Mr Cad is one of the most distinctive and storied independent photographic dealers in Europe, founded by Alex Falk in 1960 as 'Camera Corner' on Pit Lake Bridge in Croydon, peaking in the 1980s as a chain of nine outlets from Brighton to Colindale, and consolidated through the 1990s-2010s into a single Aladdin's Cave operation that has, by their own credible claim, become Europe's biggest supplier of used analogue camera equipment. After 53 years on Windmill Road in Croydon, the business moved to a smaller premises in Pimlico, London in April 2013, but maintained the depth of inventory that makes it a destination rather than a shop.
The specialism is encyclopedic analogue: 35mm, 120mm, 127mm, 5×4 and 10×8 large format cameras and lenses, enlargers, chemicals, paper, all manner of studio and darkroom hardware and software, Super 8, and one of the UK's most important Polaroid and instant film operations (including the Impossible Project partnership from 2010). Mr Cad is also the second-largest seller of conventional and instant film in the UK by their own estimate, plus a significant studio lighting department covering Multiblitz, Nice, Eagle Flash Systems, Aurora and Eagle Softboxes.
What's online represents only a small fraction of the actual inventory, over 30,000 items are available for part-exchange, and the operation runs on Alex's accumulated memory plus highly loyal staff knowing what's in stock and where to find it. Customers from photography schools, professional photographers worldwide (Ireland, Nigeria, Australia, China), and the art photography community use Mr Cad as a primary source. Alex Falk is still at the helm in his late eighties, an industry institution.
Mr Cad occupies a unique position in the European used camera market, there is no equivalent operation at this scale specifically focused on analogue equipment. The closest comparators are Camera House (Birmingham/Staffordshire, also analogue-focused but smaller scale), Real Camera Company (Manchester), and the various film specialists like Nik & Trick (Folkestone), Roll Film Cameras, and Vintage Camera Hut. None of these match Mr Cad's scale across the breadth of analogue formats from 35mm to 10×8 plus the chemistry, paper, and darkroom hardware operation.
Compared to MPB or Camera Jungle, Mr Cad operates differently: an analogue-focused specialist with deep inventory rather than a digital-mainstream volume operator. Compared to Ffordes (medium format depth in Inverness), Mr Cad is broader across formats and more focused on the supporting infrastructure (enlargers, chemistry) that film photographers actually need. For darkroom photographers specifically, Mr Cad has effectively no UK competitor for one-stop sourcing.
For UK film and analogue photographers, Mr Cad is one of the key destinations, particularly for less-common formats (127, 5×4, 10×8), darkroom equipment, and chemistry. The shop visit in Pimlico is reportedly an experience worth making (Alex Falk's character and the depth of stock make it a destination), and the international mail-order operation works well for buyers who know what they want.