Then and Now: Remembering Dean’s Photo-Cam

Seated in a corner of the local Starbucks, Dean Shaffer talks shutter speeds, lenses and camera types as he sips his coffee. Dean, who has worn many hats, shares his knowledge with all the confidence of a professional who has spent decades in the photography business.

Although his camera repair shop existed before my time, I have paid several visits to the building that once housed it: 66 W. Water Street, the current home of Kindred Spirits Crystals, Books & Gifts. A number of years before Hellertown’s familiar New Age store came on the scene, there was Shaffer’s camera repair shop, which Dean founded himself and ran with a handful of employees. The shop, Photo-Cam, served the local community from the mid 80s to 1991, and Dean remembers the years of his camera repair shop fondly. For Dean, the shop was the culmination of a life-long passion. “I loved repairing cameras,” Dean says with a smile. “I wish I could have kept doing it.”

Photography was with Dean every step of his life. “As a kid, I really liked photography,” Dean says. “My dad used to have a folding flip camera, and he would take pictures of trains going past my grandmother’s house.” Dean enjoyed tinkering with the camera his father gave him, a Kodak Brownie Starmite which used plug-in flashbulbs—a far cry from today’s iPhone cameras.

During high school, Dean gained experience in camera repair from a home study course with the New York Institute of Photography. The information learned from the Institute would serve as a good foundation for Dean’s burgeoning photography career. In 1973, Dean joined Bethlehem Steel’s Micrographic and Computer Output Microfilm Department, microfilming a variety of items like checks and drawings of railroad cars.

During his time at Bethlehem Steel, Dean opened the Photo-Cam repair shop in Hellertown. The business was originally run out of his home, but as it grew, Dean left the Steel and relocated Photo-Cam to Water Street. By the mid 80s, Photo-Cam was an established local business, sharing a building with Zeke Rentzheimer’s shoe repair shop. Though they worked in different fields, Dean and Zeke provided similar services to their customers. “Shoes were like cameras,” Dean explains. “People used to buy shoes and get new soles put on all the time while keeping the same shoes.” Though nowadays cameras are normally built into cell phones and require no maintenance, the models Dean encountered required frequent upkeep. Like Zeke’s shoes, customers chose to have their cameras repaired rather than replaced.

Photo-Cam was built entirely from the ground up, with the Schaffers’ own hodge-podge contributions. “My dad actually made a lot of these things,” Dean says as he shows me old photographs of the store. “He made this tool cabinet. He made the work benches, the shelves, everything. I had a couple basic items, like maybe a light meter, but none of the other tools that I needed. I had to scrounge the rest of them up.” As Photo-Cam grew, Dean developed his own method of repair. When disassembling cameras, Dean would use empty egg cartons to sort the screws and small parts. “I’d get an egg carton and put the pieces in there: Number one goes in there. That lever goes in here. I’d use the egg cartons so I knew in what order I took the camera apart. To put it back together, I could just reverse the order.”

The key for Dean’s professional development was repetition. He would pore over camera service manuals from the Society of Photo-Technologists, meticulously following their instructions, until he felt comfortable handling a wide set of models. “When I first started, every camera terrified me!” Dean admits, laughing. “But I had enough confidence to know that if I had the service manual, and if I could get parts for what I needed, I was okay. I can do this repair without stripping these screws. I can do that repair without damaging the shutter.”

As the business grew, so did Dean’s team of workers, and in the late 80s Dean brought on a fellow technician and a bookkeeper. Though Dean enjoyed repairing in his shop, the logistics of running Photo-Cam were beginning to take a toll. The business prospered, but the expenses grew. 

“Employees were getting paid holidays, vacations, health insurance, while I wasn’t getting any of those benefits,” Dean said.  “It became clear to me that I needed to do something to get those same benefits.” In 1991, Dean sold Photo-Cam to Optikos, an Allentown photo equipment store, and moved into the field of biomedical photography.

With such a broad range of photography experience under his belt, did Dean’s appreciation for the art of photography change over the years?

“I don’t know that I ever lost interest in taking pictures,” Dean muses. “I stopped taking pictures because you’re always looking through the viewfinder. It’s like spending your time looking at your phone. If you’re looking at your phone, you’re missing out.”

Though Dean chose to close shop, his memories of owning Photo-Cam and the services he gave to the community live on. His experiences with Photo-Cam serve as a good reminder that every passion is worth pursuing.

Helen Behe is an MFA candidate at DeSales University, where she is studying through the program’s poetry track for a degree in creative writing and publishing. Aside from her studies, Helen enjoys gardening, boxing and rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles. She is a resident of Bethlehem. Read more of Helen’s Then & Now series here.