Has a specific camera ever opened up or transformed your photography?

George Mann

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I have had several cameras that have opened up different photographic avenues, as well as transformed the way I shoot. These cameras are the Nikon FG, the Yashica A, and the Nikon D2x.

The FG + a 50mm Series E lens is just the right size and weight to always leave the house with when carried in a small photo fanny pack, allowing me opportunities to shoot things I would have otherwise missed out on.

The Yashica A being a square format TLR offers me a unique photographic perspective with uniquely rendered images.

I was never happy with shooting digital until my acquisition of the D2x. Being more of a challenge to achieve the best results from it makes it more fun, and the images it yields are second to none.

Does anyone else have similar stories to tell?
 

Alex Benjamin

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Not so much specific camera as format. I've spent years as a 35mm shooter. I move to 6x7 only a few years back. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why my 6x7 photos were so uninteresting, why I couldn't get the same percentage (admittedly pretty low) of keepers with the 6x7 that I had with the 35mm. Took me quite a while to figure out that you just don't think visually and photographically in 6x7 as you do 35mm. And that realization is just the beginning, as I'm still trying to figure out how to think visually and photographically in 6x7.

The challenge with 6x6 is a bit different. The change going from 35mm to 6x6 is so radical, the particularities of the square are so obvious—which doesn't mean without their own, numerous, challenges—that the passage from one to the other is somewhat less difficult. That said, going from eye level to waist level brings its own set of difficulties. Your relationship with the world constantly needs to be reajusted. That's why in 6x7 I went from a Mamiya RB to the Pentax 6x7. I prefer the Mamiya as a camera, but at least with the Pentax I can still abide by the look-take camera to eye level-frame-shoot-take down camera-keep looking-bring camera back up if necessary, i.e., keeping my attention on the object of my attention.

All three formats are important to me. There is an interesting back-and-forth between the way you see the world, the way you relate to certain things in the world, and the way you think, or feel, whatever that relationship is is best translated in a photograph.
 

Yin(UTC+8)

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说实话，我从小就开始玩胶片，很长一段时间我一直在用PS相机（傻瓜相机），我觉得很方便。但是当我接触到富士的gw690时，我意识到了手动胶片的美妙之处。我开始尝试很多手动胶片相机，这给了我比PS相机更好的体验，并且变得非常艺术化。
 

Yin(UTC+8)

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现在，我最常使用的相机是富士GX680iii和基辅60。它们都很笨重，但在我的身上看起来很酷。
 

Pioneer

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I used 35mm for years, mostly taking family photos, but they were pretty simple photos. It wasn't until I bought a Pentax *ist DS digital 35mm that I actually starting thinking about what I could do with composition and exposure adjustments. That immediate feedback, and the ability to delete my mistakes, allowed me to really start experimenting.

Then I bought a Yashica-Mat 124G and started shooting 6x6 medium format and I really began to experiment with the square format. I loved it and still do.

I am still shooting 35mm and medium format and I love it but a friend gifted me an 11x14 field camera a couple of years ago and WOW! What a difference being able to contact print a large negative shortly after developing it. It is almost like shooting monster digital and I am having to learn things all over again.
 

BrianShaw

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6x9 half frame. Speciically Kodak/Nagel Duo620. Has me looking at the world from a different perspective.



 
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Sirius Glass

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Minolta SR7, Minolta SRT101, Minolta SRT102, ... Minolta MD11
Hasselblad 503 CX, Minolta 903 SWC
Nikon N75, F100
 

dpurdy

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If you are old and have been a photographer your whole life it has happened multiple times. Currently I am being "transformed" by two cameras. Digging through my camera closet I found my old Rollei 35S that I had only used a few times many years ago. I took it for a walk in the neighborhood to see if it still works. It works great and I have discovered that I really like neighborhood street photography.. after never before caring for street photography. Then I decided to start photographing my prints rather than scanning them to put on line and I bought a Nikon D2Xs and a Nikkor 60mm 2.8 micro lens. I think it is a great decision. It is a really good camera and the sharpest lens I have ever owned.. So now it will do all my scanning.
 

guangong

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I sketched and drew for years before doing photography. Therefore I have tried whenever possible to compose my pictures. However there are times when a grab shot takes precedence. I started with 35mm. When using a Rollei or Hasselblad I rarely compose to a 66 frame, but try to visualize for a frame of different proportions within the 66 frame, because dynamic composition is extremely difficult using a square. I also have other medium format cameras of different proportions and do try composing within their frames. I haven’t used my 45 view camera for several years, but the whole operation of this camera requires a more deliberate attention to detail and composition. I may shoot a 36 exposure role in an afternoon, but only 4 or 5 shots using a view camera.
G. B. Shaw had it right. The success rate for photography is similar to salmon spawning upstream. The ease of pressing the shutter button disguises the complexity of photography.
 

