Afterlife for a Konica rangefinder, sort of


This may be useful for those of us with far too many classic film cameras, and no real market for them.

Today, there's very little demand for the 1970s-era 35mm rangefinder cameras I love. I have a handful of really good ones: Olympus XAs, Vivitar 35ES, Canonet GIII QL17, and a few Minolta Hi-Matics. Plus a few that need a little work, but I simply couldn't devote time to resuscitating. These have "DOA" tags on them. And on their own, they're useless.

But in trolling for a Konica Auto S3 on fee-Bay** the other night, I found 27 separate auctions for parts for the camera. Only one actual S3 camera, but more than two-dozen parts for sale.

So if you have the patience and precision screwdrivers to disassemble and tag the working pieces of a camera -- and the skill to photograph them using your digital camera's macro mode -- parting out a non-working 35mm camera might be a way to get some value from that old buddy on your shelf.

And, in case you're wondering: my Auto S3 works fine, and no -- it is definitely not for sale.

***

** I rarely sell items on fee-Bay anymore. When they decided to become son-of-Amazon.com, and abandoned the individual casual seller by messing with their fee schedule, I went to Craigslist.

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