A New Record Is Set

Yesterday's post ("Your Favorite Digital Camera") set a new record for most comments of any TOP post—336 as of this writing. Thanks to everyone who answered—very interesting and enlightening for me, and also fun.

(Note that TOP takes Saturdays off, so no new post tomorrow.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Scott Reeves: "Congrats on the record. I did not comment on the thread but read many of the comments with interest. My own personal favorite, my beloved Nikon D300, is no longer the camera I use every day—nor is it even my backup camera. I am certain that if asked, many others would say the same. What an interesting reflection on the state of photography (and commerce for that matter) that we happily discard our favorite tools to replace them with ones that we inevitably will not like as well. No big surprise, I guess."

Comments

[toto]

Probably broke the record for the shortest comments too.

[mani]

Re-reading my own comment from yesterday (who doesn't do that?), I was mortified to see the obnoxious (but unintentional) tone of boasting through my whole post: “my Leica this, my Mamiya that bla bla Canon 0.95". In the giddy excitement of writing about MY cameras for a change, instead of reading other people’s opinions about their’s, I'd omitted the main point of the intoxicated joyride through my camera cabinet, which was that switching to film had not only allowed me to try a wide range of formats and exotic equipment that in some cases doesn't even exist in digital, I'd been able to do it at a fraction (or rather four or even five decimal points) of the price of the equivalent digital equipment.
While I'd been on the treadmill of digital ’upgrades’ I’d never really been able to step very far outside my limited 'comfort zone’ of camera choice - going out on a limb to buy something totally different wasn't really an option if it meant taking a large loss when the experiment failed (I've never sold a digital camera at anything other than a massive loss). But trying different film cameras and old lenses is trivial, and I've even sold them at a profit.
Just one more aspect of the endless ’film vs digital’ debate that I tried (unsuccessfully) to shoehorn into yesterday's discussion, and came away looking like a bit of an ass.

[I think you're being too hard on yourself. Your comment didn't come across to me as being inappropriate. --Mike]

[Art in LA]

You know you're going to have tally everything up, right? Have fun!

[James Sinks]

Thanks for asking the question. I don't often get to talk about my favorite camera...and I probably went a little overboard.

[Anurag Agnihotri]

Will be nice if you tabulate them or something...i am a sucker for the 'lists'.

[Barbu Mateescu]

I really, really hope that we'll get a statistic for that (mount, brand, model at least).
____

This part NOT for publishing: Mike... please stay true to the question, and no more featuring Arc(h)aic cameras in a *digital* question.

[Marco Venturini Autieri]

People like to talk of themselves.

[Manuel]

Proof that we're a bunch of gearheads ;)

[Daniel R]

Just wait until you ask us about out favourite lens!

[Jim Simmons]

I don't mean this as a criticism, but I sensed in the request that you were actually aiming for a "highest ever" response rate. To hear that you achieved it makes me feel like a seer. :-)

[Ian Loveday]

Here's a personal theory. What makes us cherish the memory of a particular camera above others? I believe in many cases it is the scale of increase in satisfaction over the camera you had previously. I went (in my youth) from a Zenith to an Olympus OM1, I did not experience the same step-change in satisfaction progressing through OM2, and finally OM4Ti although these were technically superior cameras. So the OM1 became my most cherished film camera. I didn't experience a similar step-change until moving from my HP945 (first digital camera) to a Pentax DS so the DS retains my affection despite moving on to more advanced DSLRs since.

[Jack]

Next question after "your favorite lens"
Might be: camera you "miss from your past,"
Or film camera you wish you could buy in digital form if it cost no extra.
I like the comment that your favorite camera is usually the one that was the largest step up from the last one. I agree with that.

[Bryce Lee]

Suspect Ian Loveday's commentary is maybe the most telling.
Me?
Replied as to the original query about digital;
not as much as was covered by others.
My own favourite camera was a Pentax Spotmatic
with a 50mm lens. The two other glass I wanted was a wide angle lens and a telephoto (135mm). Maybe that's all we need these days?

At work had Nikon, and Hasselblad cameras and these were used by me daily for some 28 years.
However would much prefer to return to those days where life was simpler and too the photographic devices. The whole world of photography has changed in the mechanical
end of the process. It still is a matter of recording the moment the way you see it!

[Caleb Courteau]

Talking about cameras is easier than talking about photography. The End.

[John]

'The same thing that makes you live, can kill you in the end'. That was from Neil Young.
My cherished maxxum 5D is still clicking along with a bunch of old incredible Minolta glass gathered over the years. A parking lot meeting with like a drug deal for a guy to sell me a Beer can.
http://www.dyxum.com/lenses/Minolta-AF-70-210mm-F4-%28beercan%29_lens48.html
The thing to remember is it's photography, not the camera. Don't want to go down on a bad frame.

[Eric Perlberg]

I enjoy reading your posts and I also enjoy clicking on your commenters' names to go to their galleries and look through their images (does anybody else do that?). I found it especially interesting to see the images in relation to the poster's fave cam though I'm left with no special insights. It's going to take awhile though to make it through that many comments.

[Frank]

I talk abot my Canon 5D (with 50mm lens) in my response to the "Your Favorite Digital Camera" post, and find that all three cameras I own have been mentioned - Canon 5D, Sony R1, and Panasonic GF1. Hooray!

Actually I like them all. As Mike once said, a good camera is good because it made pictures you want. You use it and make pictures satisfying to your art pursue, memoriable to your life or family, or significant to your career, and you're gonna like it. All my cameras have captured some "decisive moments" or "significant others" of my life, my family, or my friends. Therefore I can't help liking them.

And each of them has some merits that others lack. That's sad. Or that's interesting. And that's an indivisible part of photography hobby - we have endless lust of cameras (and lenses). ^_^

[Paul Marriner]

G12