The Online Photographer

Sunday Support Group: Impulse, or Compulsion?

Every time I sell stuff on eBay I end up...buying stuff. I bought another film camera a few days ago.

Geez. This marks what, five months since I swore up and down to myself that I would never, ever, under any circumstances ever buy another film camera again? Yeah, about that long.

It was a pure impulse purchase. I wasn't even looking at film cameras at the time.

I now own twelve, which might be a lifetime high number (I don't actually keep track), which I think you'll agree is very appropriate in light of the impressive amount of film I shoot every year, namely, nada, also expressible as "zilch." So I need all these cameras, obviously.

I had a girlfriend once who had such a thing for shoes that she seemed to be incapable of walking past a women's shoestore without being drawn inside by an invisible tractor beam. Shoes were like a compulsion with her. Well, can't imagine that.

But wow, look...I scored a Nikon N8008 for a mere $99 and it turned out to be new. In the box, with the protective film on the bottom and the JCII sticker fresh and sparkling. It even had the little plastic insert over the film gate. Not a mark of any kind on the thing. Looks untouched.

Of course, the seller might possibly have been being just a wee bit disingenuous even so—because the battery compartment was hard to open and the batteries, which the camera had obviously been stored with for a long time, had oxidized and bled some of that white crusty stuff (what is that, anyway?) on the insert and into the battery compartment.

Or possibly there was no intent to deceive; maybe the seller just didn't realize. It's possible. Things happen. People do pass away, loved ones put their belongings up on eBay without really knowing how or if they work...things like that. Collections are broken up and sold. Things are parceled off to intermediaries for selling. Could have been quite innocent. Then again, maybe that's why a pristine LN Nikon was for sale at a measly ninety-nine bucks. And how come he described it as "in perfect working condition. All of the shutter speeds, program and manual modes, light meter, motor drive and all other functions are working as they should"? Really? How would he know that, with ancient dead-as-a-doornail batteries frozen in the battery well? Methinks the seller doth claim too much.

Caveat emptor all the way on Ye Olde Fleabay.

Anyway, an hour's soak of the battery holder in a weak solution of vinegar and a little careful swabbing of the battery compartment with a dry Q-tip, some fresh batteries, and all was forgiven.

For a camera that's 30 to 33 years old, this is a time capsule.

Leading edge but not bleeding edge
Takes me back (nostalgia being no doubt the main attraction here). In 1988–91, the original 8008's production run, Nikon pitched it as an amalgamated successor to both the FE2 and the FA. The FA was the first camera to feature what came to be called Matrix metering, although it was called "Automatic Multi-Pattern" (AMP) metering in the FA. That was the beginning of the end for photographers understanding how metering works. It boasted the "world's fastest autofocus" at the time. It's also very easy to focus with manual-focus AIS lenses, what with its AF-confirmation dot in the viewfinder.  It has auto-load and auto-wind and -rewind, ultramodern features in the '80s. Woo-hoo. It also had lots of of plastic, which alarmed everyone.

Oh, and I need to eat a little crow, too: remember the other day when I was expressing dismay that the new Pentax K-3 III will cost two thousand dollars? Well, the N8008 cost $857 when it was introduced in 1988, and that is, ahem, $1,934.37 in 2021 dollars. Hmm. Maybe the problem here is that my sense of the value of money is stuck in 1988?

I had two 8008's back then (for some reason no one then ever used the "N" when referring to it). I joined a professional studio with the condition that I would switch to Nikon, because the other three photographers all used Nikon and everyone pooled their equipment. Needed a particular lens for a job? Somebody had one. My Contax stuff wouldn't have been useful in the mix.

I wanted to get an F4s, and had one on order, but there was a several-month delay before it would be available, so I bought an 8008 to use in the meantime. When my F4s arrived, I de-accessioned the 8008, as planned. Then, after using the F4s for a year, I decided I actually liked the 8008 better! So I bought another one and sold the F4s. So this is my third of these.

I slugged it out as a pro for five years, although gradually my business and income shifted mainly to high-quality custom B&W printing for exhibition and reproduction. I was better at that than anyone in town. I was not better as a professional photographer than anyone in town.

Now all this old camera needs is an AF-Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2 D, which by a strange vagary of fortune is still available new. Not gonna do it, not gonna do it, not gonna....

The F4s was the camera that turned me off of big cameras, by the way. For the duration, as it turned out. What a portly beastie it was. (Paul, whose name was on the lease at our beautiful studio, called his Nikon F3 with full motor drive "Darth Vader." So of course he called my F4s "Luke." He was sadder than I was when Luke departed.)

Will I ever take a single picture with this survivor 8008? Probably not. But one thing's absolutely for certain this time: no more film cameras for me. This is it. No question. Never buying another one.

Believe me? Why of course you do. How could you doubt?

It's hip to be square
Meanwhile, back in the here and now, I've been taking pictures with the X-H1 using the widest lens I have, the 14mm prime (21mm equivalent), with the aspect ratio set on square. It's very different for me. Not the way I'm used to seeing at all. But I've been in a rut, so I'm shaking myself up. Trying to be more iconoclastic in my compositions, too, to loosen the visual calcification.

We'll see how that goes. But I always enjoy experiments.

And y'know, I do love photography, so it's all good.

Mike 

Books o' the Week

Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 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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Ron Hoffer: "I sincerely took the same pledge around four years ago after I sold off the last of my Nikon SLR gear, figuring the remaining stable of six classic, elegant and capable film cameras (Leica M7; Contax T; Rollei 35; Hasselblad 501 CM; Rolleiflex T, and a folding medium-format Ikonta) should suffice for my occasional film shooting diversion from Fuji fan behavior. Barely a year passed before two lovely M-mount lenses passionately and successfully cried to join the brood. After all I could use these on my Fujis! But how to explain the purchase and then near immediate return of a rebought Nikon F3HP and then a Barnack Leica? Alas, their behavior suggested expensive repairs ahead. When the electronics of my pocket rocket Contax-T failed two months ago, I lost all resilience and succumbed to a Pentax Spotmatic; a chrome version of my first serious camera from 51 years ago. At least I chose two lenses that I never used before (a 35mm ƒ/3.5 and 55 mm ƒ/1.8). After a professional CLA, the camera reminds me of my youth, with a serious shutter 'clunk' and the benefits of small aperture hyper-focus to account for the crude groundless focusing. First rolls affirmed the glory of Takumar glass and home souping in Rodinal. So, the itch is satisfied for now; that is unless a Mamiya 6 or 7 crosses my path...!!!"

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "I knew more than one fashion photographer that favored the 8008 over the F4. They first bought them as back-up, and then just started using them as their primary!"

Kye Wood: "The only cure to this specific ailment is this; have your collection (of whatever you keep purchasing) on the table in front of you. At all times. When you're presented with temptation, glance at the surfeit. The urge will immediately abate. I can guarantee that this strategy works for cameras, lenses, watches and guitars."

Malcolm Leader: "White powder? From the web: White Crystals and powder on the battery is potassium carbonate. This is electrolyte (potassium hydroxide) which reacted with O2 to form Potassium Carbonate. In this condition the battery is no longer usable. Potassium carbonate is a very strong alkaline and water soluble."

hugh crawford: "I used to use a 8008 and the dedicated flash that Nikon made for it because it had one really neat trick. You could set it up so if you held it over your head and were using autofocus the flash would project a spot where the camera was pointed. It was great for when a PR agency client was throwing a party at a nightclub and there were a lot of other photographers crowding around some celebrity. Stick your arm up, get the red spot on celebrity X, push the button, and you get the overhead eye-of-god photo of celebrity X surrounded by photographers. As an extra bonus you would often get them looking straight at the camera (because of the the mysterious red spotlight) with a puzzled expression as though they had just recognized someone.

"The PR people loved it since it showed that the celebrity came to the event, the press covered the event, and the celebrity was looking right at the camera.

"I didn’t really have any 35mm equipment at the time so I went into Lens & Repro where I was a frequent renter, and said that I needed to rent a camera for party/disco photography. The guy behind the counter said 'watch this,' did the red spot thing, and I was sold."

Mike replies: Great story! I never knew about that.

I was amazed at the sheer number of flash units pictured in the "System Information" brochure that came with the old Nikon. It made me reflect that one of the things that made Nikon top dog back in the day was its expertise with flash...no other camera came close. With today's extreme high ISO's making flash much less necessary, that could be another contributor to Nikon's decline these days.

Richard Man: "It's so cheap, I save money every time I buy!!!  ;-P  "

John Camp: "Back in the '90s, I had newspaper photographer friends who were secretly leaving the newspaper-supplied F4s's at home and using their N90's instead. The N90 I believe was the 8008 successor, and was a terrific camera that weighed about half of what an F4 weighed. That was important—PJs carried an immense amount of crap around with them, ready for anything, and some literally damaged their shoulders with the weight of their camera bags."

Mike replies: I used to believe I damaged my neck by draping heavy cameras around it and maybe I did. I had chronic neck pain for at least twenty years. Believe it or not, the thing that cured it was pool!  It didn't occur to me until after I bought first first pool table (in 2012 or so) that it might make my neck pain worse, but it did the opposite—something about leaning over above the cue and then raising up my head as far as I could stretched whatever needed to be stretched or strengthened whatever needed to be strengthened. In three weeks my old neck pain was gone, and it hasn't come back. It's amazing what the right exercises will do. Physical therapy is full of deep mysteries, I think.

Alex G: "I can still recall the desire I once felt for a Nikon F100. Sometimes I forget that it’s an old, obsolete desire and it feels very real. I satisfied that impulse pretty well with a N80, back in 2004...the last film camera I bought new. It came somewhat close to the F100. Fortunately I resold it while it still had some value. But these obsolete desires just live in your head alongside the names of ex girlfriends’ parents and the like."

David Brown: "eBay came close to being like crack to me in the late 1990s and early 2000s (I'm recovering...). At one time I owned 12 (Twelve!) 35mm SLRs that worked, and a couple or three that did not. I think (I would have to count) that I am down to six or eight now, and four medium format. Last frame of film? I don't remember."

Open Mike: Change for the Sake of Change?

["Open Mike" is the open-topic editorial page of TOP, when Yr. Hmbl. Ed. frets about the stuff that clutters his brain. It is sometimes on-topic, sometimes not. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays, and sometimes does.]

Something new and novel happened to me yesterday: I had to admit to myself that I like my old digital camera better than my new digital camera. And my old lens better than my new lens.

I won't talk about the cameras themselves or their features, because this isn't really about that. It's more about how we make decisions to change, and why we sometimes change things that don't need changing.

Big warm wet kiss
For some reason, something I read in an audiophile magazine many years ago stuck with me. The writer admitted that he was in a permanent state of constantly changing his system, that he was always looking to upgrade. Then he admitted that the first time he optimized his system, he had landed on a modestly expensive (in the high-end audio world, that would mean "very expensive but not absolutely insane to normal people") system that was suited to his personal tastes; it consisted of tube electronics and Quad electrostatic speakers is all I remember. He described its sound as a "big warm wet kiss." He said something along the lines of, it wasn't accurate but it departed from accuracy in the ways he liked. Then he admitted that when he continued to upgrade that first system, a.) he felt great remorse when he first committed to the dismantling of what had taken him so long to arrive at (by selling some of the essential components such that he could no longer put the original system together again); b.) that he missed that first system for years afterwards; and c.) that he still, years later, periodically got nostalgic for that first system. I might be embellishing the story for present purposes, but I think he also admitted that he hadn't ever liked any "accurate" system he had ever built since then quite as much as he had liked that first one.

The obvious question springs to mind...why hadn't he just kept that first system and been done with it?

I already have one
It's almost like when we like a category of "things" too much, we feel compelled to continue to optimize, to fret and tweak and shop. (Hmm, that would have made a good title for this post..."Optimization Without End.")

There are many things I own or have owned in the past that I don't optimize. In most cases that happens with categories of things that I like but don't really like too much. I like my car, for instance, and I'm not really tempted by new cars. I mean, it'll eventually wear out, of course, and I'll have to replace it. But I'm not talking about that. My thinking about it usually goes like this:

1. Maybe I'll buy a new car.
2. All I can afford is a used one.
3. I already have a used car I like.

Another example for me is my chef's knife. Now, I know knife geeks exist; but I found a chef's knife I liked (my then-girlfriend's amateur chef stepfather had recommended it to her, and I liked hers), located a source even though they had been discontinued, and bought two, one to use and one as a backup. And I was done, folks. I use my knife every day in the kitchen, and I'm perfectly happy with what I have. Zero desire for any further changes. Those two chef's knives are going to see me out. Actually, there's no reason why the one won't, and I'll leave behind the new one in the drawer.

I've replaced my tripod once in 44 years. I really liked my first one and kept it contentedly for a number of decades. When I bought my second one it was an improvement in every way, and now I really like that one and have utterly no desire to look at other tripods. I'm completely happy with it.

And I know lots of people who are perfectly happy with their cameras or their lenses, too—every now and then I hear a comment along the lines of, "I bought my Nikon XX in 2012 and I've been perfectly happy with it ever since." Now, granted, you don't hear a ton of comments like that in the digital photography world because the pace of change was so rapid in 2000–2015, and improvements tended to be large enough to be noticeable. But still, there are people out there who just aren't shopping all the time.

Strange as it may seem.

Historically, there are many photographers who stick with one set of gear for what seems like forever. Even if they don't use the same exact items, they stick with something very similar to it. When Henry Wessel died, he was still using the Leica M3 and the same ancient Canon lens for it that he'd been using for decades. Cartier-Bresson upgraded to the latest Leica M bodies as they came out, but used the same 50mm collapsible Summicron that he had used for virtually all of his pictures since the 1950s. (He did carry other lenses sometimes and tested other lenses occasionally, but when I was leafing through his proof books at Magnum New York with Erich Hartmann, Erich told me that "you can look through book after book and hardly come across a single picture that wasn't taken with the 50mm lens.") I don't know what Michael Kenna's actual gear consists of, but he seems perfectly settled on using film 'Blads for his work, and has been for a long, long time as far as I know.

There are many more examples.

747 to 747, 911 to 911
Sometimes, things actually do develop to a point of sufficiency. Consider, for example, that it took humanity 65 years to get from Kitty Hawk to the Boeing 747 Jumbo jet...and that the 747 has been in service now for 53 years! Granted, there are refinements to the story—later competitors, design changes to the Boeing, etc.—but it looks an awful lot like progress was pell-mell until we got it right and then there just hasn't been a huge burning need to change further.

Sometimes it seems to me that smartphones have already passed that point. Yeah, they continue to evolve, but how much of that is marketing and styleyness and how much of it reflects a genuine need for improvements? Weren't smartphones essentially "there" with, say, the iPhone 6? (Ironically, the cameras might be the most visible things in need of upgrading!)

One way you can tell that the point of sufficiency has been reached is when there start being aficionados of the original "sufficient" models. For example, there are people who actually like the old iPhone 4s, and hasn't Apple introduced models either called the "Classic" or intended to be such? (I don't actually know the details; I don't keep up with phones.)

Take for example the classic Leica. Introduced in 1953, the point of sufficiency was reached by 1984 when they took an M4-P and shoehorned in a manual, non-coupled onboard meter. You can make the argument that everything before the M6 was preamble, and everything after it, postscript. Leica even makes the M10, which I've always argued essentially amounts to a digital replica of the classic Leica rangefinder. (Like Porsche still builds a replica 911. They call it the "911.")

Stuck! Is that bad?
Anyway, I have to admit that I want to like my latest camera best. I do consider it "better." I'm glad I have it and I often use it. I want to like the smaller, slower "Fujicron" that better fits my personal ideology about lenses—that is, what I say I like. But, when you get right down to it, I'm more comfortable with my 2014 camera body and the first, too-big, too-fast 35mm-equivalent lens I got with it. I like using the equipment better and I like the pictures I get with it better. It fits. It suits. It serves. Still.

So why not just stick with that?

The inescapable conclusion is because I can't. I'm too addicted. Addicted to change for the sake of change; to tweaking or optimization. I'm irrevocably settled into a comfortably permanent state of "upgradeitis." Upgrading is a part of my wiring, it seems like...my muscle memory, in typing terms. New is always best, YouTube tells me. I've been upgrading since I bought my first digital camera! I can't stop now. Can I?