AnselMortensen

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When I upgraded from a Kowa Six to a Hasselblad 500C, I noticed a significant improvement.
Whether it was due to the Zeiss lens, a change in my way of seeing/composing/subject matter, or some intangible psychological reason, the improvement was noticeable.

A couple of years ago, when I acquired my first 8x10 camera, after decades of using 4x5 and 5x7, seeing the image on a "picture window" sized groundglass was a revelation...I feel that some of my recent 8x10 images are some of my best work.
 
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George Mann

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dpurdy said:
If you are old and have been a photographer your whole life it has happened multiple times.
Click to expand...

I have been involved in this hobby since 1972. During that time I have had countless SLR cameras, and a few less than stellar rangefinders.

But none of them offered me what the FG, A and D2x do.

dpurdy said:
I bought a Nikon D2Xs and a Nikkor 60mm 2.8 micro lens. I think it is a great decision. It is a really good camera and the sharpest lens I have ever owned.. So now it will do all my scanning.
Click to expand...

I actually bought my D2x to scan my film as well, but found it to be an excellent photographic tool that I have been using ever since.
 

Nicholas Lindan

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Well, most of the cameras I have gone through in the past 60+ years have changed the way I photograph. The highlights being:
  • Zeiss Nettar - Age zilch - My mother's camera. Started the whole obsessive thing. Didn't take pictures with it, just stared at as it hung in the front closet. I inherited it when she passed. Takes wonderful pictures. From a few years back: Terminal Tower
  • Empire Baby - Age 8 - I finally had a camera of my own! The pictures were awful; the camera was awful; incredible spherical aberration so the top and bottom third of the picture was a blur; the shutter was a sometimes event. I learned to develop film with a Tri-Chem Pack and some kitchen bowls. Friend of a neighbor gave me an old Federal enlarger. Nowadays the blur is considered très artistique.
  • Imperial Satellite - Age 9 - Well at least the picture was "in focus," the shutter worked reliably, the film could be wound on without the camera's back coming off. My pictures were no longer artistique. Dead boring, in fact: a picture of the Christmas tree; a picture of the boys in my 4th grade class; a picture of my mother and sister sitting on the couch.
  • Agfa Solina - Age 10: An exercise in frustration - the green goo/glue had struck and instead of focusing with the helical the whole front cell turned freely in the mounting threads. Every picture was out of focus. I blamed my skill at estimating distances. Bought accessory range finders. Finally, after two years of frustration, I realized the camera was at fault, not me. Fixed the green goo problem, firmly seated the front lens cell. Pictures were now in focus - for the first time in my life. Lots of artistique pictures; lots of color slides; got a projector for my birthday; got a Durst J35 enlarger for Christmas. Life was good.
  • Exakta/Exa 500 - Age 15 - Needed fixing right out of the box - fixed the aperture mechanism, put the prism/screen in the right place so things were in focus - I now knew it was often the camera's fault when things went south. Started taking good pictures, looking back on them now I'm impressed with some of them. Lots of pre-set lenses. Obsessed with getting things in focus, obsession lasts to this day.
  • Miranda Sensomat - Age 17 - I returned the first sample as the meter was erratic. New T-adapters & automatic lenses. I sold the Exakta to a girl in high school who went on to become a professional photographer in Chicago. On vacation it just made plain old good photos. Used it in photography classes at uni. Produced some very fine images. Iris Settled on Plus-X and D-76 1:1. Amazing how peer pressure can motivate, now I not only had to please myself but also the class and the Prof.
  • Graflex Graphic View - Age 18 - First used the school's , then bought my own. The usual revelation about grain, resolution and gradation. Mine, however, had a 90mm Angulon, not good choice in a lens and so I didn't use it much. Sold it along with the -
  • Leica M3 - Age 20 - Used it mostly with Kodachrome. Needed a lot of fixing. Had a suite of lenses and accessories. Stupidly sold the whole kit, along with the above. Was able to pay the rent, though.
  • Rollie SL66 - Age 20 - Never used it much. I only remember shooting 3 rolls of film. Good results, as expected. But it was heavy, the camera and lenses required a suitcase to haul around, along with a tripod. As I didn't use it much I, again, I stupidly traded it for a -
  • Leica M5 - Age 21 - a camera that I also don't use. But it is much lighter. It sits on a shelf.
  • Nikon F3 & FM2 - Age 31 - The cameras I use constantly. All sorts of lenses, finders, focus screens, motor drives, backs, etc. etc. etc.. The FM2 is always loaded with Tech Pan - large format results Terminal Tower innards. - fisheye lenses for large format being hard to come by. The F3 used to be loaded with Kodachrome, sadly no more and it has to make do with the occasional mix of TMX, Ektar & Ektachrome. Also picked up an F4, F2AS and N75, along the way. Don't use any of them much.
  • Sinar F - Age 32 - Yup, takes exceedingly sharp images. Trees, benches in the snow Crack Apo Sironar, Grandagon & Nikkor M lenses. Lots of bellows, finders, extensiion rails ... Has it's own suitcase. Probably weighs less than the SL66, above; at least I don't feel it weighs too much. I have a P for that.
  • Yashica T4 - can't be beat for vacation snaps. Liberating, nothing to fiddle with, just aim and press the button. And the automation really works, 36 properly exposed and properly focued 5x7 color prints as a matter of course. Camera is better than it has any right to be. Have/had four of them. One was loaded with Kodachrome or Tech Pan as it could handle ASA 25, loaned it to a girlfriend for her trip to New Zealand. She kept it. Told me she was keeping it. She told me she never took such good photos as with that camera - I didn't find out what her previous camera was, possibly came in a box of Cap'n Crunch cerial. Stupidly I didn't exchange it with her for a 'newer, better' model.
and there it, mostly*, stops, waiting on my finally using my never used -
  • Shen Hao 8x10
*mostly - exceptions being an Argus C3, a Yashica TLR (635?), various broken Oly's and Canons, Exaktas ... none having any influence.
 
