Cameras I've Known and Loved

This young scholar with chocolate ice cream smeared on his face was waiting for his mother just outside of Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I shot it with a Canon 7s rangefinder loaded with Kodak Tri-X. How can you not love a camera that makes it easy to get photos like this?

Out of simple curiosity, I decided to make a of list every camera I remember owning. The list came to 30, starting with the Mamiya/Sekor 500DTL I used in high school and ending with my most recent purchase, the Canon EOS 30D. To some of you this may sound like a lot. Keep in mind, however, that I'm in my mid-50s, so this didn't happen in a year or two; I've had almost 40 years to buy and sell. Mostly sell, because I only own half a half-dozen cameras now. Most of them are film cameras I keep around for nostalgic reasons and, to be honest, because I enjoy using them a lot more than my DSLRs.

But this post isn't just about enjoyment. It's about love. It's a ode to the cameras I bonded with, if only for a year or two; the cameras that helped make me a better photographer; the ones that made me look at the world differently, learn new techniques, and realize that the only limitations on my photography were not the camera or the lens, but me.

One early example was the Canon 7s, Canon's last 35mm interchangeable lens rangefinder. I used it during my first two years in college. It was completely manual. The meter was a CdS cell stuck onto the front of the body and did not read through the lens. Its readings were easily fooled by bright objects and you never knew for sure about its angle of coverage. Speaking of which, the frame lines weren't automatic either. You had to turn a dial on top of the camera.

As a result, the Canon 7s made me think about what I was doing, and fortunately there wasn't much to think about. I had only one lens (a 50mm f/1.8, not the huge 50mm f0.95 you see here) and shot only in black and white, so shutter speed, aperture, and focus were all that was left. The camera became a part of me; something I could set in an instant, effortlessly and without looking. Try that with any of today's DSLRs. Hell, it's hard to set some of them even when you are looking!

At the opposite extreme in size though similar in simplicity was the Pentax 67 I owned when I was in my late-twenties. The Pentax 67 took 120 rollfim, produced a 6x7cm image and looked like a 35mm SLR on steroids. Because the reflex mirror and shutter were so large, the noise and vibration were alarming, to say the least. Most Pentax 67 afficionados mounted it to a heavy tripod and used mirror lock-up to ensure vibration-free photos. That's certainly what I did when I used it for interior photography. I skipped the mirror lock-up for portraiture.

Common sense would dictate that the Pentax 67 would be one of the worst possible choices for street photography--and yet it was one of the best street cameras I ever owned. Was it small? No. Was it quiet? Hardly. I therefore had to abandon all pretense of being discrete. Instead, I had to get comfortable with walking around in public places with a huge  conversation-starter. People took it for granted that I was "serious" and that if I pointed it in their direction it was for good reason. Most were flattered. Attractive women asked for my card. Men looked with envy at the size of my lenses. The lesson-learned was that it was up to me to decide what camera was most appropriate for my needs, not tradition, popular opinion or accepted wisdom.

I could go on, but I'm sure by now you get my point. Different types of cameras encourage different ways of seeing and photographing the world. Every now and then if you find yourself in a creative rut it may help to try a camera radically different from what you're used to.

Finally, I can't be the only one who has fallen in love with a camera or two and learned something from the relationship. Feel free to share a brief tribute to past loves or flings of your own--but don't be too surprised if you're not the only one who's fallen under the spell of some of the great cameras of the past.

Comments

[Janne]

I have two current loves. One is the Rollei 35S. Small and solid, it's built like a metal brick - literally; it's possibly the least ergonomic piece of equipment I've owned. It's quirky and a little odd to use, with its scale focusing, retractable lens left-hand winder. It's also joy to use, and it's my coat-pocket camera, always with me.

My other love you already mentioned: the Pentax 67. No, you're not discreet or unobtrusive. Yes, it really is a good street camera. Especially if you use a waist-level finder instead of the prism finder (that hunk of glass alone is almost a third of the camera weight).

What they have in common, I think, is a sense of being very solid, precise and reliable. And they're anything but bland; both cameras ooze personality, and this is amplified by the use of film, which adds its own signature to the results, depending on the film and development.

[Karl Storck]

I'm not close to your number of cameras, but I keep going. Two of them have been used Pentax Spotmatics. I just ran them down that last bit. I should have bought a K1000. Still regret I never did. Most loved is probably my Nikon FM2 besides my Pentaxes.