Mike

Product o' the Week:

A fantastically comfortable ergonomic mouse for PC users. Should be considered incompatible with Mac unless you want to use only default settings. Available in regular and small sizes, right and left hand, and wired and wireless. WARNING to Mac users: Do NOT download USBOverdrive! It broke my computer. But really, for you PC users, you won't believe how easy on your hand this mouse is.

The link above is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

albert w erickson: "Mike, I haven't commented in while and thought I would jump in with a comment. A wise man said 'wealth consists not of having great possessions, but having few wants.' Not really sure who said it but it is very true.

"I have been going through some anguish considering which camera to get rid of. I now have two Nikon Z cameras, a Nikon D750, and a Fuji X-T3. According to my wife I am a hoarder. I have promised to relieve myself of one or two cameras. The problem is the D750 is my favorite camera. It's more than five years old and old technology but I love it still. The Fuji is a great travel camera because of the small lenses. That leaves the brand-new Z's. They are great cameras and take beautiful pictures and all that, but there is something I love about the IQ and feel of the D750. It really feels like a camera to me. This is clearly a first-world problem and one I will solve soon. In all probability I will sell the Z6 and keep both the D750 and the Z7 II. The Fuji needs to stay because I love walking and shooting with the small primes.

"I feel better already having confessed my crazy dilemma. Thanks for the post; you really hit a nerve with me. Be safe my friend."

Mike replies: As a public service we should probably do a post showing eight or ten pictures of guys with outrageously huge camera collections. Then when readers' spousal units give them a hard time for having too many cameras, they could show her or him that post and say, still think I have a problem? —Mike, CPE (camera purchase enabler)

Terence Morrissey: "This brings up a good point: how often should you upgrade your camera body? I asked that question to the late Michael Reichmann, who recommended every second new model."

Benjamin Marks: "As a fellow gear-head, I have noticed this too. I have many cameras, and many lenses, but just two axes. OK. Three axes. Actually, now that I think of it, three axes, two hatchets, and a maul—oh and a wedge and a small sledgehammer. And an extra wedge from that time I couldn't find my wedge at the beginning of the heating season, but couldn't spend more time looking for it. We burn a lot of firewood. Sigh.

"I think there is something about what I call the 'modularity of purpose' that encourages acquisition. The maul you use to split cord wood is not the tool you need to make kindling. A medium-weight axe will get stuck in a large, wet, piece of wood. But the maul's weight and geometry make it perfect for the task. The maul, on the other hand, is too heavy to be wielded with any finesse. So if you are liberating a small stack of kindling from a straight-grain piece of cord wood, a hatchet or a wedge and hammer really are the tools you need. So would one medium weight axe be enough? Maybe. Is it the best tool for all jobs? Not even close. Same with chef's knives and paring knives.

"But you've also identified the allure of the value 'upgrade.' Many of these are designed to enhance manufactured gear that is produced at a price point. Seiko, for instance, made their SKX dive watches with a mineral glass crystal, the trade name of which is Hardlex. It is reasonably tough stuff, but will get scuffed after several years of daily watch wear. For about $50 more, they (or you) could install a synthetic sapphire crystal on their dive watches, which is superior in every way. Sapphire is pretty close to diamond in hardness—you can wear a watch with a sapphire crystal every day for 15 years and it will not have a scratch. Once you replace the inferior Hardlex with the superior Sapphire you are better off as a user, but hosed as a collector. Why? Because collectors put a premium on unmodified watches. And so it goes.

"There is also an issue of gender lurking here. I am trying to think of modular goods that are susceptible to upgrades: computers, cars, motorcycles, firearms, stereos, watches, sailboats—really boats of any kind. Maybe I have tunnel vision here, but it seems to me that the pursuit of these gear categories breaks down (at a guess) 95/5 along male/female lines. Most of my photographer friends who are women have one or two cameras and that's it. Not so with the guys. It is a strange and beautiful world."

Ilkka: "I agree. I fully agree. Up to the point when you said you must ‘upgrade.’ No you mustn’t! The only thing I might add is a suggestion to buy good quality, whether it is a tripod, or a kitchen knife, or tools, or a lens. Maybe camera as well. Then there will be no need to change it for decades, maybe even in a lifetime. I still use a Gitzo tripod and Linhof ball head I bought 40 years ago. I bought binoculars 30 years ago and just sent them in for service. First time. The manufacturer offered to open them up and clean them for free. I have a Tenba bag I bought 30 years ago. It is a bit rough around the edges and needed some simple repairs, but it is still better than most of the other bags I have bought over the past ten years."

Bear.: "When my parents finally downsized from their empty-nester family home, my mother had the most brilliant brainwave of her long, married life. She told my father that she wanted the best washing machine, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and iron that money could buy—she asked, please go research them and acquire them for our new home.

"Being male, my father did—he spent weeks searching the Internet, telephoning factories, reading consumer magazines, and testing various models on shop floors. After careful consideration, the new appliances were purchased at great expense (about which my mother carefully said nothing) and delivered. He then spent days ensuring they were properly installed, reading instruction manuals to learn all the features, etc.

"Thereafter, they were his babies. My mother is not allowed to use them—and she has not had to wash, do the dishes, vacuum the house, or do any ironing ever since. My father does it all. Hmm."

Mike replies: Now that is a wonderful story. Really tickles me. And you know what? As I read it I found myself instinctively sympathizing with your Dad. Ha ha! Thanks for that.

Open Mike: Square

I really need to work on comments this morning. I'm fast getting far behind again. I've had a couple of less-than-productive days, although I seem to have found time for exercise and for typing practice.

I confess I didn't know that I could set my Fujis to shoot square. I know why—it's because when I got them I looked for a 4:3 ratio, which I prefer most, and they don't have that, so I just left them set to 3:2 and forgot about it. They also have a selection for a longer, skinnier aspect ratio—16:9 I think? The camera isn't handy at the moment—and I never use that either.

I've never been attracted to the square aspect ratio per se. Most times I've shot with square cameras, I crop. It's only attractive to me on the iPhone because it makes the "camera" more natural to handle, removing some of its inherent awkwardness.

I did come across these recently:

They're my aunt and uncle. Mary Polk, my mother's younger sister, with Sailor the standard poodle whom I remember as an uncommonly good dog, and her husband, my uncle Smokie Polk. They had a farm south of Lexington, Kentucky, where Smokie bred and raised thoroughbred racehorses for a number of decades. He was at some point the President of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Breeders' Association. I was always very attached to both of them; Mary is a wonderful soul, and I admired, and sought to emulate, Uncle Smokie (who was always called Al or Dr. Polk at Keeneland Racetrack. Smokie was a vet as well). They're in their eighties now, and long since retired from the horse business. Mary never worked that I know of, but she's very accomplished all the same: she's an outdoorswoman and canoeist, who I recall went on Outward Bound wilderness treks in her 40s with people half her age, and she's an artist as well—she learned woodworking in midlife and built beautiful furniture. She not only designed the exquisite lake cottage they live in now, but she built most of the furniture in it. They raised four kids, and raised them well, and now the house is full of happy grandchildren every summer. They also own an island way, way up in the Boundary Waters of Canada where they have a small cabin—the trip in is so arduous that they've outfitted their skiff with survivalist supplies. Smokie is also an accomplished sailor, which is no doubt how the dog got its name. He's owned at least three boats since I've known him, not counting "stinkpots" (motor boats). Mary's canoes are the best of the best of the best.

In short, they've always been two of the coolest people I even know; that they're related to me is just an extra bonus. Uncle Smokie bred mainly middle-level racehorses, not the big-time names of the marquee races, but he did have a Triple Crown winner once—he was the breeder (not the owner or trainer) of Temperance Hill, who went off at 54.3-to-1 odds in the 1980 Belmont Stakes to beat Derby winner Genuine Risk and Preakness champion Codex to become one of the greatest long-shot winners in Belmont history. Temperance Hill was subsequently named Champion Three-year-old Colt of 1980 (all the Triple Crown races are for three-year-olds). The three Champion Three-year-olds preceding him were Spectacular Bid in 1979, Affirmed in 1978, and Seattle Slew in 1977, all names to conjure with; it was a golden age of American horse racing.

I took these portraits when I was ten. I think I was actually a pretty good portraitist when I was ten! Portraits are what I've always been best at. I had my first photo show in the dining room of my prep school when I was in ninth grade, and they were all portraits, of classmates and faculty members. Most were nabbed by the yearbook staff and used in the yearbook (without so much as a by-your-leave, which didn't seem unusual at the time), so I no longer have them.

These Instamatic prints are tiny, only 3 1/2 inches square including the borders, taken with a Kodak Instamatic on Verichrome Pan film. The film was 126 size, in a one-piece cassette that dropped into the back of the camera. The resolution is very low—the lens is probably a doublet or triplet. I don't actually know. And I don't know its speed or focal length, either. (It was an Instamatic 104.) [UPDATE: it was a plastic 43mm, f/11, single-element meniscus! Take that, Olympus 25mm PRO with your 19 elements! Thanks to several readers for this.] The Instamatic was the brainchild of Dean M. Peterson, one of the greatest unsung inventors in the history of American photography. It was designed in response to research that exposed the fact that loading film was one of the things consumers felt most insecure about. It shot in square format only, and the pictures came back from the drugstore printed square.  

I find I'm much more sympathetic to Kodak's whole program now than I was then—the advertising campaigns about "memories" and the little packets you'd get back from the drugstore with a neat stack of square prints with white borders, with the month and year stamped in the margin of each. Turns out that was a very robust and useful program. It has that sort of confident, plainspoken mid-century vigor about it. By the time I became an art student it was conventional to denigrate Kodak's resolutely middlebrow approach to photography—we were awtists, after all—but as aging has scraped away some vanity and ambition I've come to realize that Kodak was more right than wrong. I'm thankful I have these prints now, and thankful I can so easily place the date to April of 1967.

I'm not sure if there would be anything to be gained by "trying out" the square format of my Fujis. But it does have some of the appeal of simplicity, the square—a reminder that the real challenge of technique is to get past it, so that, once past, we can get down to work.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History by Jennifer Dasal (Penguin, 2020. Adapted from the popular podcast.)

This link above is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

KC: "Thanks for weaving such a nice story into this discussion of aspect ratio. I hope your aunt and uncle have a chance to see this post. As a former Lexingtonian I have to point out that the local racetrack is actually called 'Keeneland.'"

Mike replies: Thanks! Fixed now. My cousins reminded me of this when they saw the post.

Michael J. Perini: "Charming Pictures to be sure, and I couldn't agree more that as you say that Kodak 'was more right than wrong.' A company that realized and was willing to pay for pure research. Some great scientists and engineers there—they even invented digital. They were a supertanker and in the end, just couldn't turn the wheel fast enough.

"Like many TOP readers I shot with almost every format out there but mostly 35mm, 6x6, 4x5, and 8x10. The film camera I loved most was the Hasselblad. I did some good work with that camera. When I picked it up I 'saw square.' But when I was shooting 35mm or 4x5, I never missed the square format. I just shot what I shot.

"But even though I haven't shot a square camera in years, I often find nice square compositions hiding in my 2:3 files. Occasionally I will see a composition that is begging to be square and compose it that way on the 2x3 sensor. I've never felt the need for a square camera viewfinder to 'see' square or any other shape. I usually think—get the picture in whatever shape you can get it with whatever camera you have—if it is a strong picture, it will survive. If it is not, its shape doesn't matter."

Dan Khong: "One does not need many elements to shoot good pictures. The Instamatic lenses were like magnifying glasses but they made a lot of folks happy. The Tessar lenses stood their ground over many decades. They still produce astounding pictures in Rolleiflex TLRs. One might conclude: An average camera in good hands is better than a good camera in average hands."

Steve Belanger: "Great post, Mike! Thank you. I too had an Instamatic 104, given to me by my older brother as a birthday gift. My introduction to photography at age 12. My family and I took a trip to Montreal in 1968 to see the 'Man and His World' exposition. I still have a handful of great photos and memories of that trip."

Crabby Umbo: "By the way, I consider the 126 cartridge to be another of the great 'lost formats.' Manufacturers not only made rangefinder bodies with quality glass, but Kodak made a reflex with interchangeable lenses. The whole 'chink' in the armor was the cartridges' inability to hold the film flat, and in an exact enough plane to really get quality out of the image. My Mom had a high quality version with a glass lens and a wind-up motor drive, which I loved to use, but was always frustrated with the blurriness! A simple concentration on fixing that cartridge, and it would have had real legs. Can't believe Kodak made the decision to go with increasingly worse formats like 110 and Disc, all while the consumers were abandoning their models to go with the image superior autofocus, autoload, point-and-shoot 35mms. Sheesh!"

Mike replies: I believe the origin of the idea that eventually became the Disc was to solve the film flatness problem.

Peter Croft: "I find square format frustrating. I can never work out whether to hold the camera horizontally or vertically.  :-) "

Mike replies: Here's the trick: neither!

Actually, though, I had a photo school classmate who did a project shooting a square camera in the diamond format. 

SteveW: "'It's hip to be square!' —Huey Lewis & the News."

Frank Field: "Square format is not easy to shoot, I think. I see Michael Kenna as a contemporary master of square format. Study his compositions and your square format images are bound to improve."

What Do You Shoot With These Days?

Based on actual usage rather than ideals, what would you say your two main cameras are these days? If it can be b0iled down to two, I mean. Main camera and primary alternate. I just wonder what people are actually shooting with these days.

I was going to say Main: Fuji X-H1, Primary Alternate: Fuji X-T1, but then it occurred to me that I do a lot of "all kinds of stuff" with the iPhone too. I guess if I had to say, for my main camera I switch off between the X-H1 and the X-T1 (which I try to keep in the car) and then my primary alternate is the iPhone. Of course that's cheating on my own rules which is pretty absurd!

I find I still don't like to "claim" the iPhone but I have to be honest.

You? Where're you at these days?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Featured Comments from:

SteveW: "My main cameras for some time have been Nikon D750 and D7500. I'm a Nikon guy, and the cameras are easy for me to use. (I doubt I'll find the motivation or justify the expense to change systems, even to the Nikon Z system.) That said, I am more and more using my iPhone 11 Pro. I'm finding it fun to use, and getting images in different ways just by how small the phone is, and how I can hold it in varying perspectives so quickly and easily. And it's always with me. After using the iPhone, picking up one of my DSLR's is quite an A/B effect. Like going from a Miata to a Suburban?"

Ed Donnelly: "A9 for wildlife and other moving objects, and A7R IV for everything else. Although I own and am very fond of an X-T3 as well, it just doesn't get as much love as the Sonys for some reason. "

Brad Burnham: "Hasselblad 500C and iPhone XS Max."

Kyle Batson: "I lucked into a windfall earlier this year and splurged on a Leica M10. I’ve barely put it down since. And because my Voigtlander 35mm ƒ/1.4 is under repair, it’s been my 50mm ƒ/2 Summicron that I have been shooting with for the past several months. It’s the most wonderful shooting experience I’ve had, second to my Fuji X-T3 with 35mm ƒ/2 I sold two years ago.

"My other go-to, my secondary, is my Sony RX10IV. I’ve never been a super zoom fan, but the size, zoom range, image quality, and value combination is unmatched. I don’t use it nearly as much as the Leica, but it’s great for hiking, travel, and wildlife work. Still in my kit is the wonderful Sony A7 III and Leica Q, but they overlap a lot with my other cameras for current uses so much they aren’t getting much use lately."

Jay Burleson: "Gone back to ultra-simple. I now have only two cameras (have never really used my phone for pictures). Carrying a Leica Q2 and a Leica Q2 Monochrom in one bag and the whole package is not much bigger than a loaf of bread. Just like the old days; one body for color and one for B&W."

Fulvio Senore: "Just one camera: Panasonic GX9 with the 3D printed handle that you recommended about six month ago."

Cecilia: "OM-D E-M1 Mark II and iPhone X...I keep thinking I should need more...."

Mike replies: Count your blessings!

