Recently, my dad gave me an old camera that used to belong to my grandfather. The camera is a Kodak Bantam Special and I believe my grandfather bought it new in 1937 and paid $129 for it. That was a rather large sum of money in 1937. The interesting thing is that my dad still has all the negatives that were made with this camera and my grandfather kept notebooks on what he took and when, so all of these negatives are dated with short comments in the notebook :)
It's always interesting to me to see images from "a bygone era" like this one. It seems the old photos we find most interesting today are the ones of people and places. 65 years from now what will people think of our photos?
Just goes to show you how precious a time capsule photos are! An otherwise ordinary scene now draws new interest 66 some-odd years later.
That was quite a sum for a camera, John - considering economics of the period, and salaries at that time. Hmm.. my grandfather was 35 by that time.
How lucky that the negatives and notes have been kept all this time!
Thanks for sharing! I'd love to see more if you are able to upload them.
That is a very interesting story and how wonderful that the camera was kept in such great condition. Looks like a real family keep sake. Do you happen to know what the parade in one photo was all about?
That is a very interesting story and how wonderful that the camera was kept in such great condition. Looks like a real family keep sake. Do you happen to know what the parade in one photo was all about?
I don't know but i'm guessing it was a christmas parade right after thanksgiving.
Excellent, we were just talking about this yesterday. The pic is a great piece of Americana, and the Bantam, as you already know, is one of my fave cams. Good stuff!
Wow! It would be fun to go back and try to set up a few shots using the old photos as a guide and compare the two. See how much has changed and stayed the same through time. My family has a friend that does that with old New York photos and they are amazing.
Wow! It would be fun to go back and try to set up a few shots using the old photos as a guide and compare the two. See how much has changed and stayed the same through time. My family has a friend that does that with old New York photos and they are amazing.
Wow! It would be fun to go back and try to set up a few shots using the old photos as a guide and compare the two. See how much has changed and stayed the same through time. My family has a friend that does that with old New York photos and they are amazing.
You have a nice slice of Americana preserved in your negatives :) How many do you have?
I have somewhere between 300 and 400 negatives.. i'm not sure exactly.
You might contact the American Memory project of the Library of Congress -- they might be interested in your image collection since it is so cohesive and documented.
This appears to be a pep rally parade prior to a football game between the Lenoir Rhyne Bears and the Appalachian State University Mountaineers in 1939 :)
