Irony of history and the fungus

(Olympus PEN E-P1, Zuiko Digital 17mm F2.8)




I have to admit that I have been too lazy to update my blog. It has been almost two months now!

I am going to talk about the smell of old cameras. Yes, the smell.

From my experience, all old cameras have very distinct smell.If you have an experience of buying old camera even once, you would know what I am taking about.

If you bought old cameras from shops who maintain old cameras extremely well like a museum, there might not be any smell at all. But almost all of my purchases of old cameras were from eBay. The all came to me with exactly the same distinct smell. This smell was not only on cameras but also on leather camera cases.

It is not difficult to spot this smell is from some sort of fungus/mold.
I happen to be in a medical field when I am not enjoying shooting photos. I know each microorganisms have their own characteristic smell.

The fungus on the old cameras is obviously different from what I deal with at work. I, therefore, am not able to tell what kind of species exactly it is.

But I know the real fact. This camera fungus doesn’t care the kind of cameras. Regardless of being SLR, TLR, rangefinder camera, they all grow the same kind of fungus, therefore the same smell. The fungus doesn’t care what era the cameras were made. 50's, 60's, 70's. They all smell the same. In addition, countries where the cameras were made don’t matter. Made in Japan, Germany, USA, Soviet, or wherever, they all smell the same.

Deductively saying, there seems to be the special fungus which likes to grow on old cameras. That must be the ones that are floating in the air as a spore until they find attractive old cameras. Then they start to grow, only to give us that particular smell of old cameras.

Suppose we have two cameras here. They were made during cold war era, one in the U.S.A, and the other in U.S.S.R. After several decades and cold war is over, both cameras are radiating exactly the same smell in harmony. History and the fungus work in an ironical way.

I must say it is far from nice smell. However, it is certainly a kind of smell that makes me motivated to go and shoot another film.