Jack Libbis made no more than $42 in his last week of business. Not enough to make him reopen the doors of Canberra's oldest photographic store. Ninety years of history shut for good.

"I'm still in a spin about it. I'm still in disbelief that something like this could be so detrimental to close us down," the owner of the Manuka Photographic Centre said.

"I get very emotional about it. It's half my life and it's been my passion since I was a 12-year-old kid with a camera in my hand."

"We have some customers who have been coming in their whole lives. There is a 95-year-old lady who has been coming to the shop since she was four years old."

For Mr Libbis, the coronavirus crisis has accelerated a trend. Conventional cameras were doomed once smartphones improved.

He has felt the first tremors of the earthquake which business owners have told The Canberra Times they are sure is on the way.

It hasn't arrived in full force yet.

One pawn shop in Canberra said that trade was actually down. Fewer people were coming in for desperate loans in return for their valuables.

Across the country, personal insolvencies are at their lowest in 30 years.

Bankruptcies haven't risen in the ACT since the virus hit.

"There's no up-tick," Alisa Taylor, a partner in Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers said.

"There's almost no activity in that space at the moment."

"The government has temporarily taken away the teeth of the legislation," Ms Taylor said.

It's done that by making it harder to reclaim debts.

Before the crisis, people owed money by a company could send a "creditors' statutory demand" to the debtor, wait 21 days and if there was no payment move to get the company owing the money declared insolvent. That grace period has been extended to six months.

And the threshold for demanding money has been raised from $2,000 to $20,000.

But lawyers say it's a postponement of crisis. "The steps that the government has put in place are only deferring the damage," Lorraine White of BDN Lawyers said.

Alisa Taylor said that insolvencies might increase from October if the legislation goes back to normal.

"In six months time, these companies won't have the money to pay up."

She thinks the problems will be acute for commercial landlords with big mortgages but who have deferred rent collection so income isn't coming in.

READ MORE:

"Bankruptcy is a last resort once the credit cards are maxed out," according to Charles Bosse of Bankruptcy Experts which helps companies in trouble in Canberra.

He called the current situation, "the calm before Canberra's storm".

Some in business are not completely bleak about the prospects. Eddie Senatore who specialises in helping companies deal with crises, including insolvency, thinks the best companies will survive and those which have lost the habit of innovation and enterprise will fail.

"We'll see the businesses which are serious operators come through but they will be skin and bones," he said.

He cites companies which are adapting. A gym which has put physical exercise instruction online. An Italian restaurant which has returned to its roots as a deli. Pubs going the many extra miles to deliver food.

On the other, darker side, some companies are surviving only because the government help is there, according to Mr Senatore, what he calls "zombie corporations".

"They've just stuck around to get the stimulus," he said.

"For these companies on the fringe, all that's happened is kicking the can down the road to September and October."