Cameras you don't click with.
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I forgot about the AGFA Solinettes
Pretty 35mm folders, but weird focusing (hard on the fingers)
Pretty 35mm folders, but weird focusing (hard on the fingers)
I have never shot my Nikon F3. Every time I pick it up and leave it back on the shelf because it is heavy.
Trastic PressPan
Great concept as an X-Pan alternative, but its shoddy execution and build quality never produced good images for me.
It was a camera that I really wanted to like but, after putting about 20 rolls of film thru it I had to admit that my standards were higher than its output. There was something off in regards to the film plane where it just didn't produce sharp images. And it wasn't the 50mm Mamiya Press lens as I also used that exact same lens on my Dora Goodman Zone and it was just fine.
The ergonomics weren't great, being front-heavy with a small grip, but I could have lived with that if I liked what came out of it.
Jeremy
Great concept as an X-Pan alternative, but its shoddy execution and build quality never produced good images for me.
It was a camera that I really wanted to like but, after putting about 20 rolls of film thru it I had to admit that my standards were higher than its output. There was something off in regards to the film plane where it just didn't produce sharp images. And it wasn't the 50mm Mamiya Press lens as I also used that exact same lens on my Dora Goodman Zone and it was just fine.
The ergonomics weren't great, being front-heavy with a small grip, but I could have lived with that if I liked what came out of it.
Jeremy
I hate to say it, but I'm starting to come around to the realization that I'm not clicking with rangefinders in general. While many features and handling of rangefinders appeal to me, I'm getting less consistent results with that platform than SLRs. It's a shame because I feel like I should be able to focus faster and more surely in lower light scenarios, but the outcome doesn't reflect that.
Chris
Chris
I use an F6 and would not say I love it. It's just a nice AF SLR that does its job. I much prefer using RF cameras. What did you hate about it? And are there other similar AF SLRs that you like - if so, why?
Also curious to hear what you don't like about it.
I shoot with an F5, and F100, and sometimes N80/F80. All of those bodies are great in their own rights, and I always assumed that the F6 was just a modern(er) version of the F5, which I love.
The only "negative" that I can say about the ones I listed above is that they are so good that they feel like only one-step-removed from shooting a digital camera. Meaning that I don't get the film "feels" when shooting them because they are just so easy to use.
Jeremy
Yah pretty much all AF slrs are so easy to use to give good results they can feel like giant p&s cameras. I’ve owned the f75, f80, f100, f4, f6. All give superb results. All feel like the camera is doing all the work, for better or for worse.
The Rollei 35 (which found a new home this week).
And the Komaflex-S. While I really like the 4x4 format, the camera just doesn't feel "right" in my hands. It will be replaced this year with a TLR.
And the Komaflex-S. While I really like the 4x4 format, the camera just doesn't feel "right" in my hands. It will be replaced this year with a TLR.
Yup the world’s most dropped camera, which says something about the design..
The 40mm 2.8 Sonnar lens is fantastic but wasted in a camera that relies on zone focus. At f8 every lens looks the same. Which is why I have that lens in Ltm-M form, so I can focus it accurately at any aperture at any distance.
My last film camera purchase before switching to digital was an N80 (same as F80). It was great for chasing my young kids around, but wasn't as satisfying to use as my OM-1 (or the all manual cameras I've owned since).
Chris
It really isn't. It's more like a full featured F100 than a modernized F5. By that point, nikon knew that full-time pros were increasingly all digital and made a super prosumer camera.
I love my F6. But I got it before I got other professional nikons and 30 years after I'd handled an F4. I've never owned an F5. They're nice to shoot, despite their size, but I haven't spent any time with one. So I'm kind if interested in the response, too.
I will relate that I met an old time pro who sneered when I told him I had an F6. He jokingly forgave me because I had my F3 on me -- he went digital 20 years ago, but still owns an F3 and F5. He also really disliked the F6 after daily shooting F5s for newspapers for years, which he raved about.
Maybe it's good I never bought an F5. Ignorance is bliss, I use the bejeebus out of my F6.
I’m sure as an old, salty, weathered pro he did not like the F6 because it was not aimed at pros, but wealthy shooters who just wanted the best. And so Nikon made the best luxury 35mm slr that they knew how, knowing the pro market was over for 35mm film cameras.
You’re not missing anything w the F5. It is a huge, awesome AF slr that weighs a cr@p tonne. Does not matrix meter w manual focus lenses (unless chipped) if that matters. Much harder to know/see which af patch is being used.
Basically the F5 was built to be the best pro camera. While the F6 was built to be the best camera.
F6 is fussy about this, too. I chipped my MF 18mm lens because I like it so much, and it works a treat on the F6 now.
F4 seems to be almost old lens agnostic. Works with every darned thing that has an aperture ring.
But the F6, professional or not, gets me good shots, drives VR nicely for my long lenses, and was the first "modern" camera I bought when I got back into film, so it meets my expectations fine.
Of course, not everyone connects with everything. This is a thread where the F3 was called a turd (I'm guessing a universal opinion, judging by just how few of them Nikon was able to sell) and the Nikonos too ugly to use when they were the height of French design aesthetics in 1960 (Jacque Cousteau is rolling in his grave over this slight, I'm certain).
And, yes, this guy I met was old and salty. Retired around 2010 and told me several stories of his most active years from 1980 to about 2005, so the F3 was the camera of his youth, and the F5 was the ultimate camera when he was shooting for the newspaper at the end of his career. We often really bond with the thing that was THE thing in our formative years.
In 35mm SLRs, any camera in which the shutter speed dial is not located on the top plate, next to the film advance. So that rules out Olympus OM1/2, Nikkormat, and Contax SLRs (and probably others). All nice cameras, but the ergonomics are awkward for me in terms of adjusting shutter speed and aperture rapidly in manual mode. Also, the OM cameras are a bit too small for my hands.
Dale
Dale
I shot with a borrowed Hasslelblad fairly recently and I was a little... underwhelmed? Just very finicky feeling to me. And as someone who is shooting on a pretty strict budget, even holding it made me a little sick lol. If I owned one, I don't think I'd ever want to shoot with it enough to learn to love it.
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