Carl Blesch: "Bought a Nikon Z6 in mid-2019 and have been in love with it ever since, mainly for delivering clean images in low light at high ISO settings. My previous main camera, a Nikon D7100, continues to be a useful backup, especially for long telephoto shots with its DX sensor. And, of course, my iPhone."

Brian Small: "Canon M5 for my main. I don't really have a primary alternate but I do have a collection of old digital point-and-shoots that I still use regularly."

Lynn: "I must be the odd one out here. My main alternates between a Leica IIIc, CL (film) and OM-4. Mostly with 21mm and 35mm lenses. Sometimes a 50mm. Alternate is one of the Fujifilm Instax models—the Mini 9, SQ6, and Wide 300, depending on the subject. I just love the Instax colors and rendering. The monochrome film is not too bad either."

Lesley: "My main camera is a Nikon D600 and the secondary one was a Nikon AW1 (mainly used for cycling and kayaking) until last winter when I bought a Nikon Z50 as a lightweight camera for a spring trip that never happened thanks to COVID-19. At first I was annoyed because I no longer 'needed' it, but now I often have it in the car, or in my purse, and I'm really glad that I bought it.

"I have used Nikons since the days of the Nikkormat and it's nice to have a camera I can still use with an older lens."

Chris Kleihege: "So far my team is looking so lonely...My main camera is a Walker Titan 4x5 and my point-and-shoot is a Polaroid that was my grandfather's. It's modified to hold 4x5 holders."

Joseph Brunjes: "My Chamonix trio of awesomeness (4x5, 11x14, 8x10)."

Mike replies: Chris, meet Joseph. Joseph, Chris.

Carl Coryell-Martin: "I'm about a month into a one camera, one lens, one year project with a Fuji X-Pro2 and 35mm ƒ/1.4. I purchased the 35mm lens back in January for a canceled trip to Singapore, and finally started bonding with it back in November."

Tim Wilson: "Huh. Three pages of comments, and my browser is finding zero instances of 'S1R,' as in Panasonic Lumix S1R, my current 'primary.' Would have thought there'd be others here who'd discovered this phenomenal camera and its system of fabulous lenses. Mine is responsible for banishment to a storage cabinet of (in order of declining pixel count) a Pentax 645D, a Nikon D810, and a Canon 5D mark II. Secondary: Lumix G9."

Mike replies: Here's a nice picture of it by way of consolation.

Lars: "Zeiss Ikon ZI + ZM Biogon 25mm ƒ/2.8 + Fuji Superia 400. I read your review here in 2008 and decided to buy that camera. I'm still using the same combo each and every week. Couldn't be happier!"

Mike replies: That's so cool.

The Nikon F, 1959-2020

The Nikon F has died at age 61, after six iterations.

Some time within the last few days Nikon Japan added the 旧製品 ("old product") tag to the webpage for the F6—while the Nikon Direct store in Japan now shows 販売終了 and Yodobashi Camera shows 販売を終了しました, which are just shorter and longer ways of saying "sales have ended."

The F series, Nikon's flagship professional 35mm film SLRs, lived from April of 1959—the company's first SLR—to now, November of 2020. But, like Kodachrome, it endured far past the time it could have. Nikon managed to keep it in the catalog well into the digital age.

The F6 was not, of course, a relevant product for Nikon at the end or anywhere near it. However, many photographers still living will have memories of F's past.

I personally owned a F4s, bought new. Although I was very camera-proud of the purchase for a while, for actual use on the job I eventually went back to using a pair of N8008's (called F-801 in Europe).

The F6, last of the F-series, has now been
labeled 旧製品, "old product"

One of my memories of the F4 didn't concern the one I owned. I walked into Pro Photo in Washington, D.C., where all the professional photojournalists had their repair work done, and saw two F4s's, painted tan, on the repair table (the techs worked out in plain sight of the walk-on traffic at Pro Photo). Both cameras looked horribly beat up. Partly, I suppose, because the paint wasn't a very durable surface. But that wasn't all. Based on appearance they could have been ten years old. As I was talking to the owner, Dick, I learned that both cameras had been brand new only six months earlier! Pro Photo had painted them in desert camouflage for the Gulf War when they came out of their boxes. Sorry that I don't remember their owner's name any more—or it's possible Dick didn't tell me. He was by nature taciturn, but also, most likely, discreet.

I also owned a collector-grade F2 bought long after its era. I never took a single picture with that one, but it was beautifully built.

Anyway, the Nikon F is dead. Long live the Nikon Z!

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad)

Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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Featured Comments from:

Sal Santamaura: "Procrastination doesn't pay. I waited until August 25 to place my order for an F6 with B&H, hoping to secure one of the four units they've received roughly twice each year for quite a few years. Now I'm waiting for the B&H email advising my order is cancelled. Or, if uncharacteristically optimistic, delivery of an F6 from the last batch Nikon ships to dealers with open orders that were placed before the discontinuation. Fingers, crossed, but not holding breath."

UPDATE from Sal, Wednesday Nov. 11th: "It's time for an update to my featured comment. This morning I received an email message from B&H notifying me that the F6 ordered in August was just shipped and will arrive here in two days. Friday the 13th will be my lucky day!"

Mike replies: That's pretty cool, to know you got one of the last ones.

Mark Sampson: "I disagree that the Nikon F is dead. As long as 35mm film is still made, some of those cameras will be in use after anyone reading this post today has passed on. Rather like the Douglas DC-3, of which nearly 200 are still operational, 85 years after the type's introduction. (It was said for many years that 'the replacement for the DC-3 is... another DC-3.')"

Speed: "Wikipedia tells us that the Nikon F was introduced in April of 1959 priced at $186 with a 5 cm ƒ/2 lens. An online inflation calculator figures that would be $1,664 in 2020. Wikipedia again: The Nikon F was succeeded in 1972 by the Nikon F2 series after a production total of 862,600 bodies. The Nikon Z that Mike mentions sells for a few dollars under $3,000 without a lens—but the 'film' is free. An interesting comparison would be the new Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max which is priced from $1,100 to $1,400. A completely different way to make terrific photographs and Apple will sell a ton of them. Statista tells us that Apple sold more than 200 million iPhones per year between 2015 and 2018. And more than a few went to serious photographers."

Michael W Purcell: "Still occassionally shooting with my Nikon F from PJ days in the later '60s. Damn thing just won't quit."

Photo by Lynn Burdekin (larger size on Flickr)

Lynn: "I used the Nikon FM and FE for quite a few decades until moving to a Canon 5D soon after it came out. Loved the 5D. Then one day in 2015 I was browsing in an op shop (charity store I think you call them) and I asked if they had any cameras. Usually they keep them on display but there were none in sight. The staff member mentioned they had some in a box out the back and would I like a look. A few minutes later he returned with a large cardboard box filled with old cameras most of which you wouldn't look twice at. Then I noticed an old tan leather never-ready case with Nikon F embossed on the front. Inside was a plain prism F in chrome with the original 5cm ƒ/2 lens. It was dusty and the mirror was hanging up but on a hunch I bought it. It wasn't until I got it home that I noticed the serial number: 6407XXX, which I believe makes it a late 1959 model. A CLA later it looked like new, a thing of beauty.

"The F6 looks a great camera, but I'll stick with the metal, mechanical F. There's something magic about history."

Helcio J. Tagliotto: "Nikon F can also save your life!"

Mike replies: I enjoyed that.

New Old Lens for the Wista (Continued)

For those following along, here's my 4x5 with the new-old lens on it. (The camera is a rosewood Wista 45DXII, the lens a Calumet Caltar II-N 135mm ƒ/5.6.) I got the lensboard off eBay. You have to get one with the right sized hole—this lens has a Copal 0 (zero or zed) shutter, so (naturally) I got one with a Copal 0 hole.

For those who might know little to nothing about view cameras, to mount a lens on a lensboard is simple. The rear cell of the lens unscrews from the back of the shutter. Then you remove the retaining ring.

Clockwise from front: rear optical cell; plastic lenscap; retaining
ring; and the rest of the lens, here set
down with its front cell facing down

Simply seat the lens on the board, fix in place with the retaining ring, tighten with a lens spanner wrench (here's one of those on Amazon). Actually what I do is just hold it in place and rotate the shutter itself a little until tight, taking care that the retaining ring isn't riding up on one edge of the hole in the board. Then replace the back cell.

Rear cell of lens on board, showing retaining ring

By the way the lens board is a "board" even if it's made of metal. And the hole is said to be "drilled" even if it wasn't, as in, "a Technika metal lensboard drilled for a Copal 1 shutter."

There's a lens in there. Chien ancien in background.

The camera folds up with the lens on it! Which is not necessary and not something you can do with most lenses because they're too large. Normally you'd remove the lens on its lensboard and put it in your bag. But setting up and knocking down the camera in the field is a process you might go through many times in a day or half-day of shooting, so eliminating steps saves time. So it's nice.

Keiichiro Nagaoka
You might recall our posts on Nagaoka cameras, handmade in Japan, here and here. The first was called "Last Man Standing." Alas, the last man is perhaps no longer standing. I have not been able to confirm the news through journalistic channels, but we have heard multiple rumors now that Keiichiro Nagaoka recently passed away. We heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that he entered the hospital, where he was unable to receive visits from his family due to the cursed COVID-19, and never came out again. Deep respect to Nagaoka-san and his family. His work lives on. He lived his life doing what he wanted to do!

Old view cameras never die, but they do migrate
While I'm still on the topic of old view cameras, our friend Ned (the retired President of Pentax USA) recently gifted his old Kodak to our friend Christopher (whose print I critiqued here—I'm going to do more print crits soon, by the way)—and Christopher decided to use his old Kodak lens with it and shoot Kodak transparency film, for a spiffy all-Kodak outfit. Without pictures it didn't happen, so here's the picture:

Photo by Christopher J. May

Sweet!

Mike
(Thanks to Ned, Chris, and the many readers who send news)

Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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Featured Comments from:

David Dyer-Bennet: "I'd never really considered the process of mounting a lens on a view camera lens board before. Now that you've laid it out so clearly, I'm startled that the positioning of the rear cell is sufficiently precise! I would have expected the distance of the rear cell from the front cell to be critical to the usual sorts of optical tolerances, and I wouldn't have thought screwing down a nut, even metal-on-metal, would be sufficiently precise. Learn something new every day! (On consideration, probably the precision needed in large-format lenses is somewhat less than miniature formats, for one thing.)"

William Schneider replies to David: "The front and rear lens cells are precisely spaced, but the shutter retaining ring has nothing to do with it. Here are some illustrations that show how the retaining ring and rear lens cell attach. That should demonstrate how precision is achieved...

Mike adds: Yes, and the cells do have to be precision calibrated to each individual shutter, which is why shutters aren't considered user-interchangeable. Old lenses can be mounted in new shutters, but only by specialists, for instance by S.K. Grimes, "The Photographer's Machinist."  These days you would also have to have a donor shutter, as Copal stopped making new shutters in 2013. I don't know whether Compur shutters are still made or not.

Bill Tyler replies to David: "The positioning of the two cells is quite precise. The retaining ring holds the front cell in place, but neither the retaining ring nor the thickness of the board interfere with the rear cell as you screw it in. There's enough of the front cell's rear that extends past the board so that the two cells mate precisely. And yes, for most lenses, that spacing is critical. Incidentally, lens boards are quite easy to make for most view cameras for anyone with a modest supply of tools. They're just square pieces of wood or metal with a hole in the middle, except for some camera, like the Graphics, for which the lens board actually has a lip around the edge."

Rob de Loe: "I've mentioned previously in these comments that I'm done with film. That's it! Done done done. Never coming back. But...someone introduced me to Portrait Pro and Portrait Body Pro software over the weekend. I knew this kind of thing existed, but I didn't really know if you know what I mean. I thought 'Sky Replacement' was bad. After checking out Portrait Body Pro, I actually felt ill. I hate everything about what this kind of software is doing, and will do, to photography. And so while going for a walk to shake off the queasy feeling, I thought to myself, 'I guess I'll have to go back to film after all.' Nope, not doing it! But really, within a decade, at the outside, film will be the only way to make a remotely authentic photograph. So good for you, Mike, for getting ahead of the curve!"

Mike replies: I advocated in the 'nineties for letting the word "photography" and related words stand for old-fashioned optical-chemical photography as it was understood up until the digital era, saying we should use "digital imaging" and related words for the new technology. Alas, digital had low status in the beginning, which inevitably led to the co-optation of the word "photograph" for its results, the better to claim equal status for it. Now that it has more than equal status, it's too late to go back to terminology that makes the sensible distinction.

Sunday Support Group: Scores

The Wista arrived on Thursday, and I thought I'd show you a few pictures of it. It does not have a lens yet.

They're surprisingly small and delicate in person, which is hard to convey in pictures.

Like a '30s leading lady, this Wista has a "good side." The KEH description did not mention wrinkled bellows, and this camera's bellows are not wrinkled on one side, but are wrinkled on the other side! I've never seen that before. I don't even know how it's possible.

The ground glass has markings for medium format backs.

It even has a red dot. And an extra one for good measure. Just kidding. These are the the index marks to show you the neutral position for the front standard.

Now that it's here, it's dawning on me that this is going to be hard to pull off without a darkroom. I could have someone else process and print the film, of course, but where's the fun in that? Maybe I should have worked this out earlier....

Sometimes I'm not too smart, but just can't help myself.

Oh well, forge on, let the chips fly, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and other clichés along those lines.

Look what else I scored yesterday! Right out of the ground. Steamed or roasted, yum. This will keep me in crucifers for several days.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Richard Man: "We all must do 'not too smart' things sometimes. I took just a dozen photos with the 8x10 in Yosemite last weekend, and while one thinks that all possible photos in Yosemite have been taken, I really like how much control I have with the camera. I used movements in almost all images, most of them just slight amount, but the results are so satisfying. By the way, this is taken with the lens that you highly recommended—the 12-inch Gold Dot Dagor. It draws beautiful images with portraits, landscapes...anything I throw at it. Thank you."

Mike replies: That's beautiful Richard.

Mark B: "Holy crap that's a pretty camera!"

How to Choose a 4x5 Flat-Bed Field View Camera

One point I wanted to make about the 4x5 flat-bed field view cameras: It doesn't matter which one you choose.

Pick whatever appeals to you. Just because I like Wistas and gas on about them doesn't mean Wistas are "better" or that they're necessarily the ones to have. 

You don't get a lot of advantage by optimizing here. People researching fret over movements, but really, in the field, about all you ever need is some front rise and either a little forward tilt of the front standard or backward tilt of the back standard. If the latter, it's a little more convenient if the back hinges from the bottom rather than pivots in the middle, but you're good either way. You're seldom going to use much more than that unless you're a fan of movements and like to go out into the world and look for reasons to twist up your camera.

You also seldom need more than 12 inches of bellows draw. Again, unless you have special and specific purposes in mind. I did copy photography of paintings with my old Wista and a 210mm plasmat, fer cripes sake. With lenses of normal focal length on a 4x5 (the standard lens is 150mm), 12 inches is enough for almost any purpose. Can you do absolutely anything with it? No, but if you're trying to outfit yourself to cope with any possible photographic eventuality, choosing a view camera in the first place is putting on a hair shirt.

Same goes for lenses. People worry about coverage but most lenses for any particular format do fine in most situations. Longer lenses tend to cover more, lenses cover better when stopped down, and lenses cover better when focused closer. Even if you have a lens with iffy coverage by the specs, you'll probably only rarely run into any problems. Aficionados might go on and on about late-model 75° apochromats, and they are wonderful, but heck, the Rodenstock Geronar, a budget 62° lens with only three elements that used to be bundled with inexpensive monorails (here's a sample), is essentially a modern reproduction of Dennis Taylor's legendary Cooke Triplet, a lens that took some of the greatest and most famous pictures in the history of photography, never mind being the basis for millions of binocular and slide projector lenses. It was good enough for Ansel. Photographers today ought to be able to limp along with one.