Instamatic
Pentax SV (first slr, bought 1977)
Chinon CE4
Mamaiya 645
Pentax Spotmatic
Pentax Spotmatic
Canon demi EE17
Nikon FM2n
Hasselblad 500C
Hasselblad 500CM
Nikon F60
Nikon D80
Nikon D200
Olympus E-P1

[Paul]

Great post, Gordon. That photo really gave me a big smile when I saw it. :-) I'll always remember my first love, a Minolta SRT-101. Simplicity at its finest. One lollipop, one stick, no frills. I've since fallen in love with a recent acquisition, a Leica M6. Again, simplicity, quietness, and gestalt. It just gets out of the way and lets me take pictures my way.

[Kevin Mayo]

Way to get two of the most diametrically opposed cameras ever in the same post. I understand the point how some cameras work for you and some don't.

[Edd Fuller]

I'm with Paul on the SRT-101. It wasn't my first camera (that was a Minolta SR7- which like Gordon's Canon rangefinder had a meter built into the body but did not meter through the lens). I used the SRT-101 exclusively for about 10 years in the 70s and early eighties and looking back at the negatives from that camera, I am always suprised at how good it was. Somewhere along the way I switched to Pentax, and still shoot regularly with my small and simple MX.

[Dolan Halbrook]

My loves...

• Pentax ME (my first real camera)
  
• Contax 137MD (oh, those lenses..)
  
• Olympus XA (my spy camera)
  
• Fuji F10 (my only true digital love...)
  

I've had a ton of other cameras over the years, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind. I'm still trying to reproduce the shots from those cameras, years later. My current stable (Pentax K-7 and Panny TS-1) are technically great cameras, but they don't evoke the same emotions. That said, I hear there's an LX-3 successor coming out soon, and the m4/3 bodies are looking more interesting by the day ...

[Peter Lenz]

Must be that I am a little younger. My favorite and first good camera was the Olympus OM-2, with the fabulous 50/1.4 lens. Another camera I had a love afair with was Praktisix with a 180 f2.8 Sonnar but the film transport kept failing. Now recently bought a Leica M6 and a Hasselblad 553 ELX, what a beauty.

[Josh]

Pentax LX. It fits my hands just right, never fights a lens, and the original owner's monogram below the film advance lever reminds me that it used to work for a living.

[John Robison]

My favorites are my half frame Olympus VF and reflex cameras, still used for most of my photography. My great regret is selling my Miranda D, my first SLR in the early 70's. It had interchangeable finders and screens and my first purchase for it was a waist level finder and plain matte screen. Even today I can't get along with split wedge and microprism focusing screens and all my OM-1's are outfitted with matte screens. Just purchased a DSLR March of 2009, an E-410 (with a simple adapter I can use all my OM Zuiko glass on it) but the extra bright screen is marginal for manual focus and I long again for just a matte screen with no markings what so ever on the screen. So like you, I much enjoy my film cameras more and now must retire to the darkroom to soup a couple of rolls of B&W.

[Lesley]

In 1972, while travelling (local buses and hitch-hiking) through East Africa, I bought my first "real" camera, a Nikkormat FTN with a 50mm lens. Over the next few years it got bounced around in springless vehicles, stuffed in the bottom of a rucksack that was then tossed atop a bus in Peru, and only marginally protected from the salt spray while kayaking on the west coast of BC. I learned to see what the lens saw, and could focus and set aperature and shutter speed to achieve what I saw in my mind within moments. Eventually the salt spray got to it, and I moved on to a Nikon FE. And then, of course, came digital.
Several years ago I bought another old Nikkormat and although I used it only a couple of times, it felt "right" in my hands. Maybe I'll get it out again!

[Steve Rosenbach]

I like articles like this one, Gordon, and I really enjoyed yours! I would have loved to have one of the old Canon rangefinders - a 7 or a Canon P.

As for me, my all-time favorite piece of photo machinery is the Leica IIIc I had in the 70's (btw, I'm turning 60 next week ;-)

Here's a little post I did for my blog about it: http://tinyurl.com/y8dljma

[Robert Hoehne]

I have had a few cameras I loved using:
Minolta CLE
Minolta 7s rangefinder
Minolta XD11
I now shoot a Canon 5DII which I don't mind but no real affection for. As a street camera with a huge 24-70 f2.8 on it I get a surprising reaction, people come up tome asking for me to take their picture, http://roberthoehne.com/b2evolution/index.php/2010/01/27/australia_day_2010_at_the_entrance. This never happens when I take out any other small or average sized camera.
Size does matter.