Forget the uber-rare Leica MP2 that’s going on auction at the end of this year. If you want a unique camera but don’t want to trade your house for it, you can save yourself a couple hundred grand by going for this brand new made-for-NASA Hasselblad MKWE up for sale on eBay for a cool $33,751.

We’re not sure why the price is so specific or what exactly makes this a NASA camera (it doesn’t seem to be branded so), but it’s a definitely an eye-catching Hassy.
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This Leica MP2 camera and matching Wetzlar electric motor are going up for auction at WestLicht Auction in December of this year. The starting price for this auction is €80,000 (~$105,000), and the camera is expected to fetch up to €180,000 (~$235,440).

The reason this camera is so darn valuable is because while Leica MP2s are already quite rare, only six of them were ever made in black. This is one of them — the first to ever be offered for sale, and in fully original condition. Welcome to the crazy wonderful world of Leica collecting.

Do you think photographers in the future (assuming they exist) will be collecting any cameras being made during our time?

(via The Online Photographer)

Most of the time we come across an absurdly large and expensive lens on eBay, it’s some sort of lens with focal lengths in the thousands of millimeters (e.g. this 5200mm Canon lens or this 2000mm Nikon lens).

The lens shown above is the Kilfitt Zoomatar 250mm f/1.3 and is currently for sale on eBay. It doesn’t have an absurdly large focal length, but is pretty standard at 250mm. See the little box handing off the end of the lens? That’s the Hasselblad medium format camera this lens is designed for.

The price? A cool $33,751. Needless to say, walking around doing street photography with this lens would earn you some pretty strange looks.

Thanks for the tip Jon!

We featured a Nikon belt buckle here last month, and now here’s one by Canon. It’s a limited edition Canon F-1 belt buckle made by Lewis Buckles in Chicago for Canon in the 1970s. Charles Eves won the one above for $3 in an eBay auction. The seller was a former Canon salesman that was awarded the belt buckle for his high sales.

I wonder what Canon is awarding their employees nowadays…

Thanks for the tip, Lloyd!

Image credit: Photograph by Charles Eves and used with permission

There’s a super rare Nikkor 6mm f/2.8 fisheye lens for sale on eBay. How much does f/2.8, 6mm, and a 220° field of view cost? A mere $34,020.

Aside from this uber-rare lens being uber-expensive, it’s also ridiculously heavy, weighing in at close to 11.5 pounds. Here’s what Photography in Malaysia has to say about this lens:

You are looking at one of the most gorgeous looking lens in 35mm SLR photography – a lens that can actually see behind itself! This series of lenses were originally developed for special scientific and industrial use where wider-than-180° picture coverage is required in surveillance work, photographing the interiors of pipes, boilers, conduits, cylinder bores and other constricted areas. But in applications such as advertising and commercial photography they are used extensively for dramatic effects.

To put the field of view in perspective, human vision is about 180°.

(via Photojojo)

There’s a Nikon 11/2000mm Reflex-Nikkor-C lens for sale on eBay. The price? A mere $19,950.

This page has more information on this rare lens:

This is the longest reaching and the largest dimension Nikkor optical lens for 35mm photography [...] This rarely seen lens was believed to be hand made and on a special order basis. It was generally been seen finished in white colour which carries the purpose of minimizing thermal effect if use frequently in the field [...] Neither the lens is easy to carry along nor friendly to handle as its dimension and weight factor often require time consuming setup for shooting.

The thing isn’t “easy to carry” because it weighs about 39 pounds. It’s also fixed at f/11, so you’ll need good light and stabilization to use it effectively.

(via Nikon Rumors)