People worry greatly about lightness in cameras meant for the field, and that's a legitimate concern if you're going to carry your camera in a backpack, but, again, it's overblown as a problem for most people. Being a photographer means having to schlepp. Most of the rest of the "stuff" you have to carry to shoot large format is going to overwhelm a pound or two of difference in the camera body. Put your money into a carbon fiber tripod and you'll be doing your back a bigger favor than you will by chasing the lightest 4x5. Even many of those who do landscapes base themselves out of the backs of their cars. My teacher Frank DiPerna used to say that he'd lug his 8x10 only a short distance from his car. When I asked him what he did if he saw a picture beyond that, he smiled and said, "There are no pictures more than a hundred steps from my trunk." [CORRECTION from Scott Kirkpatrick: "That is an old Weston family quote. Nancy Newhall credits it to Brett. I think Edward opines it in the Ben Maddow volume. Doesn't make it any less true." I guess Frank was quoting when he said that! Thanks for the clarification Scott. —MJ]

Wisner Technical Field. To use one, wear a deerstalker, smoke a meerschaum pipe, and call everyone "old chap."

Chamonix 45F-2. To use one of these, begin every sentence with "so" and have a sleeve, if not two.

All I'm saying here is that if you ever plan to get a 4x5 field camera, you don't need to worry any more than you want to about "shopping concerns." There's no secret-society insider knowledge in my choice of a Wista. Get whatever appeals to you for whatever reason, whether it's a Nagaoka, a Zone VI, a Tachihara, or a Canham with a reducing back; a new plywood Intrepid or Shen-Hao, or an ancient restored Baby Deardorff; an expensive Ebony or a cheap Horseman Woodie; a gaudy neo-Edwardian Wisner or a sleek ultramodern Chamonix. No matter what you end up with, you're going to wish some little thing on it were different (human nature!) and you'll grow to feel affection for it in proportion to how much you use it. If you like it, if it appeals to you, you're good.

And if you find you're not using it, then set it up in the corner of the living room as a conversation piece! Like a racehorse put out to pasture. They're pretty things, and exotic to normal citizens. Instead of actually using it, you can explain to your friends how to use it, and let them get under the dark cloth and look at the image on the ground glass. It's all good.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 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.

Please help lest TOP get put out to pasture!

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

Vijay: "Agree with so much of what you've said here about shopping. I probably have about a 100 sheets worth of experience with large format since 2003, and I love returning to it every once in a while. But one of my most enjoyable experiences with large format has to do with the 'conversation piece' element of it. My son's third grade teacher invited parents to come in to class (a few years ago) and give a brief talk about their career or hobbies. I took the LF kit in, gave a brief talk and let the kids take a peek under the ground glass for an upside-down view of their playground. Watching their reactions was priceless!"

Mike replies: It was also always a highlight of the high school photo classes I taught. The kids really enjoyed that day. The experience of looking through a view camera gets at something essential about photography: you're seeing what the lens sees, and it was the attempt to seize and fix that image that was the main impulse for photography's invention in the early 1800s. As complicated as people think view cameras are, they're really the most simple and elemental of cameras. You don't have to use one for taking pictures to be enriched by an encounter with one.

Rick in CO: "For my backpacking alternative, I wrote an article in Shutterbug a few years ago. I settled on the Super Graphic with a 135mm Kodak Wide Field Ektar and a 210mm ƒ/6.3 Zeiss Tessar."

Walter Glover (partial comment): "The entire history of lens design is available to you. Choose from coated, uncoated, Petzvals, Ektars, Imagons and more. Work out who you are, what you want to say about what you see. Make a highly personalised decision that is your look, and own it."

Jack Baty: "I've long considered an upgrade to my beat-up-and-leaky Crown Graphic, but could never decide which camera I should get. When I saw your post I thought, 'If it's good enough for Mike, then...' and 20 minutes later I had a Wista 45DX in Cherry and 150mm Sironar-N on the way from KEH. FWIW, That's how I chose a 4x5.  :-)  "

Mike replies: So you're the guy!! I noticed that that one had disappeared from the KEH website as well.

Now I feel like I'm on the hook, so I really hope you like it. We'll have to compare notes.

Mike Plews: "The Wisner and Chamonix are just stunning; they are beautiful objects. Thanks for the pictures. Photographers curious about 4x5 but are on a budget may want to look into a clean Crown or Speed Graphic. They have limited but useful movements and the added benefit of coupled rangefinder. I believe Wright Morris did his best work with a Graphic with a normal and a 90mm Angulon. A Super Speed Graphic might be even better (poor man's Linhof). If you do go this route you will also need a fedora with a press pass stuck in the band and a cheap cigar to chomp on."

MikeR: "How long ago was the Kickstarter Wanderlust Travelwide 4x5 campaign? I eventually got my camera, mounted a recommended lens on it (from KEH), added some accessories (like an add-on rangefinder), and...nuthin'. It's in a drawer, never having had a single sheet of film exposed. In order to use it, I would now need to send the lens out for CLA, since the shutter has glued itself into extreme slothfulness. So, if after a bit you kind of just let the project sort of sit, and maybe silently disappear into a hidey-hole somewhere, well, you'll have company...as will I."

Mike replies: Yeah, I've done that, with many cameras. Some I get along with, some I just wish I did!

How Is This Time Different?

Yesterday, jp41 wrote:

"Mike, I am not making this up. When I executed a Google search today for TOP, there was a random TOP image that caught my eye mid-screen. When I followed it back I came upon this webpage. There, I found your new resolution posted: '...my New Year's resolution this year: 50 sheets of WP film in '11.' I was seriously considering emailing you about this and then I encountered your latest posting and learn you've already gotten yourself another new view camera. Nice coincidence! I'm looking forward to some view camera related stories coming from this."

So that was 2011...I would have had to look it up. That was the earlier outbreak of "largeformatitis" I was thinking about yesterday. 

How things have changed in nine years! The Single Use Device was a nice idea (if you don't want to follow the link, it was a Chamonix Whole-Plate view camera I bought for myself back then with big plans and high hopes, but never did much with). It was also one of the earliest occasions when I was earning enough to buy myself a nice camera as an indulgence. The Chamonix was an amazing camera, honestly one of the most beautiful photographic devices I've ever even seen, much less owned. Those Chamonix cameras, built on Dick Phillips' design principles with his blessing and crafted to a fare-thee-well, are incredible. If I were buying one now I'd get one of those red-bellows'd 45N-1's. They're simpler than the current 45N-2, but where view cameras are concerned, I like simple better.

I do have a whole-plate camera, and it's a lovely one for sure—but it's an antique that I use for "display only" in my living room. Built in 1903 not too far from here by Rochester Optical Co., it's the first thing guests see when they come in my front door. (Or that they would see, if I had any guests during COVID.)

The Single Use Device was a bailure (fail 'n' bail), I'll admit. Honestly, I had neither the extra time nor the extra energy to be a large format photographer in 2011 and the years immediately following. Those were heady days in our little corner of the Universe: 2011 was still on the uphill side of the peak of the digital camera market (2012); the peak for TOP (2013); and surely near the peak for written blogs on the Internet (exact year unknown, but they're kinda old hat now). I was probably working 10 hours a day and for the most part seven days a week in 2011. There was one year in there somewhere when I took no more than about 14 days off the entire year—meaning I didn't take weekends off. Although I think that was earlier than 2011. I was testing a lot of digital cameras in 2011, keeping up with all the news. I didn't have enough time or energy left over to go traipsing around the neighborhood schlepping a tripod and a view camera.

Plus, I fell in love in 2014 and moved house not once but twice, in '14 and again in '15. Still miss her, if I'm honest.

But that was then and this is now. Now, my audience is about one-third what it was then, I spend about half as much time working, taking Saturdays off plus a few days here and there throughout the year. I earn less. (TOP and me are currently kept going by direct donations, and thank you for that! Y'all know who you are.)

It seems a more promising time for an attempt to return to film and large format now. I have more time. I'm actually looking for something to occupy and distract me, having been (mostly) isolating for the past seven months.

I still don't have a darkroom (I actually don't have a single room in my house that can be darkened, not even a closet), and that's a problem, but I'm thinking about ways to make negatives and at least get the results up on the blog so you can see what I'm doing. I might have to be creative. 

And at this point, I need a kick in the keester...a "way to reinvigorate, re-commit, and recharge," as I put it in Sunday's post. 2020 seems like a better time in my life to go tilting at windmills than 2011.

But as ever, "we'll see."  :-) 

Mike

P.S. Wouldn't it be cool if my only two cameras were a 4x5 for B&W film and an iPhone? That tickles me for some reason. Though probably only because it's contrarian, impractical, and, yes, quixotic....  :-)

Original contents copyright 2020 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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Featured Comments from:

Richard Parkin: "Re 'Wouldn't it be cool if my only two cameras were a 4x5 for B&W film and an iPhone?' Damn! I repeatedly resisted commenting yesterday that you should sell all your other cameras (except maybe one for 'scanning') and use just the 4x5 and iPhone (maybe upgrade the iPhone) as they seem to me to be a natural fit. You have the iPhone all the time and can use it for noting photos to take with the 4x5 and so on. I think there are relevant apps too, and the iPhone is a view camera in a way.  ;-)  "

robert e: "Re 'Wouldn't it be cool if my only two cameras were a 4x5 for B&W film and an iPhone?' Or if they were one? 

Viewfinder Preview

Mark II Artist's Viewfinder

"I think Michael Reichmann once reviewed a similar app where the iPhone was mounted to the view camera to act as a real-time viewfinder (and perhaps exposure meter, too?)."

Mike replies: Wow, thanks for that. I love Viewfinder Preview. Carl Weese predicted this more than 20 years ago: he wrote an article for Photo Techniques in which he detailed using a small digital camera to scout locations and tripod positions for his large- and ultra-large-format work. VP takes it several steps further.

Struggle, It's Good for You

So look what I got:

I decided to try to take my own advice of last Sunday. (No, I had not been thinking of this when I wrote that...this was a late-night impulse purchase. I was tired and my defenses were down.)

As ambition, this would be cray-zeee. I haven't even set up a darkroom, but all the darkroom equipment I own is predicated on negatives up to 6x7 cm. Plus, I've admitted many times that I'm not very good at large format photography. Or at least I wasn't, back when Rain Man came out and George H.W. Bush was president.

But I'm actually going to try to use this beastie a little.

Know why? To challenge myself.

Because it's good to struggle.

So I've heard, anyway. They say if you want to keep your mind limber as you age, you need stretching exercises for it. That is, it's good to try to learn a foreign language, even if you never achieve fluency. It's good to try to learn to play an instrument, even if you're not musical. It's good to try to learn logic or Latin or square dancing. Something new to you, something that will be a challenge for your brain and/or body.

It doesn't actually matter if you master it, or even if you can master it. The point is that the struggle is good for you. It gets you out of your rut. Forges new pathways in the old, worn synapses.

If it's also humbling, such that it makes you more grateful for the skills you do possess, there's probably not much bad about that.

Ecclesiastes 1:9
This might well be another outbreak of chronic Largeformatitis, which recurs from time to time, like, I don't know, a skin rash. If so, so be it.

At least I didn't have to shop. There are all sorts of beautiful 4x5s you can buy if you want one, but I bonded with a Wista in 1987 and it still forms the main part of my experience with large format. There might be many good 4x5s—there are, I mean—but this one's "mine."

People who are good at large format work hard over long periods of time to get fluent and acquire their technique. They earn their chops. It's something that requires mastery. It's not like I'm going to come along as, effectively, a newbie, and accomplish anything noteworthy. For me, this is like learning to play chess, or to sing, or swim. (I can't swim.) To struggle against it, that's the point.

(Although look at this guy's first 4x5 photo. I think that's a hell of a first try. I like circle-in-center compositions. I don't know, but I'd say he should stick with 4x5.)

Of course, maybe this Wista will just sit on the shelf and I'll admire it. Look on the bright side: if that happens, then you get to tease me about it.

In other words, maybe I'm just shopping again. It happens. At least I didn't buy a motorcycle.

I need help!
Now for a topic that could eat up some bandwidth: which lens?

I don't want a super-sharp, analytical, clinical, hypercorrected ultramodern computer-corrected lens. I want something that doesn't necessarily call attention to itself but that has some character. And beautemous bokeh. Doesn't have to be "sharp." Just pretty.

Anybody out there got any thoughts or opinions about that? Or about LF lenses in general?

You know me and lenses. Some things never change.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 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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Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Wajda: "A woman in my town was having a yard sale with camera gear and she had a Wista DX and Schneider 150mm G-Claron ƒ/9 lens which is surprisingly easy to focus, and it can stay on the camera when the camera is closed. I love it.

"I ended up shooting a series of photos on Bergger Panchro 400 with it this summer—I went out with just two film holders and had the goal of bringing back four exposed sheets of film (that's how many fit in an SP445 film tank) and these are the results. (A few were with another lens but most were with that 150mm).

"As it goes with goals, when you need four photographs, you find four photographs.

"I also have a 203mm ƒ/7.7 Kodak Ektar that will fit on the camera when closed, but haven't used it yet."

Mike replies: I really enjoyed looking at those Kenneth. You have a knack. A knack for getting people to co-operate, too, looks like.

Josh Hawkins: "Re 'Of course, maybe this Wista will just sit on the shelf and I'll admire it. Look on the bright side: if that happens, then you get to tease me about it.' I for one would never do that. Nope. Never.

"(I’m completely on board with trying new, uncomfortable things. They say musical tastes solidify in people by their early twenties or earlier and if that doesn’t make someone want to listen to new music I don’t know what will.)"

Mike replies: Josh was the manager of Oak Park Camera when I lived in Oak Park. This comment seems to imply that he might tease me about buying cameras, and I have no idea why he would suggest such a thing, do you?

Daniel: "Why not keep it simple? One lens—only one. Learn to use it and view the world in 4x5 through it. Tray develop in the dark and contact print. 4x5s are jewels in a contact print. Bill Ratcliffe, Orem, Utah, photographed for decades with one 4x5 and one 10-inch Kodak Commercial Ektar lens, and did well with Audubon magazine covers, books and magazines."

Nikhil Ramkarran: "You are out of control (he says as he contemplates which of his tripods can hold his near unused Toyo 4x5 or whether he needs a new tripod 😋). You’re a bad influence Mr. Online Photographer!"

Shootout! Of the eBay Specials

eBay specials, clockwise from front right: Pentax Spotmatic SL with dented prism and Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4 M42 screwmount lens; Minolta XG-M with 45mm ƒ/2 lens; Olympus OM-2N with Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 (the lens was the gift of a kind reader); Contax RTS II with Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar 60mm C (the camera was the gift of a kind reader); late-model Pentax LX with Pentax-K 50mm ƒ/1.4 and wooden grip; and Nikon FE with AI-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/2.

Over the coming Winter I plan to write a bit from time to time about these "eBay specials," for absolutely no good reason except for fun. I'll compare various "haptic"* or ergonomic aspects of holding, handling, and using them. All of these cameras or various close cousins of theirs are available on eBay or other used camera sites if you go looking for them.

Mike

*Haptic: "relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception**."

**Proprioception: "perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body."

(That's the first time in a while I've looked up a word and then had to go look up another word from the definition of the first one.)

Original contents copyright 2020 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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Featured Comments from:

Luke: "Is there a word for following a trail of words through the dictionary?"

Mike replies: How about "Rathole, n., Pointless waste of money, time, or resources"....

I've been doing that all my life. In fact I used to read the Encylopedia Britannica that way (14th edition, to 1973—I was one of those who was not a fan of Mortimer Adler's split 15th edition). I'd go from one article to another letting each one suggest the next thing to look into. I could read for hours that way.

Crabby Umbo: "The Nikon, screwmount Pentax, and Contax are cameras I've known, owned and loved! Still have a screwmount Pentax (fixed up by Eric Hendrickson, thanks Eric!) that I use today. Something about those Pentax Spotmatics that fit in the hand so perfectly, and the lenses are just something. Loved the Carl Zeiss lenses, the Nikon robustness, but something about the Pentax Spotty....

"Might I suggest a Canon FTb or TLb as well? Had a few FTb rebuilt one time back in the '90s—sorry I sold them—and for some reason, love the breech-mount lenses better than the later, more plasticy FD (non-breech-mount) series. Fair warning, though, the breech-lock lenses seem to get their fit and feel from grease on the focus threads; if they're old and dried out, they spin pretty loosely."

