Photo Credit: © John Sypal

Last year Nebraska-born, Matsudo, Japan-based photographer John Sypal participated in a group show that took over a shopping street in a small town near Tokyo. The event drew a number of photographers, and Spyal noticed the variety of cameras the visitors had in-tow.

Around the same time, he discovered Tumblr, the microblogging site, and decided to put it to use building an online gallery of images of film cameras being carried by photographers in and around Tokyo. Thus, Tokyo Camera Style was born.

Sypal keeps a Ricoh GRD in his pocket so that whenever he meets someone with a rare or uniquely accessorized film camera—a vintage Leica M5 or Rolleicord or Konica Hexar RF Half-Frame, for instance—he can snap a photograph and add to his project. “It's when I am working on my own photography that I come across other people with cameras for the site,” he says.

There are legions of dedicated film photography enthusiasts in Tokyo, Sypal notes, providing him regular fodder for the project.

“The thing about Tokyo and the people who live here is that information is highly regarded. People love to know about things, and they pride themselves on demonstrating this knowledge,” Sypal says.

“This sounds like a recipe for smugness, but Japan lacks irony and sarcasm. Snark is non-existent. A guy with a rare M6J with a Leicavit, a Noctilux and vintage accessory finder on top isn't being a pretentious show off, but instead is just a guy with interesting taste in cameras.”

“There are more camera publications than most people realize,” Sypal adds, “and the past three years have seen an increase in publications specifically aimed at people interested in film photography.”

Interestingly, Spyal says roughly half to a third of the cameras he photographs belong to women, and three-fourths of the cameras on the site belong to people under 30.

Sypal maintains the site for fun. It gets a few hundred hits a day, he says, and was featured in the June 2009 issue of Nippon Camera. Thanks to the exposure, he sometimes elicits an "Oh, you're that guy,” reaction when he requests a photo.

Check out the Tokyo Camera Style blog by clicking here.