Disposing of old film cameras?

[blockend]

I've also just bought a digital (an Olympus Pen EP1) and I just can't feel any affection for it. Maybe it's the fact of contemplating the pics on the camera screen. They just look so uninspiring, I don't have the urge to get them printed.

A lot of people feel the same way. I think there are two things going on, first, film has been popular for over a hundred years and is a deeply embedded social artifact and not just on the level of picture making. The whole business of loading a roll, processing or getting the prints back has been an inter-generational thrill longer than living memory. It won't move over that quickly, in the same way that Polaroid didn't kill the negative.

Second, film reminds us that what we're seeing isn't reality, it's a distorting mirror, partly our choice of subject, partly the oddities of the film and the camera. Black and white reminds us of this abstraction in spades.
It may all look like a tweedy fondness for old money but it's a kind of craft skill that seems to be enjoying a resurgence.

 

[Elmer Fudd]

I would never part with my (seldom used) canon EOS film cameras, but I originally went "Canon" because of their lenses which I can/do still use, and this was at the infancy of digital.
My very first "grown up" camera though, a 30 odd year old Zenit-E with its manual aperture Pentax 42mm screw fit lenses and it's "your guess is as good as mine" light metering system is often popped out of its case for a quick 36 framer.

It's one excuse to lock yourself in the bathroom, in the dark, with a pile of magazines and nobody thinks anything wrong of you. That is, unless, you leave the bathroom without a perfectly printed B&W image in your sweaty little palm!!
(Wiped the side of your nose to fill negative scratches, anyone??)