Mike replies: That was known as "packing" and it was an integral part of the helical design. One of the kindest things you can have done to an old manual-focus lens is to have it re-packed by an expert repairman. Not terribly expensive, and it gives them new life. I used to like finding lenses in otherwise excellent condition that were dried out, talk the seller down because of the loose, dry focus action, then pay ~$65 to have the lens repacked, resulting in a fine, smoothly-working lens that focused like butter. Old Nikkor AI and AI-S lenses were prone to the problem and responded beautifully to the treatment.

I agree with you about Spotmatics. If I could suggest one manual-focus film camera that should be revived today in deluxe, modernized form, it would be a Pentax based on a Spotmatic. Cf. the Nikon S3 2000, a gorgeous modern copy of the 1958 S3. My Spottie would be a "resto-mod," though, as they're called in the car world, with a 100% finder and centerweighted AE metering. Alas, it would cost three or four thousand dollars and I would never be able to bring myself to buy one.

Juan Buhler: "Just a week or so ago I bought a black Pentax ME Super on eBay for $25. It was a bit of a gamble because the condition was unknown, but the camera works fine and looks great! The ME Super was my first 35mm camera back in 1992 or so, so this was mostly a sentimental purchase. I did shoot a roll of Fuji color film with it though. It’s hard to remember to wind the camera after each shot.... I also still have my two black MXs, and every now and then I run an old roll of black-and-white expired film and develop it in caffenol, just because it’s fun. I look forward to those posts!"

Dan Khong: "Mike, Thanks for letting me choose a present for this Christmas. I want the Olympus. It's the smallest camera made during the days when others were huge, clunky and qualify to be more like paper weights. And the 40mm focal length—neither too long like the 50–55mm nor too wide like the 35mm—is just right for my style of street photography. Please bubble wrap and courier by either DHL or FedEx. Merci beaucoup!"

Books About Camera Collecting

Three thousand cameras
I got more tips and pointers to this recent article on the BBC than almost anything else in recent memory, about a man named Neville "Jim" Matthew who loved to travel and who picked up cameras wherever he went—lots of regular readers thought I'd be interested in it and should feature it. When Jim died recently he left his collection of 3,000 cameras behind, in the former Salvation Army Hall he bought to house them.

Jim Matthew

Those readers were right; I enjoyed that. Had to smile at this bit:

"'He really enjoyed talking to people about it when they came into the hall,' says his widow Dorothy. 'I had to come down and rescue them sometimes because he did not know when to stop. He was a very good speaker. He didn't have a small talk but if it was something he was interested in he could talk for a long time.'"

Not quite coincidentally, do you know the difference between a collector and a hoarder? The collector is organized. If you have a lot of stuff and it's junked all over everywhere (why is my collar suddenly hot?), you're a hoarder; if it's all neat and organized, you're a collector. There's more to it than that, but that's the baseline of the distinction.

Three books
Apropos of Jim Matthew and his 3,000 cameras, here are three books about camera collecting that are highly enjoyable even if (or perhaps particularly if)  you have no aspirations to be a collector yourself:

Collecting and Using Classic Cameras by Ivor Matanle. This might as well be considered one of those delightful travel books with the writer as genial tourguide; Ivor's friendly character comes out on every page, and his delight in old cameras and the people and places he photographs with them is very evident. The cameras are interesting too. I consider this kin to one of my favorite books from childhood, Ralph Stein's The Great Cars, which is half grand tour and half memoir and similarly charming.

Jason Schneider on Camera Collecting: A Fully Illustrated Handbook of Articles Originally Published in Modern Photography. Jason Schneider is the Dean of American camera collecting, and he's a fine writer too, which makes his passion come alive. He understands these old devices like few others, and has the knowledge to put them in a holistic perspective. If you like this book, you might have to "collect" volumes two and three as well.

Our friend Todd Gustavson's Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. Todd, as longtime readers of TOP already know from our 2016 article "A Visit to the Treasure Vaults," is curator of the George Eastman Museum's vast camera collection. Not only is this book far more comprehensive and thorough than most books about cameras, but Todd's "portraits" of the cameras are excellent (in 2016 and perhaps still, he was using a Nikon Dƒ and a manual-focus Micro-Nikkor 55mm to document the collection).

Leicas line the walls
I had an early encounter with camera collecting. When I was young, there was an elderly gentleman who had a camera store on a major thoroughfare in Washington, D.C. I coveted a Leica at the time, and he sold them, so I went to investigate. I found a shop that was stuffed to the gills with endless rows of old Leicas of every sort; perfect. When I presented myself, he sized me up and said slowly, "You would like to purchase a Leica camera." As much a statement as a question, it somehow managed to convey skepticism without being at all impolite. I took him to a bank of cameras near the front of the store and pointed to the M3 I wanted, which sat among rows of other M3's. "How much is that one?"

He looked at me about as if I had offered to cut off his pinkie finger with a dull knife.

"That is not for sale," he said curtly. "These Leicas you see around you are for display only."

Since then I've encountered several other proprietors who preside over what are purported to be "shops" but are actually collections. You can't talk them out of much. There might be a few things for sale—the then-current Leica catalog, in that gentleman's case I regret that his name, which I retained for years, has sifted out of the memory bank. But they are really collectors, and would no more sell a piece of their collection than they would sell you a tooth!

[UPDATE: It was Heller's Camera in Bethesda, Maryland. Andrew Heller, who was Hungarian, died in 2004, and you really should read his obituary—pretty sensational. I had no idea. He was a photographer of important world events too.]

Have you ever seen the A+E show "American Pickers"? They occasionally come across a junkyard owner who won't actually sell them anything. I've also known at least two people—one a book guy, one a camera guy—who owned shops because it facilitated their collecting—they would cherry-pick the best of the items that flowed through their shops for their own collections. (I never got to see either collection, more's the pity, although there's still time.)

I did eventually own an M3 for a while, though. Jason Schneider can tell you all about the M3, and do a much better job than I can.

Mike
(Thanks to a number of tipsters)

Original contents copyright 2020 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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Paul Judice: "I worked for a Leica collector/dealer in the early eighties. He sold new Leicas to doctors (we were near the Houston Medical Center) and displayed rarities for admirers to view. The downside to this was that the 'museum patrons' ate up so much time with questions about items we weren't even selling."

John Shriver: "Heller's Camera in Bethesda, Maryland had a wonderful collection of Japanese Leica clones in the 1970s. They were in the Air Rights Building on Wisconsin Avenue. Never bought a Leica there, but bought film, and dropped off film for processing by Colorfax. Run by a fine European gentleman."

Mike replies: That was it! Thanks. Found out more about Andrew Heller now that you mentioned the name, and added it to the post.

Funny, as I was writing this post, my brain suggested "Andrew Heller" but I thought, no, that can't be it, because I had a high school classmate named Andy Heller. I assumed I was remembering the wrong name.

Jim Simmons: "Michael's Camera in Melbourne, Australia has the best camera collection I've ever seen. Every age, every format, almost every variation of Leica made."

Albert Smith: "I own the Ivor Matanle book. I was really into classic cameras and after thumbing through this book in a bookstore (remember those?), I bought it within two minutes. I own several of the cameras within, but what really got me was his narrative descriptions of the quality of the older optics. This was often simply accepting the flaws of pre-computer designed lenses and embracing '...pleasing roundness and slight softness of the image' or 'the curious characteristic of defined yet slightly unsharp detail.' I enjoyed this book decades ago and your post here made me pull it off of the shelf again."

Tom Burke: "Ivor Matanle! I used to have that very book. I think I donated it somewhere when I realised that I was never going to actually collect, let alone use, any of the cameras he mentioned in it. He also used to write an occasional guest column in Amateur Photographer, especially during Garry Coward-Williams' editorship. I kept a couple of issues celebrating 'Leica: 50 years of Leica M' (2004) and '80 Years of Leica' (2005), and Ivor had a lengthy article in each. (And from ferreting around about AP I have just learned that Roger Hicks died last year. Today is not a good day....)"

David Brown: "I was told (years ago) that I had crossed over from photographer to 'collector' when I bought a six-foot-high cabinet to keeps the cameras in. Alas, it's no longer large enough."

Jeff (partial comment): "Mr. Heller sold me my first Leica in the '80s. He also convinced me to buy Summicrons, particularly a 35mm to start. I asked him about a Summilux, and he interrupted with his thick Hungarian accent, forcefully saying 'Summicron.' I started to say that I read about this or that, and he again cut me off, 'Summicron.' This continued for another 10 minutes or so. I bought an M6 and a 35mm Summicron.

"I visited many times over the years, and when he and his wife were too old to keep up the shop, I was one of the people he approached to determine if I had any interest in buying. That likely would have been a disaster for anyone, given what was to quickly change in the industry.

"I still often think of him as I handle my M10, M Monochrom, and SL2 (with some old and new Summicrons!). I wonder what he’d make of all this digital Leica stuff. Probably not much; he was an old school guy, happy to share his well earned wisdom. And he loved Rollei, too."

Bob Curtis: "His book is available at Amazon, under his more Hungarian name, Andor Heller."

Joe Kashi's Wedding Present from his Wife (a Nagaoka)

Words and pictures by Joe Kashi

Joe Kashi's wedding present from his wife

Joe Kashi: Here's the back story about my Nagaoka 4x5. It was my first large format camera, a 1976 wedding present. I still own and use it.

While at MIT in the early 1970s, I had some photography coursework with Minor White and first became acquainted with large format photography in the process. But, I could only afford a screw-mount Pentax Spotmatic and a few lenses, which I also retain.

After MIT, I moved to DC in 1973 to attend law school. While in DC, I married a woman who was an accomplished artist, a painter in oils. (By the bye, she studied at the Corcoran through high school.) We often backpacked in West Virginia's Spruce Knob/Dolly Sods wilderness, and getting a super-light and compact large format camera seemed a natural.

Just before we married in 1976, we saw an ad for a new Nagaoka, then being imported by Graphic Imports of Honolulu. We surmised that any craftsman still building wooden cameras in 1976 was elderly and likely not long for this world—that was 44 years ago! So, we promptly ordered one as my wedding present from her. My camera is engraved as serial number 517. I recall that it cost about $600 new, a non-trivial sum for a law student in 1976. [Inflation Calculator: $2,741 today —Ed.]

The only lens that I could afford back then was an older 120mm Goerz Dagor, which turned out to be a sharp, handy lens that worked well with 4x5 color film, even though it was not coated.

Some of my nicest early images were made with that 120mm Dagor, so of course I sold the lens, the only time I've ever sold any photography gear. I regret doing so to this day and could never find another Dagor in that focal length. Currently, the camera sports a 145mm Zeiss Double Protar VIIa triple convertible lens.

Fast forward to 2020, when I have been living in semi-rural Alaska for decades. Now, my preferred non-digital format is 5x7 B&W. When I saw the article about Mr. Nagaoka not only alive but still at work, I hazarded an inquiry about whether he might be willing to construct a 5x7 field camera comparable to my 4x5. Apparently, he's ill at the moment but I'm willing to wait.

If Mr. Nagaoka is able and willing to make a 5x7 comparable to his compact 4x5, I promise to put it to good use. I've looked for a 5x7 Nagaoka on eBay for years without success although some were reputedly made in years past.

Although I have other 5x7 cameras now, I have zero doubt that a new Nagaoka 5x7 would be the epitome of a super-light-weight but practical 5x7 field camera. (Outdoor photographers can be a bit weird about an extra pound or two. It's probably no surprise that my digital preference is Micro 4/3.)

I've weighed the Nagaoka against other ultra-light-weight 4x5 cameras like my Toho FC-45X and Calumet-Gowland. The Nagaoka is noticeably lighter than even these, and easier to use.

By the way, it folds intuitively and easily. I've never had a problem with the bellows.

Out of curiosity Friday evening, I looked for other Nagaoka cameras on eBay and found several. One 4x5 claimed a serial number identical to mine, 517. After a double-take, I double-checked. Mine's definitely #517.

That eBay camera is advertised as "mint" but looks as though it's been used to pound large nails. It seems such a shame to do that to a camera that was jewel-like when left Mr. Nagaoka's small shop!

Joe Kashi

UPDATE Monday Sept. 21 from Joe Kashi: "Hi, all: A few replies consolidated as one comment:

1. Between 2006 and 2018, I went fully digital, mostly Micro 4/3 but also with a full-frame kit that's heavier than the 4x5 outfit. I began adding large format film back into the operational mix two years ago because I felt that I was becoming stale using a digital-only approach. The slower, more thought-out large format film approach is, for me, a good complement to digital-only. I occasionally take my Olympus Pen-F along to meter and use its B&W mode to help frame and visualize large format images faster. Melding classic and modern tools makes sense.
2. Unfortunately, I don't have a large format photo gallery online. While I've had a fair number of solo exhibits and juried show acceptances, there's no online gallery. I'm still a firm member of the mounted large print school.
3. The closest optics that I've found to that classic 120mm Dagor are a late-model Schneider 120mm Angulon, itself a more recent 'reverse Dagor' design, and a multicoated 125mm ƒ/5.6 Fujinon NWS. They’re both sharper, almost as light, and less expensive used than classic Dagor lenses. Redesigned late model US-made and Swiss-made Dagors using modern optical glass and still-repairable shutters are superlative but very expensive on the used market. Typical of most classic field cameras, the Nagaoka handles lenses from 75mm (21mm-e on full-frame) to 300mm (85mm-e) without fuss or hassle. Large format is largely extreme-wide-angle through short-telephoto photography."

Original contents copyright 2020 by Joe Kashi. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Fred Haynes: "This is a pretty camera! Jewel-like is right. The metal fittings are shiny and new looking. Are these fittings and controls off the shelf? Or does Mr. Nagaoka custom manufacture those as well? As beautiful as it is, it’s not something I’d be interested in unless I was younger, lived in a more picturesque part of the country, and had a good working darkroom, and a few bucks in my pocket. The last is the most important! Oh, I like the pictures you took that support the writing. Very nice!"

William Schneider: "In 1984, Petersen's Photographic magazine published a 'buyer's guide' comparing features and cost of various studio 4x5 cameras and folding field cameras. In a fit of nostalgia from reading recent posts, I scanned the summary chart and placed it online. This list, while chock full of view camera choices, omits some field cameras like Tachihara and Ikeda. It was indeed the golden age for view camera photography."

Philip Ramsden: "My introduction to 4x5 was while working for Leica in the 1980s. We had the Linhof agency. So my wife found a Linhof 'press type' camera, no movements and a 127mm lens. It served me well until I started teaching Scientific Photography at one of our colleges. We taught students to use movements on our 4x5 studio cameras. My next move was to an Ebony because Linhofs are heavy. Ha ha! Ebony is one of the heaviest timbers around and my camera is probably as heavy as the Linhof. But the results are superb. I only shoot B&W and process at home. If the shots are good enough I have a 4x5 enlarger so can make an 8x10. Bliss. I still shoot 35mm B&W and digital with Fuji cameras but that is for colour. Thanks for all the photos of the Nagaoka."

Luke: "I took my 4x5 Crown Graphic to the baseball stadium back when the Braves were big losers and the place was only one-third full. I set it up across the field from the spectators to shoot back at the action. A security guy soon showed up, saying 'No video!' After he got a closer look, he said: 'Oh! That's the kind of camera they used to take your picture sitting on a pony when you were a kid!' My antique 'pony' camera captured a view of about half the stadium. With a loupe on the original chrome, I can easily see my wife and her dad in the crowd, and see his wristwatch."

The 10th Camera: Why No Pentax?

The "10th camera," the one not on my Top Ten Favorite Cameras list from the other day, is not an iPhone. I do appreciate my iPhone camera and take pictures with it all the time, but it's not quite there from a technical standpoint. It's perfectly adequate for taking pictures to be viewed on...itself. And for emailing and texting. (And for putting on the blog, maximum width 800 pixels.) But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be as happy with it if I were making even small prints. Although I should try that. I also don't own the latest thing in iPhones; mine is a 7+, released almost exactly four years ago. There's just nothing wrong with it so I haven't replaced it yet.

