As I was about to let the seller know that I think I got his camera working again, he told me that he really had to go and did we have a deal? I asked him if his price was firm, he shot me an angry look and he said 'four bills is as low as I'll go.' Based on my research, I was getting a pretty good deal, even if the camera needed repair. Whatever I did unstuck the camera and the film advance began to work.

I opened the back of the camera and moved the film advance gear with my finger and I heard a couple of clicks. The seller seemed to be more interested in whomever he was texting on his iPhone than what I was doing with his camera. There was even a little clip on viewfinder for the 8.5cm lens. I checked the lenses, which looked and operated just fine. The film advance wouldn't budge and the shutter release did nothing. Once we found each other in the grocery store lot (the seller turned out to be a nervous young man who now seemed very irritated about having to drive half way to meet me), I inspected the camera. After some back and forth, he agreed to meet me half way in a Safeway parking lot in San Rafael. I called the seller the next day and told him I lived in the North Bay. The camera, advertised as belonging to the seller's grandfather,В was located in South San Francisco and the ad said that the camera was jammed and was being sold as is. One night in April, scanning the San Francisco Craigslist photo listings, I saw a pretty nice example with 5cm and 8.5cm lenses for $500. All of the eBay examples were well over a grand and way out of my budget. I wish I could remember, because it would be fun to try and find a copy and revisit it today.Д®arly in 2014, I got to thinking about that old book and the Nikon rangefinder that was burned into my memory.

I learned how set up a darkroom from reading that book. I do remember that it was written in the 1950s by a woman photographer and that she shot with the S2. I don't remember the name of the book or the author.

It's funny how one little memory like this can stay with you all the way into adulthood, but it did. I have a memory of seeing a Nikon S2 in a 'how to' photography book I borrowed from the library of my junior high school.

Nikon s2 rangefinder camera