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…