Chennai man owns 3,000 cameras

Chennai: It's said that a man is known by the company he keeps. But there's someone who's known by the cameras he keeps.

C Sekar, owner of an enviable collection of cameras, chooses to call his apartment 'Camera House', an apt name, considering most of the space in the apartment is taken up by his cameras.

Sekar’s romance with the lens has been going strong for the last 28 years. And now his shelves are brimming with an exquisite collection of more than three thousand cameras – all of which still work.

"There are people who collect vintage cars, or old stamps, but no one ever thinks of camera. I think I'm the first one to do it," C Sekar says.

Sekar has cameras from Britain, US, Switzerland, France. Some of his exclusive pieces are - a model wrapped in crocodile leather, an old wooden piece, that's more than a century old and to top it all, there a small lighter cum camera that clicks a picture even as you light up a cigarette.

Sekar's vintage collection could easily fetch him crores of rupees, a well deserved reward for spending almost three quarters of his earnings on his fetish. But he has other designs.

"At least two college students come to my house everyday to study about my camera. It helps them understand how things were some years ago - that's before technology came in. I want to preserve them all for posterity in a museum," Sekar says.

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