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RezaLoghme

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Going from 35mm to 6x6 as a teenager, with various cheap TLRs. Cost of film + processing was huge (for me, at that time), so slowing down and thinking about the final image before pressing the shutter release was a big game-changer for me.

A cheap early Rolleiflex 3.5 got me "hooked".
 

FriedLouisStudio

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I'd had decades of photo experience with everything from 4x5 view cameras down to a Minox, but everything I'd learned in my parents' studio was rigidly pragmatic. While nowhere near as scientific as what I see here (we didn't measure our solutions in metric, I never heard terms like contrast index or characteristic curve [though my folks did understand subtle technical issues like reciprocity failure and bellows correction]), we didn't make anything considered art. We were commercial photographers mainly doing product shots, and Dad always said, "I'm no artist, just a craftsman."

The Minox IIIs I got myself for my little midlife crisis at age 40 in 1995, when I decided to more completlely embrace my lifelong photographer self by carrying a camera with me all the time, changed my shooting. (Mind you, I'd already had a Minox B as a teenager, but I'd grown frustrated with my grainy/dusty/scratched results on 1960s TX and soon traded it for a Petri Color 35.) I specifically wanted the IIIs because it was smaller than the B... and I'd found the selenium meter on my old B pretty useless in anything other than bright light. So I commited myself to improving my exposure estimation - a skill I'd also developed as a teen, but had grown rusty over the years using cameras with built-in meters or carrying a Gossen Pilot or Luna Pro.



But even more significantly than my exposure technique, I wanted to learn to make pictures for artistic expression vs. just documentation. Using the Minox nearly daily taught me to previsualize. Because the IIIs (and B) loses a frame if you close it without taking a picture, I wouldn't even open it and bring it to eye unless I was already pretty sure there was a good picture there. I improved my "eye".

