Asia Camera Museum

the Asia Camera Museum in Penang, Malaysia is right up my alley 

One of my big hobbies is photography, especially film photography on classic analog cameras. When we were in Penang, Malaysia, my girlfriend took me to the Asia Camera Museum, which was right up my alley!

up the stairs to a historic photo studio

The museum is located on the second floor of a shop house, in an old historic photo studio which still has its original darkroom. When we arrived, another small group was just leaving. We rang the bell at the counter, and waited for the museum's manager to come out from the back room to greet us. We were the only visitors at the time, and the manager took time to give us a private tour around the small museum.

exhibits in the museum 

The exhibits were incredible, and I was completely thrilled to be there! The museum had everything from 100 year-old tintype cameras to those funky digital cameras from the early 90s that used floppy disks instead of memory cards. They had old movie cameras, Brownies, medium-format cameras, and all sorts of cool stuff. The collection was huge and impressive.

hundreds of classic and antique cameras

One of my favorites was this fantastic old portrait camera. It's the type where the photographer has to cover their head with the dark blanket while taking the picture.

this old camera still works!

They also had a small darkroom, a relic from when the building used to be a photo studio. They don't develop film there anymore (fortunately, it's still easy to get film developed in Bangkok!), but instead have turned the dark room into part of the museum. Other exhibits showed the thousands of tiny parts that make a camera work.

it takes thousands of tiny moving parts to make a camera work

It was so nice to have the free tour. The manager even let us hold several of the antique cameras, and let us look around for as long as we wanted. It was a great experience, and not necessarily one that's in the major guide books when talking about Penang!

the museum