Oddly, there was, as several people pointed out, no Pentax on my list. I love Pentax, and I've owned and used many over the years. And my experience over a long period of time is that Pentaxians are just the nicest people. From Ned Bunnell, former President of Pentax USA, who reads TOP, to all the people I knew on the PDML, the Pentax Discuss Mailing List, they're typically courteous, friendly, and polite people. IMHO Pentaxians are the brand fans least likely to pick fights, flame, or troll.

My experience with Pentaxes, though, is that none of them were ever quite "just right"...for me. The screwmount Spotmatic is a lovely experience, and few of them are bad, but when it got down to it there's not one specific model that had everything I'd want. I've tried a great many of the K-mount cameras, from the original KX/K2/KM trio all the way to the autofocus MZ-S. The famous MX is lovely, but I prefer aperture-priority autoexposure...which the ME Super has, but the ME Super is not as solid or well-built as the MX. The LX is one of the best cameras of its era, very hand-friendly, and a great size and weight—I own one. But the shutter is like a sharp shot of a stick on a snare drum (I'm exaggerating—it's loud, is all). The loud shutter is that camera's Achilles' heel. I'm sure you remember, though, that Achilles' heel is what led to Achilles' death!

That's sort of the way my experience has been with Pentax...there's always something that holds each one back from being quite all the way right. So what was it with the digital cameras? It was the lack of the lens I needed. For years, all Pentax's digital cameras were APS-C, and yet they didn't ever have an APS-C lens with a 35mm- or 40mm-equivalent angle of view. I stuck it out for a long time but eventually got tired of waiting. (Fuji gives me three to choose from.)

Not only might your "mileage" vary, but your actual experience might vary too—I haven't used or owned every single Pentax, especially many of the more recent digital ones. The full-frame DSLR gets high marks from users.

But all that is why no Pentax appears on my personal favorites list. All of the Pentaxes I've ever used have stayed in use for a few months to a year or two, and I've enjoyed most of them, but none has ever become a real go-to or a top fave.

You know how people always say "that's just me"? That's just me.

The 10th camera
The one I almost picked to be the 10th is the Leica R4. Not a perfect camera by any stretch, and not a "pure" Leica—it was part of the long Leica-Minolta collaboration in SLRs. But my short ownership of that camera, using it with the 35mm and 90mm Summicron-R's I borrowed from Mike Hintlian—was the brief peak of my chosen film technique and "look." The pictures using Tri-X and a yellow filter on the lens and D-76 were how I wanted my photographs to look. Despite using it for only a brief time, I have a whole stack of workprints I made with that gear, and they've been a pleasure for me to look at from that day to this. I'd never nominate the R4 as a top camera of its era or as an eBay treasure, but it's one I remember with fondness.

So the 10th camera has to be the Minolta CLE, a small rangefinder with a very nice little 40mm lens. I don't know how I forgot it the other day. Maybe it was because I'm not really a rangefinder guy—despite the fact that this is the third one on my list of ten—but the CLE and its 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor were so nice. Stephen Gandy has a nice page about it (he's a rangefinder guy). I wish I owned one, but you can't have everything.

Photo by Lordcolus, CC by 2.0

Minolta CLE and 40mm M-Rokkor

Of course I've always gotten comments on gear from other photographers, but that M-Rokkor was the only lens I've ever owned that routinely got compliments from non-photographers. Just reg'lar ever-day ol'-fashioned 'Murricuns. Of all the great lenses I've owned. It happened a number of times.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 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.

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

Steve Justad: "I had a Leica CL with the 40mm ƒ/2. It now resides in the Boulder, MT, landfill. It was such a POS I could not forgive myself if I sold it to anyone. It was totally unreliable. Focus mainly. It seems the weight of a flash unit, a Visitor 283, would get the prisms(?) out of alignment and then away goes focusing. Maybe someone fixed the problem for the CLE, but I doubt it. I had similar problems with Leicaflex SLs. Unreliable build."

Nicholas Hartmann: "I am looking at a Minolta CLE (in the glass-fronted tchochke cabinet in my office) as I write this. It belonged to my father, who had two of them that he used as walking-around cameras, and one later became mine on indefinite loan. It was my gateway drug to rangefinder cameras: small, light, quick to use, beautifully made, and less intimidatingly Germanic than an actual Leica. The Rokkor 40mm lens was perfectly matched to that camera, producing images that were both sharp and round, if you know what I mean. The CLE stopped working a number of years ago but the lens is still making pictures: fitted with an inexpensive adapter to a Micro 4/3 Olympus body, it is now a tiny but solid 80mm ƒ/2 short tele that works just as well on a digital sensor as it did on film."

Dave Jenkins: "Mike, you have been on a roll with a series of great posts since your 'burn-out' episode. Maybe you should burn out more often. On topic: I have never owned a CLE, but I've had two CLs at different times and consider them one of the most inconvenient cameras I've ever used. Heresy, I know. The 40mm is great, though."

Rob de Loe: "My first proper SLR was Pentax. I owned several, culminating with a nice little Super Program. I still have a Pentax ME sitting in a box somewhere. I like Pentax—always have. To me, Pentax is the Honda Civic of cameras: reliable, not fancy, high quality, gets the job done. I still use Pentax lenses on my Fuji GFX 50R camera, but this time it's Pentax-A 645 lenses. They're excellent quality, and, in true Pentax tradition, no fuss, no muss. They also have a large enough image circle for shifting.

"I don't think I'm a proper Pentaxian because I'm not using Pentax bodies. (Not sure if that's a rule!) But you're right about Pentaxians. The PentaxForums site is a fantastic resource with loads of friendly, helpful people."

Last Man Standing

I mentioned (and pictured) a Wista field view camera yesterday. You might be interested to know that Keiichiro Nagaoka, builder of a similar but competing 4x5, is the last craftsman still building wooden cameras by hand in Japan. He was 82 years old as of the end of 2019 and has to make his own metal parts now (no more subcontractors willing to do it), but he's still building new 4x5's and 8x10's, just as he has since he started way back in 1962.

Here's the link to a September 2020 article about him originally published in Saray magazine: https://serai.jp/hobby/1002833.

Most people probably already know how to do the following, but those who don't will appreciate this: To auto-translate a whole web page, open Google Translate. In the right-hand pane, choose the language you wish to translate into. Enter the URL (web address) in the left-hand pane, then hit the "go" button in the right-hand pane (the rounded square with the arrow in it to the right of the URL). The auto-translation will open in a new window.

Keiichiro Nagaoka, from the Saray magazine article

Compliments of the participants in a thread at the LF forum (largeformatphotography.info) started by mhayashi, here's a look at what Nagaoka-san's workshop in Ueno, Tokyo, looks like from the street; here's a PDF of a Nagaoka brochure, and here's a video about him in Japanese. These give us a portrait of a happy craftsman who has spent his life doing what he likes.

One of the participants in that thread is Joe Kashi, who is also a TOP reader. Maybe Joe, if he is reading this, could send me a portrait of his Nagaoka, and tell us the story of it?

My old friend Oren, curator and custodian of the Stately Oren Manor View Camera Museum and Graveyard*, always preferred Nagaokas because they are lighter than competing 4x5 field cameras.

Heavy, man
Apropos of weight, the Wista-of-sainted-memory came in at least three woods—cherry, Japanese rosewood, and ebony. The cherry one is the lightest; and the rarest kind, the ebony, is the heaviest by a good margin. My own preference far and away is the rosewood one.

You will virtually never see a Wista with pristine bellows

Should you be interested in a Wista, the rarest of the rare happens to be up for auction right this moment: one on which the bellows are not crinkled from someone forcing it to close who doesn't know how to close it! Virtually all Wistas for sale have such crinkles in the bellows. It's cosmetic damage only—crinkled ones still function—but if you buy this pristine one, for heaven's sake learn to close the camera properly—do not force it—it's counter-intuitive but not hard to learn if you just work it out—and keep these "survivor" bellows in good shape!

Chances of that happening: close to zero, unless someone reading this really does buy that. It's rare that I can predict the future, but here's what's going to happen to that camera: the buyer will have trouble folding his new camera and ham-handedly try to force it to close, and those perfect bellows will become crinkled, just like all the rest. For such is life.

TOP is off tomorrow. See you on Sunday! I am still not caught up on the comments from last Sunday, but I will work on them till I am. Hope you have a nice weekend.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren and the folks on the LF board)

*That is, he, shall we say, owns, um, more old wooden view cameras than might be strictly required for purposes.

Original contents copyright 2020 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:

Neil Partridge: "I'm never likely to use, own or even hold a bellows camera, but I'm intrigued: what's the right way to close one? Is it just case of doing it slowly? Is there a sequence to follow, perhaps with things being loosened off? Sorry I don't even know how one works!"

Mike replies: They all close differently. Or rather, there are different ways to close different cameras, and you just have to learn how yours works. It's like anything else. Buy a new car, you have to groove new habits for operating the controls thoughtlessly. The Wista folds in a way that's a bit counter-intuitive, and you need to learn how to do it and then develop a routine to do it properly. It's not rocket science—you could figure it out in five minutes with no instruction. But when you try the way that seems like it's obvious and it doesn't want to work, the thing to do is not to simply apply more pressure to force it. When I sold mine, there were no crinkles in the bellows.

Matt: "After working with a folding 4x5 for a few years, I scraped together enough cash to buy an ebony 45s...a non-folding work of art that also happens to be a wonderful camera to work with. It is quick to set up, a joy to use, and very easy to lock down solid. Being able to set it up without the extra steps of a folding camera has meant fewer photos missed. It has its downsides...more limited movements than some cameras, and shorter bellows than others, but it is one of the few cameras I’ve owned that makes me happy just pulling it out of the bag. I hope the same will be true for whoever buys that Wista!"

Lee: "The cherry Wista 45 DX I bought in 1982 has bellows that are in great shape, and not crinkled. I used it to shoot a portfolio to get freelance studio assisting jobs, and I shot with it around Europe for a year.

"A French electrician and photo hobbyist got curious about the camera in Fiesole when I was shooting Etruscan ruins. We gave him a ride back to his hotel in Florence, and he hosted my wife and I in his Paris apartment a month or two later. He gave us a ride around Paris in his 2CV the evening we arrived, pointing out the various places around town where sex workers were picked up by their clientele. He was working on his Ph.D. in psychology, and that was his area of study. You never know where an interesting camera will take you."

Kodachromeguy: "Mike, even most metal folders (Wista, Toyo Field, Rittreck) have wrinkled bellows. The Rittrecks seem especially prone. Maybe folding a field camera does take a rocket scientist."

Malcolm Myers: "I have a Nagaoka 4x5. Sadly, it doesn't get the use it should. One day I'll get back to it."

Mike replies: As I said, mostly I cannot predict the future, but....  :-(

Michael J. Perini: "Lovely story about Mr. Nagaoka, I love it. For me, the quintessential wooden view camera has always been the Deardorff. It does everything you need and no more. Wista and Nagaoka made wonderful cameras but the best out of Japan were those from Ebony, especially their truly innovative wide-angle 4x5's which could be had with stainless steel or titanium hardware."

Fred Tuman: "A Nagaoka saved my commercial career. We were starting a very high-end residential wall coverings shoot in Coconut Grove, Florida. The prep time alone for this project cost thousands and it was all on my head. My usual large format kit consisted of six large cases with two Linhof 4x5's, 8000 watt seconds of lighting, tripods, light stands, etc.; weighing in at about 150 lbs. All of this goes on the airplane with my assistant and I. As a backup I also take with me, as a carry-on in a backpack, the Nagaoka and three small lenses, plus six film holders. My assistant carries a light tripod, three small light stands, and three Vivitar 283 flashes with built-in slaves.

"As you are about to guess...all the checked-in luggage goes to a destination unknown. The client (with his wife and two kids) are anxiously waiting with three stylists to get this production going. The Nagaoka performed brilliantly. For three days we shot all the vignettes with this modest combo. Thankfully, after the third day,the children were getting restless, and the client took them to Disneyland and had the confidence enough to leave me be. The rest of my equipment miraculously showed up and we could get our business done."

Mike replies: Fred's story is another example of the pro's dictum: always have a backup!

Open Mike: My Top 10 Favorite Cameras of All Time*

["Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, which is sometimes off-topic but not today.]

-

In no particular order, but roughly chronologically:

Zeiss Ikon Contaflex B. This belonged to my father, who let me use it when I was a kid. It was an SLR with a fixed 50mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar lens, and I believe a leaf shutter. I loved it, especially the shutter sound. I had a job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand when I was 14, and left it on the electrical junction box outside when I was unlocking the store one morning to open. I took my bike inside but not the camera. When I finally remembered and went looking for it, it had vanished. I was interested to learn that the cop who took the report was semi-illiterate—he had a lot of trouble writing his brief description of the theft, and I'm sure he didn't appreciate me helping.

Contax 139Q—A budget model, the 139 Quartz was still elegant and even had some cutting-edge tech. Early Contax (brand, not model) cameras had been a clean-sheet collaboration between Germany and Japan in the mid-1970s. Zeiss, which had been chased out of the camera business, made the lenses, and Yashica, a Japanese maker of popular consumer cameras, made the bodies, which featured industrial design by Professor Ferdinand Alexander ("Butzi") Porsche, grandson of the founder of Porsche and designer of the fabled Porsche 911. This was the camera I went through art school with, so of course I used it constantly. I had to change brands when I joined a professional studio after graduation; everyone else used Nikons, and the equipment was effectively pooled. If I had continued to use Contax I wouldn't have been able to borrow equipment from my partners, or lend mine to them.

The Wista 45DXII, designed by Sadamu Wasutake

Wista 45DXII of sainted memory—it was rosewood, and gorgeous. Wista cheapened these considerably through time; recent ones are nowhere near as nice as the one I bought by mail order from an outfit called "Fields and Views" in Old Chatham, New York, in the 1980s. Mine had real leather bellows that had a heavenly aroma. I was never much of a view camera photographer, but I still miss that camera. A significant use of it, for me, was as a teaching aid. It also got me out of being mugged once—I was being threatened by three "inner city youths," and in an effort to get them on my side I let them look through the camera. As soon as the first one saw the miraculous image on the groundglass, he transformed into an excited kid. His two friends started clamoring to see too. I explained to them how everything worked, and the four of us parted friends. Sadly, I had just used my last sheet of the film for the day, so I missed the chance to make a portrait of the three of them, a big regret.

Mamiya 6—One of my earliest writing assignments was reviewing medium-format cameras for the old Darkroom Photography magazine, and it opened up a treasure-chest of toys I would previously have had no access to. I was pleased and amazed when Mamiya sent li'l ol' me their then-new Mamiya 6 with its clever collapsible lensmount, including all the lenses and accessories. It was allegedly the pet project of the then-President of Mamiya, who was a Leica fan. I was an impoverished ex-student living in a shabby Georgetown, D.C. walk-up, and the value of the outfit exceeded my net worth at the time I got to use it. I bonded with it, and even did some good work with it in the short time I had it, and for a long time afterward I wished I could have continued to use it forever. But it was well beyond my pay grade for a long time. I did own one much later, but the moment had passed.

Canon EOS RT—Fascinating story behind this camera, which I'm sure I've written about. I was an insider with Canon for a time, having written a long article called "The EOS Revolution" at the time of the changeover to the EOS lensmount. For the article I got to meet some bigwigs in Canon USA and was loaned all (all) the new equipment. Canon reprinted the article and distributed it for several years (despite my poverty, I refused the very generous payment they offered because I felt it would compromise my editorial integrity). I feel a little guilty here for not naming the Nikon N8008 which I used for far longer, but I was really more enamored of the slick, elegant RT with its pellicle mirror, a wondrous technology that camera makers love and camera buyers do not. I shot one of the only weddings of my career with that camera, and the EF 35mm ƒ/2 lens taught me about bokeh.

