If you buy film cameras secondhand, you've probably had a fun story or two come out of it. I've had a few deals that stuck with me, and today I want to share some of them.

Oh, and thank you again to everyone who said you enjoyed the first post. I haven't written anything like this since my old Cyworld diary days, so your kind words gave me the nerve to keep going with a second one.

An Old Man in a Country Town, and a Single Slide

The first memory that comes to mind is the day I went to buy a film scanner. I drove about an hour and a half out to a tiny country town in Australia, and the deal I made with the old man I met there still stays with me.

When you buy secondhand you end up chatting, and with older folks in Australia especially, it can feel like taking a quick trip into the past.

He had been taking pictures for a long time. His archive was incredibly organized, and he said birds and flowers were his favorite subjects. He also told me he and his wife had shared photography as a hobby for many years.

I got to look through a pile of wonderful photos, and once the deal was done he said, "I don't use it anymore, take it," and handed me a Kodak slide projector for free.

A slide viewed through a loupe.
The first look at that slide, through a loupe.
An old slide the man showed me, with a white dog.
An old slide of two people standing at a door.
An old slide of the man's yard.

What I remember most from that day was one slide he brought out like a treasure.

It showed a white girl who looked about high school age. Since it was a color photo, I naturally assumed it was his granddaughter. To my surprise, it was his wife as a young girl.

In Korea you almost never see color photos from our grandparents' generation, right? So a slide of his wife in her high school years felt genuinely amazing to me.

A Camera Collector and a Roll of Film from 70 Years Ago

The second is an unforgettable encounter with a camera collector.

He was a die-hard among die-hards. The film camera world has no bottom once you start digging, and he was way down in the deep end. He collected rare cameras that are hard to find buyers for in Australia, and he said he flew to Germany every year to put them up at auction himself.

I got to see a ton of beautiful cameras, but honestly I didn't know enough to appreciate them, so a lot of them just looked like more or less the same film camera to me. lol

Screenshot of a Kodak Brownie Flash II marketplace listing.
It all started with one message. "STILL HAS EXPOSED FILM INSIDE, BUT NOT SURE OF ITS CONDITION."

While we were talking, he told me something funny. Sometimes when he buys a camera, the seller throws in a whole box of junk cameras along with the valuable one.

In fact, the reason I'd gone to see him was to buy one of those cameras, a Kodak Brownie box camera.

Two Kodak Brownie Flash II cameras side by side on a bookshelf.
Kodak Brownie Flash II. Buy one valuable camera, and sometimes a whole box of junk cameras comes along with it.

And this is where the story starts that still gives me goosebumps.

When I got home, I found a roll of film inside the camera.

An old roll of Kodacolor II found inside the camera.
A roll of Kodacolor II from inside the camera. No way to even guess how old it was.

The camera was so old that I never imagined there would be film left in it. I wasn't even sure it would develop, but I was too curious not to try, so I decided to develop it myself.

It had been wound inside the camera for so long that just getting it onto the developing reel was a struggle.

A strip of old film hung up after developing.
The first strip I held up after developing.

After all that effort, I finished developing it and… I was stunned.

There were pictures on it.

Vintage Bentley from the recovered film, frame 1.
A woman standing by a carport with a Bentley.
A vintage Bentley in front of an English-style cottage.
People gathered with vintage Bentleys.
The film held Bentleys in Australia, probably from around the 1940s or '50s, and people no one could identify.

What a thrill.

I posted this story as a short video a while back, and I remember it got a decent number of views. Lots of people told me to make a video tracking down the owner, so I asked around here and there. I even emailed Bentley in Australia, but I never got a reply.

So that film is still just my own strange little memory.

A Bundle of Film from a Garage Sale

An old roll of Agfa Isopan ISS found at a garage sale.
One roll from the bundle. The label reads EXPONIERT in German: already exposed.

The last one is about a bundle of film I bought at a garage sale.

Overseas there's this thing called a garage sale, where people clearing out their homes sell unwanted stuff or their late parents' belongings in the front yard. Think of a small rummage sale. I bought this about three or four years ago, back when I was completely hooked on eBay and Australia's local secondhand marketplaces.

The film was roughly 40 to 50 years old, maybe even older.

An old black-and-white photo of three people in hats sitting on a bench.

After scanning, I sent the photos to the seller and asked if they knew who these people were. The seller only said the film probably belonged to their great-grandfather and that they didn't really know that side of the family either.

On a ship's deck, a man in a chair and a child hanging from a ladder.
A frame taken aboard a ship bound for Australia.
Black-and-white photo of children gathered in front of a country church.
A family sitting together in front of a beach pavilion.
Black-and-white photo of a woman with a pram beside a sand dune.
Black-and-white photo of four men holding cups in a field.
Black-and-white family photo of women and children in front of a house.
The photos ran from life before the move to Australia all the way to everyday life after settling in.

There were pictures from before they emigrated to Australia, trips they took after settling, everyday moments at home, church events, all kinds of scenes.

I found them so interesting that I posted some in an Australian Facebook group, and there's a reason Koreans joke that the biggest geeks of all are the Western geeks.

A comment in the Facebook group comparing an old photo with the place as it looks today.
The Facebook group started tracking down the places in the old photos, one by one.

A few people analyzed the locations in the photos and even told me where they are today, and I actually went out to visit some of them. A winery in South Australia, an old church, and the seaside.

Seeing that the spots where people stood in those black-and-white photos are still almost unchanged decades later was amazing. It felt like holding a small piece of history in my hands.

So I'm thinking that someday, after keeping them safe for a while, I'd like to donate them to a museum or somewhere like that.

In the End, It's About People and Photos

I bet many of you have had fun experiences buying film cameras secondhand too.

I'm an extreme introvert and don't usually love meeting people, but for some reason meetups involving film cameras are always a joy. Once we start talking about film, photography and the memories stored in old things, I lose all track of time.

See you next time with more film rambles.