Blue Moon Camera Museum
by Dan Wagner
August 31, 2020 marks the official opening of the online Blue Moon International Camera Museum. Official Press Release: “Welcome to the Blue Moon International Camera Museum. Within these hallowed halls you will find our collection of history’s film cameras. It is a place we hope you can bring the family to show them the cameras you used growing up, or are currently using. A place you can hang out with your artist friends, drawing inspiration and motivation, or hatching new plots for creative photographic endeavors. This is a museum dedicated to all the peaks and valleys found in our ever-lengthening history of photography. The doors will always be open: the museum’s hours are all day, every day. Admission is always free. So come in, come in. Head to the camera hall of your fancy, they are all right this way.”
The 35mm Camera Wing: 35mm Cameras: Rangefinder, SLR, Stereo, TLR, Toy Camera
The Esoteric Camera Wing: Esoteric Cameras: 110, 120, 127, 35, Instant, Large, Minox
The Film Wing: Films Sizes: 110, 120, 127, 35, Instant, Large, Minox
The Instant Camera Wing: Cameras: Fuji Instax, Polaroid
The Large Camera Wing: Cameras: Field, Pinhole, Pre-20th Century, Press, Rail
The Medium Camera Wing - Cameras: Field, Pinhole, Pre-20th Century, Press, Rail
The Motion Camera Wing: Cameras: 16, 35, 8, Super-8
The Rangefinder Wing: Cameras: Argus, Canon, Contax, Fuji, Hasselblad, Kodak, Konica, Leica, Minolta, Misc, Nicca, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Robot, Rollei, Voigtlander, Widelux, Yashica, Zeiss Ikon
Overall Structure:
Museum Wings: 35mm Cameras - Esoteric - Film - Instant - Large Format - Medium Format - Motion Picture
One of the Many Halls: Rangefinder/Viewfinder Hall
“After nearly twenty years of culling and curating information, test rolls, and research, we are finally bracing ourselves to cut the proverbial red tape and open our new virtual doors to the public. Think of it as a web-based repository of riveting historical facts, wandering anecdotes, and expert hacks shared by the trusted staff of Blue Moon Camera. The museum is a constantly evolving, living history of our daily sales pitches, histories, philosophies and ramblings. It’s also a historical record of our daily observations, musings and experience with the ridiculous number of interesting cameras that come to pay us a visit.
Not only does the Museum provide specs and recommendations, it also provides the infrastructure needed to track the retail value of equipment - making it something like a modern blue book for the analog world. The Museum will document our current retail prices for analog equipment, in tandem with historical sale prices pulled straight from our inventory, providing a real world glimpse of the ever-changing market.”
The 35mm Camera Wing - Leica Gallery: Leica Cameras
Pros & Cons 35mm Camera Wing: Rangefinder/Viewfinder Hall - Leica Gallery - Leica IIIC
Explore 35mm Camera Wing:
Pros & Cons 35mm Camera Wing: Rangefinder/Viewfinder Hall - Leica Gallery - Leica IIIC
For Sale 35 Camera Wing: Rangefinder/Viewfinder Hall - Leica Gallery - Leica IIIC
Price History 35mm Camera Wing: Rangefinder/Viewfinder Hall - Leica Gallery - Leica IIIC
Section Structure:
35mm Camera Wing - Rangerfinder/Viewfinder Hall - Leica Gallery - Leica IIIC
Summary - Explore - Pros & Cons - For Sale - Price History
Useful Blue Moon Camera Links:
Blue Moon Camera Codex
Blue Moon Camera eBay Store
The Blue Moon Camera Manifesto: “Remember when ‘real’ was real?
At Blue Moon Camera and Machine, we seek to offer nothing less than the full restoration of your tactile sensibilities. Analog is more than tech, it is technique. It is a commitment to a lifestyle of rigor over ease, a deep connection to your craft and a knowledge of your process. We do what we do because we believe that analog is the antidote to the often overlooked compromises of an ever-automated world. A resuscitation from automation back into something more tangible; let your lungs swell as you inhale deep. We resist the growing separation between the maker and the tools, the lit fuse of planned obsolescence, and the homogeny of practice.
Blue Moon Camera and Machine, llc
8417 North Lombard Street
Portland, Oregon 97203 (503) 978-0333
We trust in analog machines for their built-in durability and patience. A typewriter might wait its entire life to participate in poignant prose. A film camera idles ready beneath your fingers as you finally release the shutter on the moment observed together. In these fleeting glimpses of significance, these machines are ready for you, and therein lies their beauty – they always have been and they always will be. Analog machines come into our lives as collaborators, co-conspirators for a lifetime of process and product. You can credibly use your analog machine for your entire life and not once will it reboot, not once will it upgrade against your will, never will it force you up a brand new learning curve. By using a machine that will inevitably outlast you, your skills improve with each subsequent project. This permits you the necessary time together to learn each other‘s nuances, coming to an intimacy in tandem. Of course, nothing lasts forever, but an analog device has the tendency to absorb and sustain the experience applied to it, pulling this energy onwards to the next project. This is a slow and rambling dialogue; we want you to listen to it.
At our shop, we consider the notion that everything in life is either convenient or it is of quality. The suffering for it, the sacrifice in making work when it is not automatic or easy, that is the hallmark of work that is good. When the shop got its start in 2001, we were working through our lunches – darting from the darkroom to the hot plate in the bathroom to cook discount hot dogs between runs of film. We began as a staff of two, stubborn – with our heels dug in – standing in defense of analog at the start of the digital revolution. We are now a staff of over twenty anachronistic people, reveling in the film renaissance. We remain unwilling to give up on 150 years of mature technology simply because the industry around us has evolved into something more disposable, less appreciable. Our staff is comprised of artists, educators, technicians, disc jockeys, and entrepreneurs. We are all fighters, working to honor the principles of diligence, passion for craft, and integrity.
Due to its longevity, there will always be film; as long as there is film, there will always be us.”
I hope this article has inspired you to visit the Blue Moon Camera and Machine International Camera Museum. Thanks for visiting The Cranky Camera!