An elderly collector of film cameras, who does not want to be identified, has decided to put up for sale almost every camera he has collected over the past 44 years.
Pride of place in the auction, at Hayward's Auction House, in Princes St, will be plate cameras dating back to the 1800s, including one manufactured in Dunedin by cabinetmaker Thomas Girvan under his "Kapai" label.
Several plate cameras made by Mr Girvan, and used by Dunedin photographers the Burton Brothers, are already held by Te Papa.
Mr Girvan, who was also a photographer, operated Kapai Studio in Dundas St and offered "direct portraits", from locket- to life-size, in silver, carbon, bromide or platinum.
According to an advertisement in the Bruce Herald in 1905, Mr Girvan was "the smartest man behind the camera", and his photographs were "beautifully finished in monochrome".
Mr Girvan died in 1921 aged 69.
The collection includes dozens of slide projectors and enlargers, and the cameras range from a once very expensive Linhof Technika to the once ubiquitous "Box Brownies".
The owner said he was not a particularly good photographer himself but liked cameras and began collecting them in the mid-1960s.
However, he now had other priorities.
"It's time for it to go."
