Michael Tisdale

Everything in this archive exists because one collector in Atlanta decided that the cameras he loved deserved to be remembered properly. In 2005, Michael Tisdale began BolexCollector.com — in his own words, “a personal project to catalog information about Paillard-Bolex, a Swiss company that manufactured clockwork movie cameras for both the professional and home movie maker.”

He had been collecting still and movie cameras since 1991, with a particular devotion to Paillard-Bolex. What began as a way to organize his own collection grew, over nearly two decades, into the definitive independent reference on the subject: cameras and projectors catalogued model by model, lenses and accessories by decade, serial-number tables, scanned catalogs and advertising, the Bolex Reporter magazine, a company timeline, and a glossary — assembled with a care that most institutions never manage.

It is intended to serve as an online resource for Bolex enthusiasts, collectors of motion picture cameras and anyone with an interest in the history of amateur movie-making equipment.

He was never only an archivist. He was a filmmaker who used the machines he documented — shooting time-lapse, animation, and b-roll, preferring, as he put it, “spring-wound cameras over anything that uses a battery.” For years his hands-on knowledge came mostly through a Bolex H16 Rex-4 and an H16 Supreme on 16mm; later, almost exclusively on double-8mm reversal. That he actually ran film through these cameras is why the site reads like it was written by someone who knew them, not merely someone who owned them.

In an interview with Collectors Weekly, he traced the passion to a convergence of older ones — photography, broadcasting, and collecting vintage records and magazines — and, above all, to an admiration for the Swiss craftsmanship and sheer quality of the cameras themselves. The site earned a place in that publication’s Hall of Fame.

Why this project owes him everything

When BolexCollector.com went offline, a great deal of carefully gathered history was at risk of vanishing with it — the fate of most personal reference sites once the person behind them moves on. This restoration is, first and last, an act of gratitude: to preserve what he built exactly as he made it, and to keep it freely available to the collectors, filmmakers, and curious readers he always meant it for.

We have changed nothing of his record. His pages are preserved byte-for-byte; his words, tables, and scans are reproduced as he published them. The modern edition is only a new reading room built around his library.

With thanks to Michael Tisdale — for the years, the care, and the generosity of sharing it all.