With my pro background, I already had a high good-shot-to-number-of-exposures ratio, typically printing about one-third of my 35mm negs. But that around 20 years of previsualizing with the Minox - along with studying great photographers and painters to learn about composition and light - made me a much better photographer. Maybe even something approaching an artist...
 

Prest_400

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While reading and thinking, I can give quite a detailed journey that surprises myself on reflecting. At just below my almost 30 year old age:

2004 - I started photography with a generic digital P&S, in the back of my mind I had this project of documenting my beach hometown - was a child back then. That thing shot like film as I remember the first memory card wasn't of much capacity and expensive! This experience
2008 - Nikon F401, it was Dad's camera and I wanted to do more serious photography as a teenager that time. Was eyeing DSLRs but the upfront cost was high, just buy film and ditto. Shot a family dinner and really liked the results.
2008 - The F401 is fugly 80s design, relatively heavy so aspiring to learn seriously seeked a classic manual SLR, chose the OM-1
Not a camera but in 2009 Kodachrome was discontinued, I thank a forumer saying "try it now or never" at that time, so went for it. Loved Dad's slides so I liked transparency film at the time. It was a very fun and giving experience.
Between 2009-2012 I really wanted to move up to Medium format, it was this alluring beautiful medium
2012 (not a camera either)- I could have gotten a Mamiya 7II with the 80mm for 400€ online but was 17 at the time so could not legally purchase it myself. Wish I had convinced family to do it! I did get a m43 as proper digital camera so started documenting quite a bit more. This is where I got into "proper" digital".
2014 - Samsung phone, to snapshot day to day. GW690III. I targeted this 6x9 RF already in 2012 or so, but was starting college and you know the cash strap situation and I was also tight with film.
2019 - Olympus EM5 with f2,8 telephoto: A changed perspective, very agile and good quality! Darkroom printing and finally doing a traditional silver B&W workflow completely.
2022 - RX100 and Google Pixel 6: What a dream to cover the day to day EDC photography. No more "fomo" about missed shots, as one branch of my photography is just documentation and life. The 1" sensored Sony is amazing and IMO almost anything someone would ever need gear wise.

Film has been my "conscious" photography, while digital much more that flexible and always available photography. Being a young millennial I realise that am a bridge generation and have shot both in parallel really. I do not really get the "digicam" trend as I suffered those well enough in the 2000s
 

Sanug

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My milestones:

In the first place, The Asahi Pentax Spotmatic from my father. In the early 1970s I used to take the family holiday images with it, while I has been frustrated with my own Agfamatic 126 my parents gave me as a gift.

Later I used this camera seriously and added some nice Carl Zeiss Jena lenses. I even managed to smuggle the famous Pancolar 1.8/80 from East to West Germany in 1987. Regret very much to have sold it.

Later I bought a Rollei 35 LED. In 1980 I took really great pictures in black and white in Berlin (East and West). I still have the negatives and like to print soon some of them. The Rollei was on a trip to India 1989, where I took great images on Kodachrome. Now I own a Rollei 35 T. It is a great camera for travelling and street photography.

In the early 1999s I did some portrait work with a Pentacon Six and the 2.8/180 mm Sonnar. Replaced the Spotmatic with Pentax LX. Had a studio flash system.

Nowadays I enjoy very much the rangefinder Canon 7s. And I must say, each camera leads me to a different kind of view and images.
 

Citsmith

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After years of commecial photography in museum exhibits I rediscovered my Horizont rotating panoramic camera I bought in the late 60’s. I began using it in a vertical manner and found something in down town Chicago that I had not seen before.
 

chuckroast

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When I was young, I thought Equipment matters a lot, and tried to find my way to good work through GAS.

When I had some photographic mileage under me, I wanted to be an artist and though, Equipment doesn't matter at all, I am an Arteest, by golly, and tried to fit everything I did into a single camera system.

Now, with the benefit of a lot more photographic mileage, I have come to understand that Photographic equipment is to the photographer as paint brushes are to a painter. Each "brush" does a different thing in different contexts.

I see one way with a 35mm SLR, an other with a rangefinder. I work differently with a 'Blad than I do a TLR. My field cameras make me slow down and think deeply about what I am doing.

Different strokes with different brushes ...

P.S. I am still trying to figure out how to become a decent artist. I'll get back to you when/if I turn 100.
 
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