Leica M6—I bought this when I quit professional photography around 1992, with 35mm and 50mm Summicrons. It wasn't the first Leica I had used but it was the first one I bought new. It was a wonderful experience—the pictures really did have that special Leica look, the super-solid, tank-like body was a special pleasure to handle, and I was fully susceptible to the lore and legend of the marque, which imbued my appreciation with a luster other cameras couldn't provide. I was very proud of it. Owning it imparted a seriousness to my sense of personal mission and also inspired me to work harder. Alas, a year after my son was born in '93, money had gotten tight again—this was right before I got hired as the Editor of what became Photo Techniques magazine—and I decided I couldn't keep that much cash wrapped up in one possession, especially when I had to drape it on my body and risk losing it by one means or another (cf. several of the stories mentioned above). And away it went.

Olympus OM-4Ti and Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2

Olympus OM-4T—I've realized that in the past I tended to obsess about cameras and lenses as a distraction and diversion from bigger problems in my life. So in the troubled years of early sobriety (today is my 30th anniversary sober, by the way) after my son was born in dramatic circumstances, I obsessed about Olympii like I have no other marque before or since. I learned everything there was to know about Yoshihisa Maitani and the development of the OM system, virtually memorized The OM Lens Handbook, and resolved to "settle down" my camera-nomad tendencies by sticking with my next camera (the Leica's replacement) for a minimum of three years. That camera was an OM-4T, and I ended up keeping it for five years. I had a darkroom in my kitchen, which is probably not ideal from a food-safety standpoint. If I had to pick one camera as the most favorite of all the ones in this list, the OM-4T would be it. (Although, curiously, the OM-2N had everything I needed.)

Sony F-707—My favorite of all my early digital cameras, although I loved the 6-MP Konica-Minolta 7D too. The F-707 had something that camera makers just don't even pursue any more—namely, it was great fun. The camera was early enough that it had a lot of problems, most notably that its noise effectively maxed it out at ISO 400 and reds were oversaturated, but it had a lovely Zeiss zoom, its swivel-body design was very useful, and it even had an infrared mode that allowed you to literally shoot in the dark. Using it was a blast. I've been sorry ever since that Sony abandoned the form-factor, which was really very nice. A modern F-707/F-717 with a square sensor in the 1" size range would be a very successful camera, I'm convinced.

Fuji X-T1—when I got it in 2014, it was Fuji's flagship. And it was my first Fuji. I bought it out of embarrassment! I had requested a review sample from my friendly contact Issac Buchinger at B&H, and when he asked for it back at the end of a month, I had not even used it. So he kindly let me keep it for another 30 days...at the end of which time I still hadn't touched it. Finally, three or four months in, with Isaac pleading with me to return his employer's property, I bit the bullet and bought the thing just to save face. So in the early days I felt like I had kind of backed into ownership. As with my current car, though, it's one of the only possessions of its type I've liked better as more times goes by...usually you like things less as time goes on because the "new" and the "special" wear off. But the X-T1 is extremely comfortable for me. I use it with the largest hand grip, and every feature seems just right to me now, from the easy-to-use AE comp dial to the flip-up viewing screen. And 16 megapixels is fine. From time to time I even consider buying a second one.

So that's the list. You might notice that there are only nine cameras on this top ten list...that's because I'm sure I'm forgetting something. It's a particular mental glitch that I've noticed over the years about the way my brain works—if I need to remember a set of things—pretty much any set of things—I'll blank on one of them. I learned, for example, never to go around a class naming each student, because, inevitably, one name, which I otherwise knew perfectly well, would vanish from my consciousness just at the wrong moment. And I almost always return from the grocery story with one item I meant to get missing. So I'm pretty sure that as I think about this list over the next few days, I'm going to have a faceplant "duh!" moment, and one more fondly remembered favorite camera is going to pop into my mind.

If and when that happens, I'll tell you about it, of course.

Mike

*Every writer has pet grammatical and usage peeves, and "...of all time" is one of mine. Things like "Top WWE Hall of Famers of All Time" sound ludicrous to me, in this example because the WWE Hall of Fame has only been around for 27 years (André the Giant, who played Fezzik in The Princess Bride, was the inaugural inductee and the only one I know of). I myself sprang into existence in 1957, which kind of renders moot the numberless millennia and geological eras before that year for purposes of the current listing. Not to mention that cameras themselves are somewhat limited in the reach of time as well. But oh well—people know what you mean by "of all time," so I guess I'll relax and shut up.

Original contents copyright 2020 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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Featured Comments from:

[Ed. note: Rob's comment below is longer than I would usually "Feature," but I liked hearing about his experiences as a golf photographer. Hopefully you will too.]

Rob Griffin: "I know that you have written about the Canon RT a few times here at TOP. The RT made my working life much more enjoyable. Working in the golf industry, I used to shoot professional tournament golf action quite often. When I first started shooting sports, I was a Nikon guy for sure—a majority of sports shooters were. When shooting tournament golf, one major problem with SLR film cameras is noise. The mirror flopping around and the shutter going off make a lot of noise. In the dead quite that tour players demand while playing their shots, a SLR with a motor drive chugging along at five or six frames a second sounds pretty much like a hay bailer coming down the fairway.

"The rule when taking photos of golfers during a tournament was that you don’t dare press the shutter button until the golf club has made contact with the golf ball. Photographers would try to time the release of the shutter so that the ball would be in the frame just after leaving the clubface. Hit that shutter button just a fraction too soon and you could easily be yelled at by a very angry golfer and his caddy, not to mention that the spectators would let you know what a miscreant you were. Sometimes, even though you had been sure not to fire before the ball was well on its way, the golfer, after hitting a less than perfect shot, would look and point in your direction to let everyone know that it was that camera guy and his noisy camera that caused the errant shot. That was a problem a golf photographer just had to live with.

"The first time I was shown an EOS RT at a camera store, I was amazed. It seemed almost silent, even at five frames a second, compared to any other SLR available at the time. The lack of noise sold me. I bought it on the spot. It became 'my' camera. Life as a golf photographer became much more enjoyable.

"While the quietness sold me, I also found that there was more to like. The RT was a bit smaller and lighter than most SLRs, always a help when hauling two or three cameras and lenses around a golf course for eight or ten hours. The pellicle mirror meant there was no black-out when the shutter fired. I had not realized how distracting the mirror jumping up out of the way of the shutter was. Now, with mirrorless cameras, many photographers can enjoy that benefit.

"I think the lack of viewfinder black-out was the also the reason that I felt that I could hold the RT steady at a full stop slower shutter speed than SLRs I had used before. It's sort of like, in baseball, how a catcher has to learn not to flinch or close his eyes when the batter swings the bat.

"One of the drawbacks to the pellicle mirror was losing about a 1/3 stop of light, so ISO 100 became in effect, ISO 80. I also know that there were concerns that the light passing through the mirror lead to a loss of sharpness. I never felt looking at my photos that that was the case. [I second that —Mike]

"I tried to tell other guys shooting tournament golf what a great tool the RT was for the job but I don’t think I convinced anyone other than myself. So maybe I was wrong about it all along [you weren't! —Mike]. I know that Canon did not sell a whole of lot of them, then closed the model out at a very discounted price. Today, on the used market, I think the price is usually pretty low.

"I still have one RT. With the Canon STM 40mm ƒ/2.8 lens it makes a fairly compact go-anywhere rig. I have been shooting a roll of film every now and then. I also have an OM-2N so I was happy when you mentioned that model in your section about the OM-4Ti. Sorry, I got a carried away a little and this comment got a bit long.

"Oops, one more thing to add: I always wanted a Mamiya 6, but now they are pretty much out of my price range. Rats!"

Mike replies: The Canon EOS RT was the opposite of most products. They're designed to sell, not primarily to satisfy buyers after the point of purchase. The important thing is that the idea of them has to appeal to prospective buyers. They have to check boxes off the shopping list and not appear to have any obvious downsides. The RT had two big turnoffs for prospective buyers, both of which you point out here. But most people who used them learned that they were great. The problem was that you had to use one for a while to understand how great it was. And that the apparent downsides were actually not. So Canon started out convinced that the camera would sell by the bushel, but learned otherwise, as buyers never got to the point of understanding what Canon already knew.

The Camera I Miss the Most

If you'll go to the previous post (just below this one), you'll find quite a lot of comments, and quite a lot of Featured Comments. I thought I'd add my own pick, from up here in the bully pulpit.

Oddly enough, I think the camera I miss the most is a Leica R4s with a Leitz-era 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron-R and 90mm Summicron-R (I'm hazy on the variants of the latter, now, but the one I used had the narrow focusing ring). I used them a little more than 20 years ago now. Michael Hintlian, who is a fine and accomplished photographer himself, loaned me the two lenses when I was Editor of Photo Techniques. After trying to buy a camera body from eBay—one described as "mint," which arrived not only dirty and dinged but broken*—I bought a worn but functioning R4s from Josh Hawkins at Oak Park Camera. Later, I bought that 35mm lens from Michael; then he wanted it back because he missed it, so I sold it back to him. I really should have kept it, but I'm just not the type to refuse to sell a guy's lens back to him if I know he wants it back.

I wonder how much work and time it would take to rummage through the boxes in the barn to find some pictures taken with that camera and lens. I know I have lots, but finding them could be tough. We'll see.

The lens was designed by Walther Mandler at Elcan, Ernst Leitz Canada. It was way, way overbuilt mechanically. Rather brilliant optically, although a friend dismissed it as "just another super-sharp, soulless lens." I liked it, though. Although it did have some quirks, it seemed to mesh with Tri-X 400 really well, at least to my eye. (That "Tri-X" is no longer made, by the way—the film you buy under that name today is the new Tri-X 400, which is "improved" and not the same film. But then, Kodak made many small, unannounced improvements to Tri-X over many years, and no one ever really knows which exact version of the film someone else is talking about when they say "Tri-X.")

For a long time I've been in the habit of looking at R7's on eBay. That's the most recent variant of the R4–R7 lineage of which the R4s was a part. The R4s was a simplified, supposedly "budget" version of the R4. It was still expensive when new, though, and at various times they've sold for more on the used market than the R4 because people seem to put a premium on their greater simplicity. I know I did.

(The same variant—the cheaper, simplified version—of the R5 was called the R-E. One of my students when I taught had a brand new R5 which had just come out at the time—his outfit cost a rather humiliatingly large percentage of my annual salary at the time.)

R7's are very cheap now and it would be easy to buy one. The R lenses, however, can be adapted, so they're still expensive. That's probably a good thing—keeps me from buying in. One complication is that I don't actually like 35mm Summicron-R's...something I know because I tried to buy one to replace the one I sold back to Michael. I didn't like it as well. The new one was a "Leica" branded one, and I  suspected the coatings were different by then. What I liked was Michael's lens. That particular 35mm Summicron-R, I mean. And there's no going home again on that.

(Just a word of advice that's of fairly limited relevance in the digital age: when you find a lens you particularly like, particularly if it's a zoom, you should consider your affection to be just for that particular lens, not the make and model generically. There's just enough sample variation in lenses (particularly zooms, but primes too, sometimes) such that the last little measure of ineffable magic—for your own definition of "magic"—is likely to be a property of the particular specific lens you tried rather than of every single sample of that same model. See Roger Cicala for plenty of lowdown on that.)

Let's put it this way: If my ship were to come in (which won't happen because I don't have a ship at sea, to stretch the analogy), I'd get a couple of R7's and those two Summicron-R's and shoot Tri-X for the rest of my life, getting someone else to develop, proof, and workprint the pictures. (Because that's what it would take to make film just as easy as digital—ha!)

I'd make the final prints myself, in the basement of the house I would of course build because, you know, that ship and all**.

However, back here in what I conceive of as my provisional, temporary situation, known to all others as "my real life," I don't use film. So the whole exercise is simple nostalgia. I've come to believe that my pining for that old camera probably derives from the simple fact that I just wasn't done with it at the time I had to give it up, such that I'm left with a permanent lingering sense of unfinished business—a lack of closure

 

if you get my drift

 

That's all it is. Probably. Subject to further experiment, possibly...I'll keep scanning the horizon from the widow's walk***.

Saturday post this week
Happy Street Photography Day tomorrow! I'll be back in the morning this week with some thoughts about that.

Mike

*And the seller had the cojones to explain to me that "mint" was only the fifth-highest description in his condition hierarchy, the slimy weasel. Behind "Mint+," "LN–," "LN," and "LN in box," I think it was. Scurvy bilge-rat.

**Hundreds of years ago, European investors would buy shares in the speculative voyage of a ship, whether its mission was trade, whaling, plundering gold from the New World, predatory privateering on the open sea, or whatever. If the ship was successful in its mission, then, when it returned from the voyage—which could take multiple years—the investors would reap a rich payoff according to how many shares they were due. Certainly, from such investors, "I'll pay you when my ship comes in" must have been common to hear. And, with communication in a primitive state, no one on shore knew how the voyage had gone until the ship returned. Our familiar expression today no doubt derives from the fact that if a voyage was wildly successful, an investor could potentially grow rich on the proceeds of even a single voyage...when his ship came in!

***When a ship in the age of sail was lost at sea, it would simply fail to return. Wealthy seafaring men often equipped their coastal houses with rooftop cupolas or platforms, the better to see to a farther horizon. Many is the time a captain would not come back, and his wife would climb to the rooftop walk to scan the sea for the ship that was never coming home, often far past the period of any reasonable expectation. Hence the term "widow's walk" for these lookouts.

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Carl Siracusa: "Back in the day I owned a Leica R7, with the 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, for a couple of years. Liked it a lot at first—the only R camera (when introduced) with auto-exposure, big viewfinder, spot metering, and it just felt right in my hands. Then the foam material that Leica used to line the mirror box started to crackle and disintegrate, requiring an expensive repair that I was told might not last. (Later found out this was a common problem with R7's.) And the shutter lag finally became just too annoying for the kind of street photography I like to do. By then the lens had become very desirable, so I ended up selling both for much more than I paid for them. I do miss it though!"

Mike replies: That's one pitfall of being Leica. If you're going to present yourself as being a cut above, then when you fall on your face it's extra embarrassing. Leicas are just cameras, and, like all cameras, they have problems sometimes. But it's annoying when you've paid extra for a camera that is supposedly "at the limits of the technically feasible" or whatever their tagline used to be, and something simple up and goes SNAFU. You might just deal with it if it happened on a mass market, affordable brand, but when the same thing happens to a Leica it's irritating. The 35mm Summicron-M I had—bought new—started flaking paint chips off its aperture blades, which then got deposited on an inner lens surface right in the optical path. I had it cleaned once, but when it happened again I just sold the whole shebang. On an ordinary lens it might have seemed like a tolerable problem, but on a fancy name lens that cost several times what a Nikkor did, it felt like betrayal. (Earlier, my Nikon 35mm ƒ/2 had a problem with oil on the aperture blades, a known defect. Maybe I just have bad luck.)

Some of the R cameras of that era had a particularly embarrassing problem—the bottom plates weren't sealed, and when you set the cameras down on any moisture the liquid would wick up into the body and wreak havoc with the electronics. Leica's workaround was to produce a little plastic tray to keep the bottom of the camera up and off any liquid. But it took away the tripod mount and made the battery less accessible. Here's a picture from eBay that shows the plastic tray detached from the bottom of the camera:

This wasn't so bad in itself, but it wasn't something buyers should have had to put up with on a camera that claimed to have unusually good engineering.

Thomas Mc Cann: "On reading your eulogy many years ago I bought a Minolta 7D and was as entranced with it as you were. Eventually I moved to Nikon but often regretted letting it go.Years later in a camera store I saw a 7D secondhand for sale and asked to see it. Profound disappointment. It just didn't hold up. Distance lends enchantment."

Mike replies: Yes, and exogenous factors can enhance our experiences, too. When I was shooting with the Leica R, I felt extremely proud to be using the legendary Leica brand—even if most of the public didn't know the R4s from an AE-1. That feeling of status and stature, even if wasn't imaginary back then (which it might have been), wouldn't lend any shine today. Today it would be just another old film camera, a curiosity.

John Krill: "I don't miss any of the cameras I used in the past. None. Nada. Zip. Not even the M3. We all know what brand the M3 is, don't we? I fully enjoy my current go-to cameras. For film it is the Contax G1 with the standard lens, the 45mm ƒ/2. For digital it is the Fujifilm X-Pro2. Can't ask for a better pair of cameras, period. So why should I miss the old stuff?"

