Film Camera Heaven is a website managed by Morgan Tyree.
The site is dedicated to the various film cameras in my “arsenal” of cameras, including toy cameras, and film—almost all of them are operational and therefore put to use.
My first camera was a Kodak 110 pocket camera when I was in 6th grade—a pretty safe camera investment from my parents perspective. I wasn’t too different from any 12-year-old with a new camera, but I specifically remember purchasing black and white film for the camera while everyone was shooting color since color had become so available thanks in part to stores like Fotomat that offered one-day film developing as well as fresh Kodak film.
During my junior year in high school, I was enrolled in a vocational graphic arts program as well as a member of the school yearbook. That made for a solid case in persuading my parents to upgrade my camera equipment to a 35 mm single lens reflex camera. I had been eyeing the Minolta SRT models on display in our nearby shopping mall for months where I even went to the trouble of photographing the display with my pocket 110 camera so my parents would know exactly what I had in mind.
That Minolta from the Christmas of 1976 stayed with me all the way up to my graduate school days when I sold it and additional lenses so I could get through my last semester of graduate school.
For two years after graduate school (1988-1990), I was without a “respectable” camera with the exception of the Kodak Pony that my brother-in-law passed on to me from his parents’ estate. I made regular use of the Pony until a friend in Flagstaff sold me his extra Nikon FM for a song. The Nikon and Pony are still with me including another 50 or so other film cameras I’ve picked up along the way since then.
Out of this small collection (“small” by the definition of real camera collectors) comes this website.
Finally, if you have some old film cameras that you’d like to see go to better use (or a better home where they will be displayed), feel free to box up your camera(s) and send to the address below. Consider this invitation if you have film too. Although not required, I suggest you fill out the form(s) below and tell me about the camera or film you want to send—what model it is, and whether or not it is working, type of film, etc. If it is a camera not in my collection, I’ll be happy to give it a new home (and use it as well). If it is a camera I already have (sometimes more than one), I’ll do what I can to find it a new home.
Morgan Tyree
c/o Northwest College
231 West 6th Street
Powell, WY 82435
