As I’m writing this, I completely understand how naive it is for me to call something on the other side of the planet a “secret”. It’s western world privilege however it’s new to me and the people who don’t live there. I recently spent seven days in Istanbul, Turkey for a three day chamber music event entitled, Tertulia. I’ll make another post specifically about that later but that was the catalyst for our trip. We went to the same event in Berlin last year. During that trip I found two vintage cameras and discovered an entirely new way to find vintage cameras at a good price. So this time around, I was on the hunt again. And to my surprise, I struck gold again.
One thing I want to mention that I also mentioned in the video is that this blog and video was inspired by this article written by Stephen Dowling in 2023 entitled “The Hidden Camera Shops of Istanbul”. I found the shops he mentioned and took the adventure further to find more.
In short, I found an “underworld” circuit of small camera shops and a couple of lone antique shops. Watch the vlog to hear all about it.
I only took four rolls of film with me and shot three of them on point and shoots and the other roll on one of the cameras I bought in Istanbul. Shooting film is simply delayed gratification or delayed disappointment. Disappointment because sometimes your shots don’t turn out. The gratification is a little memento to your future self and because of its inherent science and texture, film shots feel more like memories more so than the million photos in your phone. Here are some of those images.
This first set is from the Hanimex shot on Fujifilm 400 color negative film.
This second set is Ilford 400 black & white film.
And this third set is from the Ricoh 300 I bought in Istanbul.
In closing, Istanbul was a fantastic trip and definitely a place I’d revisit for the culture, food, experiences and definitely for the camera shopping.