'Leica Cannot Keep Up With Demand'

New black Leica M-A unmetered film camera.
Curiously, in stock at B&H Photo as of this writing.

There's a meme going around the photosphere that "Leica cannot keep up with the demand for film cameras." Here's an example. It's because of comments made by various Leica bigwigs lately.

I have no doubt that everything those gentlemen said was true, but we need more data. I mean, it could be that they have two guys assembling 36 cameras a month and now they're getting 44 orders a month. It doesn’t precisely mean either that demand for film cameras is surging generally or that Leica is selling film cameras hand over fist. I mean, it could mean that, but we need a little more drill-down for adequate interpretation.

Big grain of salt, is all I'm saying.

Change of sub-topic but not subject
...Here's a related question: if you were getting a film Leica—and let's say you could afford anything—what would you get? Brand new? Leica currently makes two film cameras, the M-A (meterless, so no battery) and MP (metered, so one or two button batteries that last a year plus). Curiously given the "can't meet demand" theme, B&H has the silver MP in stock and the black M-A in stock). Or vintage?

I'd go used, but I'd be torn. The plain everyday M6, which was an M4-P with a built-in, coupled but non-autoexposure light meter, is the most practical Leica and the most common on the used market (I'd search out a Leitz example). But I think I'd hold out for a really good M4 (all of those were Leitz) and have it serviced. Repair ace Sherry Krauter told me long ago that the M4 was the best-built Leica, as well as the only one that didn't improve, degrade, or fluctuate over its production lifetime: all built to the same high standard from first to last. Although Leicaphiles will dispute this every which way, it's good enough for me. I shot with an M4 for a year and it was a luminous experience, one of many in photography I'm grateful to have had.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve R.)

[CORRECTIONS galore: I somehow managed to make a high density of mistakes in this, for such a short post. The picture was originally labeled as an MP, which is wrong; fixed now. Also, the M6 meter is not uncoupled as I first said; it's coupled, just not auto-exposure. Also fixed now. Thanks to Pieter K. and Carl W. for taking care of dotty Uncle Mike, who obviously isn't taking his pills. —Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
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Chris Nicholls: "As the happy owner of an M6 (with 0.58 viewfinder to suit my spectacles) and an M4, I'll confirm that you can't go wrong with either of those."

Dan Khong: "My best Leica is nicknamed the Hexar RF. It has aperture priority auto exposure and motor drive. Miles ahead of the pack."

David Saxe: "Over the past 30 years, I have owned every Leica M series film camera except the M5. If I were to buy a pure nostalgia/retro film camera it would be the M3. It had brighter viewfinder and with only three framelines it didn't need to nest them inside each other. Also like any other film Leica, it allowed me to use my favorite lens—the Dual Range Summicron."

Nigli: "I have a friend who has a Leica. Her father took a photo of Che Geuvera with it. I want that one."

Bruce Appelbaum: "Five years ago I bought a Leica M7 starter kit that included the 50mm Summicron lens. I paid about $5,800 for the whole thing, which was a great price—Leica had dropped prices because they said the dollar was very strong.

"The nearest thing to the Leica were a couple of Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder cameras. The Voigt cameras went out of production and the remaining stock of 4A, 4M, 3A, and 3M versions closed out at less than $1,000 for the body only. I cannot recall which other Leica bodies were available in 2015, but none of them was offered with the lens. The two cameras in stock are now about $5,200 each and the same lens that came with my M7 is now $2,600. Sales tax not included in any of these numbers.

"Do I like the M7? Yep. Using it has improved my photography by limiting me to a prime lens and a 36-exposure roll of film. No exposure bracketing to run through high dynamic range software, and I have to move my ass, not a zoom ring, to frame the photo.

"My issues: it seems like film prices go up a lot every time I need to stock up, and since I do my own B&W negative developing, chemicals are more expensive, and Kodak no longer sells one-liter packs of D-76.

"P.S. I have a very understanding wife who allowed me to splurge for a camera and lens what could have been a nice down payment on a car."

Larry Canaday: "So...I still have the M4 I got in Germany in 1969. For about five years it (with two Summicrons) was my only 35mm and accounted for well more than half my photographic income. I'll get some Tri-X and let you know the results."

BDR: "It’s funny this should have come up today, as I just bought a brand new silver Leica MP yesterday. The prices of used Leicas with meters have gone up so much over the last few years, that purchasing new suddenly seemed more reasonable."

Mike replies: I dearly hope you bought it through my links. Someone buying a Leica through my links is the holy grail.

Rob L: "I'd stick with my M6—meters are helpful, and I know what the one in my M6, at least, is telling me when I shoot TMY or HP5+. I do agree, the M4, or M4-P, is likely more solid, but heck, the film rewind knob on mine took a nasty hit in the late '90s and I just kept dealing with the slight grinding on turning until the brass smoothed out, and it's still fine, so how much more do I need? What still strikes me is how elegant the M6 remains. a simple indicator of exposure if you wish to pay attention, two controls to adjust exposure, one for focus. You may get things wrong but it's hard to be confused."

Mike replies: That's a great line, "You may get things wrong but it's hard to be confused." My memory is getting less sticky these days but I hope I remember that.

David Lee: "I was into Leica for quite a long time. Now I don’t know what to do with them. When I daydream, I say to myself that I will buy an M10 and sell the M6’s and just keep the lenses. Then reality bites and I realize that I am not getting an M10 and I will not shoot film anymore. We need someone to come up with a digital back door that fits any M body. That’s me daydreaming again."

schralp: "Sorry, this reminds me that when it comes to Leica, the emperor has no clothes. Seriously, $5,200 for a box with a shutter that spools film by and allows viewing through another window? And, a couple hundred more if you want a meter to guide your decision making. I certainly hope you’re right; that is to say, there was a demand for 44 and they only made 36."

Speed: "Why would anyone want to use a film camera today? ...Wonders someone with a manual-transmission car. OK. I get it."

Luke: "I used to lust after a Leica M. It's a lovely analog machine. The whole focus-by-proxy thing, though...a helicoid, and a cam, and some levers, and windows and frame lines, and a best guess. The only M that Imaging-Resource ever tested was very badly misaligned, and focus was trial-and-error only. My first cheap digital Rebel many years ago was an astounding masterpiece of precision manufacturing for very few bucks. Now, that's amazing."

[Luke tested products at Imaging-Resource for many years. —Ed.]

Rick in CO: "Best all around film camera I've ever used, which I had to sell to get into the Leica digital M, was the Mamiya 7. Great lenses, easy to use and light enough to carry anywhere. Still miss it!"

scott kirkpatrick: "On 'Leica Bigwigs.' Leica's not big enough for the wigs to have grown much. The lead owner, Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, is from an Austrian family which cashed in its real estate enterprises about 20 years ago, was looking for a classy new investment, and were drawn to Leica by its partnership with Hermes. Hermes left soon after, but the Kaufmann family stayed for the cameras. CEOs and finance guys have come and gone since then, but there is a tier of product managers that seem to have come up through the ranks. They also seem to love cameras. Stefan Daniel, who is quoted in your linked article, is a special case, and a real jewel. He's the VP with overall responsibility for products, but he started as a teen-aged intern doing camera and lens repairs. He claims that on certain very old and treasured R lenses, he is the only one left at Leica who knows how to fix them and can do so. His taste is for simple products and user interfaces, and it shows. So when Daniel (and Peter Karbe for lenses) talks about new products or about Leica history, they are not just selling something. They have been there and are willing to share opinions about why things have been done as they were."

Fred Tuman: "In 1974 at the impressionable age of 18 I walked into Olden's Photo Store with $350 in my hand looking to buy a Leica. The salesman showed me a beat-to-death Canon 7 and said this was the best my hard-earned sum could manage. I stared at the wrinkled metal shutter for a long time seeing my dream slip away.

"Then a miracle happened. A priest tapped me on my shoulder and said if I could drive him back to his parish, he might have some Leica stuff I'd be interested in. Luckily I borrowed my brother's car to get into the city, so off to the garage we went. All the way back to Queens, he kept asking me what type of photography I liked to shoot, and from the conversation I knew he was legit and the real deal. We went to his quarters and his room was decorated with excellent photojournalist-style photos taken from around the world. He pulled out from a cupboard a Leica M2, a 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, a 50mm ƒ/3.5 Elmar, and a Leicavit. (at the time I didn't know the 'Vit' was worth more than the rest of the bunch.) I happily gave him my $350, and started my love affair with Leica that has never ended. It's the only camera you don't look into...you see through. I use my digital M of today exactly the same way as that first M2."

A Useful Factoid for Car Shopping

Surveys of the membership of Consumer Reports reveals that all of the cars most likely to make it to 200,000 miles (CR identified ten) were made by either Honda or Toyota*.

All I can say to that is, my Acura, which was made by Honda and has a Civic Si drivetrain, has 120,000 to go, and I hope it makes it.

It would be handy if we had projected longevity stats for camera models, too, wouldn't it? I had two early digital cameras that died, but my Fuji X-T1, as I've mentioned before, has been holding up to continuing use better than expected.

Mike

*Source: CR Consumer Reports magazine, August 2020, p. 61

Original contents copyright 2020 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.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Joseph L. Kashi: "340,000 Alaska miles on a 1998 5-speed Saturn SW2 small FWD station wagon, and still going reasonably strong.

"[Sardonic commenting on] of course Saturn went under: reliable, efficient, no-frills vehicles at a fair price, good customer service, and no rip-off [sardonic commenting off]."

Mike replies: I read this great article about Saturn in Forbes, a magazine I seldom see, in a dentist's office in 2010. Very interesting and revealing. GM and the UAW succeeded too well in their original mission, and neither of them could stand it! You'll enjoy this if you've never read it.

Joe Kashi: "Following up on my 340,000 mile Saturn SW2 and other equipment longevity comments, I read the Forbes article that you kindly listed and it mirrored what the people at the Anchorage Saturn dealership told me. We later bought two reconstructed mid-model Saturn VUE AWD SUVs. They're likewise still going strong at well over 150,000 miles. Our 1983 Chevy K-10 Blazer still plows snow reliably but needs a few repairs every now and then—plowing is hard on a vehicle. Our relatively simple 1963 Cessna Skymaster twin-engine aircraft remains capable, safe, and airworthy. It's not as flashy and fast as some more modern aircraft, but several airline captains who have flown with me up in the Alaska mountains preferred it because it was 'real flying, not monitoring automatic systems.' There wasn't a lot to go expensively wrong, such as turbochargers.

"Photographically, I still use several 1926–1928 vintage uncoated Zeiss/B&L Protar VIIa and 1950-vintage Kodak Ektar and Goerz American Dagor lenses along with a variety of modern multi-coated Rodenstock and Fujifilm large format lenses on 5x7. These older top-tier Protar, Ektar, and Dagor large format lenses produce images that are comparable with modern lenses. All of the above are old tech, but capable of modern results. At the end of the day, I prefer practical, non-frilly equipment of all sorts that keeps working reliably and indefinitely if regularly maintained."

Mike: My uncle Cam had a Skymaster. Chosen for redundancy. He was a conservative pilot, and would taxi all the way to the far end of the runway to take off. By the time he passed the tower he would be about eye-level with the controllers. Their standard exchange, repeated every time:

Tower: "Got enough runway there, Cam?"

Cam: "Can't use runway you don't have."

Juan Buhler: "I don't know about cars, but I have two dead Leica M8's and one dead Leica M9, all from faulty parts, like screens or sensors. Is Leica the Maserati of digital cameras?"

Roger Bradbury: "I once heard about a Nikon F5 that went in for a regular service. It had had over one million shutter activations. Allowing for a few activations without film in the camera, a million activations is 27,000 36-exposure films. That's more than twenty rolls of film a day, five days a week, for five years. Wow."

Sunday Support Group: Guide to Good Used Cameras

A reader who's also a Patreon supporter asked me the other day if I could please do a guide to used cameras. Most cameras over the past few years are pretty good, and a lot of them have a lot of life in them yet. What are the good bargains?

I regret to say that, much as I might wish to, I can't comply. First problem: I haven't used all used cameras, namely, the main cameras introduced over the past six or eight years. Secondly, I haven't researched which ones are inexpensive on the used market right now.

The list would be dynamic anyway, unfortunately. The used market for cameras is fickle. Years ago, when a friend bought his Leica, I tracked prices of that particular model for a few years just out of curiosity. The prices ran in very distinct cycles—for a while prices would be high, then low, then they'd ramp up again. (My friend got his for $600, if memory serves, compliments of a dent on the back of the top plate that made it unappealing to collectors and perfectionists. When collectors drive up the prices of equipment, you always wanted to look for something like a nice dent that discourages their interest.) The prices seemed to be not so much the result of fluctuations in demand as to the fact that that model just went in and out of style. I'm sure people who play the stock market know about that...it's the old "hot/not" dichotomy, which sometimes tracks with actual value and sometimes doesn't.

I've already vented plenty of times about items like the Olympus OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 and the Minolta CLE, to which excessively high prices have clung like skunk-stink. Such items appear immune to the market. Owners just think they're valuable and that they should bring a high price, and that's that. You seldom see things like that bargain priced.

A denizen of the Pentax List once got tired of a certain lens being touted as "rare" and actually collected and collated the data. Turned out the lens was the second most common lens on the Pentax used market at the time! No matter. The conventional wisdom was that it was "rare," and everyone repeated it because everyone repeated it, and therefore it had to be priced high.

If you're looking for bargains, such things are the opposite of what you want to be looking for.

You can have just as much fun with a IIIc

One more issue in valuing things I've noticed over the years is that the last revision of anything tends to retain a premium in pricing. Doesn't matter when it was released; the gearhead brain latches on to "later = better." That's even true of the Leica IIIg, the swan song of the screwmount Leica introduced when the M3 was already in production...in 1956! I wasn't even born. The IIIg wasn't even very characteristic of the rest of the screwmount "Barnack cameras," because of its improvements. Still, later = better, even if all the tech is thoroughly ancient in any case, and IIIg's command a premium to this day. Bargain hunters should look at something more plentiful and common like the IIIc.

Name one
If it's something I don't know, it's hard to recommend. Is a Canon 7D a good bargain? They're cheap; they were relatively high end when new; but I don't know how well they've held up, and I haven't used one so I don't know how good they are or not, or whether they have specific issues.

You see the problem. I'd hate to recommend something not knowing whether it might create headaches for new owners.

One of the few used cameras I can recommend right now is the Fuji X-T1. It was Fuji's flagship camera when it was new, and it's now been reiterated three successive times, so it's well out of date. It doesn't have the latest 24-MP sensor. Speed, in several parameters, is lower than the current versions.

However, they're cheap now, and mine has held up very well. I've used it enough that there's "brassing" on some of the knobs and surfaces, but nothing has broken. I don't baby it, either. I find its speed to be more than adequate for the kind of shooting I do. The high-speed continuous is still good for firing a little burst at people to avoid blinks, and I actually like the slower bracket shooting speed better—I don't know why, I guess because it lets me see each image as it goes by. For B&W, I actually like the old 16-MP sensor better than the new one, and there's nothing wrong with 16 megapixels for most users who don't make prints approaching 16x20 inches (A2) in size.

And they're cheap. Nice and cheap. To get a snapshot of pricing I always check the "Sold Items" on eBay, not current listings. Prices for the body only seem to be running between $250 and $350, and even some with a lens or the battery grip or for the "silver graphite" special edition are within that range. A body-only with a "very low shutter count" of 730 exposures (someone's backup?) but with a few cosmetic issues recently sold for $284.70.

If you just take pictures, and aren't concerned with status, that's one bargain.

I like mine with the Fuji MHG-XT Large handgrip. My X-T1 lives in the car now, in case I see something interesting when I'm on the road. Of course, I've only used two tanks of gas since March, so both the car and the car camera are seeing low usage these days, but that's COVID, not the camera.

Anyway, if you were to compile a Guide to Good Used Cameras, that's the kind of bargain you'd be looking to highlight. You want something that was good when it was new, has held up well since then, and that isn't being overvalued by the market.

Mike

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MarkB: "...Three...two...one...aaand the price of used Fuji X-T1's has gone up thanks to the TOP-effect of mentioning it as a bargain.  ;-) "