Johnny Graphic, the 12-year-old hero in my two middle-grade adventures, is a real camera nerd. He loves them and makes good use of them in his job as a news photographer. Johnny begins with a big Zoom press camera. In the second book he shoots with a Ritterflex twin-lens reflex. In the final book, he’ll be using a 35mm camera not unlike a 1930s-era Leica.

Recently I ran across a terrific website devoted to historical cameras—Virginia’s Camera Heritage Museum. Their gallery of cameras includes just about every important film camera type and brand you can think of, with great images of the old cameras. Each camera depicted also has it own history briefly described. Just click here to go the gallery.

The cameras shown here are from the museum’s collection and most closely reflect the cameras that Johnny uses as he tries to save the world from ghostly catastrophe, one picture at a time. In fact, in the first book he discovers that his big Zoom camera makes a swell weapon, much to the dismay of one very nasty wraith.