When Keith South presses the trigger on his folding roll film camera from 1927, he’s reconnecting with family history. The modest German import, of uncertain make, would sell for a paltry sum, but to the 51-year-old database manager it’s a priceless portal to the past.

“It’s my grandfather’s camera. He bought it when he was 16. His hands manipulated the controls. His finger moved on the trigger I’m moving now,” said South. “It’s my last tangible, tactile connection with my grandfather.”

South’s beloved “Gramps”, Edward Simmons, born in 1911, was orphaned by the sinking of the Titanic and his education paid for by the disaster’s charitable trust. From one of his first pay packets as an apprentice upholsterer, Edward — known as Ted — bought the camera mail order from a newspaper advertisement.

“He probably paid quite a lot of money for this camera so he had to have been quite keen on photography and I’ve inherited that from him,” South said.

Ted’s camera is now one of 150 or so vintage models South has restored and maintains in working order at his home near Southampton in southern England.

Clearing out an attic after his grandfather’s death, South found an old shoebox with negatives of shots taken with the 1927 camera. Among them is one of his grandparents, Ted and Lily, on honeymoon, when they asked a passer-by to take their photo.

The shot is displayed online in South’s Living Image museum in which, poignantly, he recounts placing the negative in the camera exactly where “the light from my grandparents had struck it and altered it forever. I do so wish I could shine a light back through that negative, out of the same lens to have them back again.”

Most coveted

Thanks to the popularity of photography and the mass production of cameras in the 20th century, South has built up his pre-digital collection mostly through hand-me-downs or for around £10 ($15) from second-hand shops. “It might cost more to buy film for some than to buy the actual camera,” he said.

Indeed, the market is flooded with vintage cameras, which can sell for near to nothing. “The exciting thing about the camera market is you can go to a car boot sale and get something for £1 or £5 ($1.50 or $8) that’s quite good or spend £100 ($155) on something that’s very good,” said Jon Baddeley, managing director of Bonhams auction house in London.

In Bonhams’ twice-yearly sales in London, and annual sale in Hong Kong, only models worth more than around £1,000 ($1,554) are offered. The biggest sales in the past three years have been to buyers in the Far East, including Taiwan and Hong Kong, said Baddeley, whose next sale in Hong Kong will be on 25 Nov.