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Preserving the World’s Legacy of Film Cameras
My conversation with a young camera technician
Some weeks ago, I wrote an article about Pro Photo Camera in Washington, DC, and how they are coping with the uncertainty of today’s tariffs. Cameras are a niche market, and punitive tariffs are the last thing local stores need to flourish. But Pro Photo’s strategy is to rely less on new camera sales — the margins for a small store being so thin — and more on other parts of the business.
Those other parts include camera repair, which has always been a big part of the family enterprise.
Old cameras are like old cars. They have a fanatic following, but that isn’t enough to keep them alive. The world’s supply of both continues to dwindle. Broken cameras, like broken cars, provide parts for the repairable ones. Over time, the total supply erodes. The ones that remain owe their survival to the attention and care of their owners and, at least equally, to the handful of technicians who know how to fix them.
