Guide
Hilmi Nakipoğlu founded this camera museum in Bakırköy in 1997 around his own collection, and it presents itself as the first camera museum in Türkiye. The oldest camera in it was made in 1896; from there the collection runs forward to the present across a wide range of makes and formats. The museum gives its own size in two ways on the same page — approaching a thousand cameras in one place, a collection reaching 900 in another.
The interest is in the variety rather than any single piece. Alongside ordinary hand cameras there are studio cameras, both the portable kind and the kind that never moved, twin-lens reflexes, spy and miniature cameras, and cameras built for Leica film and for Polaroid. Roll film and other film stocks are shown with the accessories that went with them, and the brands on display include Leica, Zeiss, Kodak, Rolleiflex and Rolleicord, Ihagee and Exakta, Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Contax, Minolta, Yashica, Praktica and Derogy. Following the cameras in order makes the technological change legible in a way a single object cannot.
The museum was set up to pass on the idea of collecting itself, particularly to children and young people, and it works as an introduction for anyone with an interest in photography.
It opens on weekdays except Monday, 10:00 to 17:00. Admission is charged, at rates that differ for pre-school, school-age and adult visitors. To reach it, take the 94 Eminönü-Osmaniye bus and get off at the Bakırköy Adliye stop; cross to the street opposite the entrance of the Bakırköy courthouse, walk to the end of it and turn right. From the Anatolian side, take the metrobus to İncirli and pick up the 94 from the bus stop there.
