World's most expensive camera up for auction

And not a megapixel in sight

World's most expensive camera up for auction

27 January 2010 17:03 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

What's being described as the first commercially produced camera is due to go under the hammer at an Austrian auction house in May of this year. Expected to sell for between 500,000 and 700,000 euros it's one pricey snapper with that cost converting to between £433,000 and £607,000 in proper money.

The camera in question is the "Giroux Daguerreotype" found recently in a private home in Germany. Said to be in "outstanding original condition" despite its 170 years, it's offered complete with the original manual from 1839.

"The wooden sliding-box camera was made in Paris in September 1839 by Alphonse Giroux, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's brother-in-law. Daguerre, the inventor of the first practicable photographic process, signed the camera to verify its authenticity", says the WestLicht Photographica auction house.

Only very few of these cameras are known to exist worldwide and all of those are in public museum collections.

Full tags

Cameras, Film cameras