Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! It’s refreshing to see that young people are now picking-up on film photography. They ensure that a time-honored craft won’t simply go away in under a generation. That’s reassuring but it’s even better to see them open businesses and pickup the torch from those that have succumbed to time and the pandemic. I’m happy to introduce a new shop that represents the next generation of camera shop owners.

Introduction:

Film Camera Tokyo (フィルムカメラ東京) opened its doors around 3 years ago. It’s situated near the trendy district of Harajuku where young people are seen to dress in the latest fashion and celebrate everything there is to being young. I wasn’t planning on visiting this shop but I was at the area so I might as well drop them a visit.

This is how it looks like as you enter. The ambience is nice, modern and clean. This is more like a boutique compared to what we’re used to seeing. This isn’t your average moldy, stuffy and cramped camera shop manned by silver or balding gentlemen. The place is full of vitality, optimism and good bargains.

They only seem to sell cameras that are in great shape. I rarely saw anything with terrible signs of use, most of what is shown appears to be in good or near-mint state. Their prices range from cheap, reasonable to upscale but what you’ll get from this is precious peace-of-mind that you will rarely get from the rats at online auction sites.

Click this link to get to their website, it appears to be maintained regularly so what you’ll see there should be what you will find in their inventory. They also have a facebook group, too. Being the young and savvy people that they are they also have a YouTube channel as well. I believe that camera shop owners should embrace social media more since that’s the only way to go forward these days specially considering how we live today in the Covid-19 era. It’s telework and it’s going to be virtual junkshops for us all soon.

Their address is 3-chōme-28-4 Jingūmae, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0001 and it’s accessible via Harajuku Station. If you’re not the type to look for it the old-fashioned way you can check the map linked above.

This is the shopfront, it’s below what looks like a salon. It can be easy-to-miss when you walk by since the sign is rather small and discreet. I thought I was looking at a watch shop when I was standing in front of it.

Fans of Leitz will find something here since they have a nice selection and the conditions of the gear sold here are very good. The prices of the cameras shown here are inline with what I’m seeing lately and are sometimes a bit cheaper.

Here’s the other end of the display. You won’t find any junks in this shop.

This part of the shop houses the most interesting things for me since I am a self-confessed Nikon supremacist.

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These are excellent cameras, I would like to purchase that Nikon FM2T in the near future after I’m done with my simple Cine-Nikkor collection. I find their pricing reasonable considering how great their conditions are.

This is the continuation of the previous part of the shop. There’s mostly Kyocera and Cosina-made gear here along with some stuff from Nikon.

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Here’s some close-ups of some of the lovely cameras from this display. The Bessas are great cameras, despite sharing a common platform with Cosina’s cheaper cameras like the Nikon FM10 and Nikon FE10 (both Cosina-made) these have a unique charm to them specially considering that many consider them to be enrty-level “drugs” to that expensive and ridiculous German brand, I’m not talking about Carl Zeiss, by the way.

This side is full of high-end compacts like the Nikon 28Ti and the more practical Nikon 35Ti. Let’s have a closer look at what’s displayed in this part of the shop.

Here’s the other part of the display, there are Hasselblads, Mamiyas and other stuff here.

This is a beauty, I’ve always wanted one of these kits. The lens is amazing, it’s sharp and well-made. It has quite a small following which mostly consists of people who have an understanding of what a fine lens is.

This is the special “Year of the Dragon” edition of the Nikon FM2, it also comes with a matching lens engraved with the year and matching serial number of the camera. This is a complete set.

These are popular these days and this shop is not in short supply of these. The Contax T2 gained a lot of new fans and the demand has inflated their prices and I don’t see that trend changing soon. They are good cameras with nice lenses as well.

There are Leicas, too. The condition of the cameras here appear to be around the A or A+ levels, certainly not the false description that we’re used to seeing from many online sellers today.

There are many rangefinder lenses here from various manufacturers, from Nikon, Leitz and even Canon.

Let’s show them our support, we need to help new businesses grow so they could continue to serve our community for more years to come, making sure that the hobby won’t die. Film photography and the appreciation of film-related gear is what I consider to a form of “high-culture”, it will be akin to wine tasting in due time, at least not within our lifetimes.

If you buy from them do mention that you saw this article. I am not earning anything from this but I just want to show my support to the local camera retail industry.

Thanks for following my work, if you liked this article please share this with your friends so it will get more views. This site earns around $0.40 a day, we are totally reliant on views. You could also support this site, it helps me offset the cost of maintenance and hosting. You are also helping me purchase, process and scan film. This site promotes the use of film so we are all in this together. See you again in the next article, Ric.

Help Support this Blog:

Maintaining this requires resources and a lot of time. If you think that it has helped you or you want to show your support by helping with the site’s upkeep, you can make a small donation to my paypal.com at richardHaw888@gmail.com. Money isn’t my prime motivation for this blog and I believe that I have enough to run this but you can help me make this site (and the companion facebook page) grow.

Helping support this site will ensure that this will be kept going as long as I have the time and energy for this. I would appreciate it if you just leave out your name or details like your country’s name or other information so that the donations will totally be anonymous. This is a labor of love and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I can. Ric.