a lot of digital photos also, but I hate sitting at a computer to adjust and print them (despise is a better term). Film still works the way it always did.
I currently use my old rangefinder Kodak and Minolta, but am looking for an SLR. If you wanted to sell it your cannon I would love to discuss it with you. I'm trying to attach a relevant photo, lets see if it works.
Anthony

anthony f said:

... I'm trying to attach a relevant photo, lets see if it works.
Anthony

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No photo attached that I could see.
-Marty-

Camera Tech Notes that explain some of what is discussed above (yes, you might be able to get a Minolta lens to at least sort of work with a mirrorless Sony...)

1. The distance from the back or base of the lens (the surface that presses up against the camera body) to the film plane is called the registration distance. If a lens is designed for say 30mm registration distance, and you somehow graft it onto a camera with a 32mm registration distance, that lens won't focus at infinity (*). But if you have a lens made to fit a camera with say a 29mm registration distance, and there's enough space, you could adapt it to a camera with a 27mm registration distance, and it will work fine.
(*) Very long focal length lenses (think 400mm +) sometimes have a lot of "overtravel" to account for thermal issues, and so some of them can overcome too-deep registration adapters, at least some of the time.
This is actually a bigger deal than the mechanical vs electronic coupling in going from old Canon mount to Canon EOS.

2. Throat diameter is just the size of the hole in the front of the camera that the lens projects light through - adapting a narrow throat lens to a wide throat camera is fairly easy - vice versa not so much.

3. Auto stop-down, auto focus, meter coupling. A fully manual camera (say a Leica M6 (film) or M10 (digital)) doesn't stop the lens down (doesn't have to), and meters "at working aperture", and has no autofocus - and so it has none of these. Due to a little bit of planning Leica screw mount lenses from before 1954 fit the film bayonet cameras and indeed the digital M series cameras up to right now.

Modern mirrorless digital cameras - Fuji X-mount, Canon R-mount, Nikon Z-mount, and Sony <whatever name> share this - so they don't actually need the meter-coupling. But they're all autofocus - but see below.


SLRs are more complicated. As correctly noted above the original Canon mount (I forget the name) depended on mechanical coupling cannot couple to the all electric EOS lens mount. But there's a weird out [1] below.

OK, so you can adapt from long-registration to short-registration, but you are likely housed on auto-stopdown/auto-focus coupling = BUT people have been using old lenses in fully manual for years (as in 5+ decades) - for things like macro lenses that was the norm anyway.

[1] OLD IS NEW:

If you are going to a *mirrorless* camera (ILC) - the Sony's, Fuji X-mount, Z-nikons and R-Canons. Or to a Leica M-10 for a different reason.

Why? Because all of those cameras are showing you a "TV" picture of what the lens sees, rather than having you peer through it optically - so there's no need to auto-stopdown the lens at all - just turn up the gain on the TV. (For the M-10 you end up using the preview screen on the back rather than the optical viewfinder.)

You end up with Manual Focus (the horror!) - but it can work.

Sometimes you have to change funky settings to persuade the camera to cooperate. Adapting anything to an EOS and I presume R mount is a notorious pain.

**BUT**

Why bother? If you are going to shell out the bucks for a Fuji-X, Canon R, Sony, Nikon Z, etc. - you probably want more modern lenses with autofocus. If you decide you want a Leica M10 (lovely cameras, but I sold mine) then you will be digging into lenses. And I have Stemar I'll sell you. (And yes it clears the M10 shutter...)

Happy Day

was working on adjusting the focus ring on my kodak and took some random shots

Then there is the pile of Speed Graphics here I will need to unload.....2 3/8 up - but mostly 4 X 5