Episode 69: Mike Butkus, King of Camera Manuals

In the 68 previous episodes of the Camerosity Podcast, we've had the pleasure of talking to a wide variety of fascinating guests.  We've had collectors, historians, former Kodak employees, camera repair technicians, and a variety of other bloggers and other assorted people in the industry.  Each of those people were fascinating guests, but each had a special niche where their skill and experience fit in and not every listener of this might would have known who they were. In this episode however, our special guest is Mike Butkus, someone whose name should ring a bell to anyone who has ever picked up an old camera and searched for information on it online.  It is impossible to collect cameras and never have stumbled upon the massive collection of cameras manuals at Mike's site.  His site has over 6000 high resolution scans of manuals for film and digital cameras, flashes, exposure meters, and much more, available for everyone to view and download for free.  Mike's site is not only big, but it has been around for over a quarter of a century, making it one of the oldest still operating film and digital photography sites out there. Be sure to check out Episode 69 where Anthony, Paul, Theo and Mike are joined by returning callers Ray Nason, Howard Sandler, and first time callers Brian Zeman and Jordan Berube. In addition to hearing Mike's origin story and getting a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at the world's largest depot of camera manuals, we venture into a wide variety of other topics, such as tips and tricks to selling a large camera collection, what is everyone's favorite 6 x 9 camera, and how heavy is a Koni-Omegaflex M TLR. Theo shares a story about a camera he bought, then returned, and may one day buy again, Mike gets yelled at by a site reader for mistaking a 2¼ x 3¼ camera for a 6 x 9 camera, and Howard asks why old folding Kodaks aren't valued by collectors. Donate to Mike Butkus: For the past 25 years, Mike Butkus has run his camera manual website by himself.  He buys all of the manuals he scans with his own money, he pays the hosting and domain registration fees with his own money, and he does all the scanning in his free time.  All of this on a site with no ads.  If you have ever found any useful information on his site, we encourage you to send him a couple bucks through PayPal. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/butkus As always, the topics we discuss on the Camerosity Podcast are influenced by you! Please don’t feel like you have to be an expert on a specific type of camera, or have the level of knowledge on par with other people on the show. We LOVE people who are into shooting or collecting cameras, no matter how long you've been doing it, so please don’t consider your knowledge level to be a prerequisite for joining! The guys and I rarely know where each episode is going to go until it happens, so if you’d like to join us on a future episode, be sure to look out for our show announcements on our Camerosity Podcast Facebook page, the Camerosity Discord server, and right here on mikeeckman.com. We usually record every other Monday and announcements, along with the Zoom link are typically shared 2-3 days in advance. We had originally planned on doing a "Cameras of the 1970s" episode for number 69, but with the availability of Mike Butkus, we bumped it by one episode, so for Episode 70, we are definitely getting our disco balls out and putting our bell bottoms on and will be going over the best, the worst, and everything in between from everyone's favorite film camera decade. We will record Episode 70 on Monday, April 29th at 7pm Central Daylight Time (-5 UTC), 8pm Eastern Daylight Time (-4 UTC), and Tuesday at 10am Australian Eastern Standard Time (+10 UTC). We look forward to hearing from you! In This Episode 2024 is the Year of Solar Eclipses, New Jersey Earthquakes, 17 Year Cicadas, and a US Election / Mike Has a Yashica Dental-Eye Mike Butkus's Origin Story / First Scans Were Made in 1999