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

[Sirius Glass]

WideLux F7 makes me think in panoramic frames on landscapes and vertical views of objects.

 

[cliveh]

I got one of these for my 8th birthday - a pretty good way to start:
View attachment 390134

Matt, I was given one of those at a similar age.

 

[cliveh]

Leica.

 

[MattKing]

Do you still have it?

No - and I'm sort of sad about that.
But I've never been one to keep cameras as display pieces, and I've no desire to futz with 127 film.
I wonder where those 127 super slides on Ektachrome are though?

 

[eli griggs]

Two or three cameras, that I can think of.

A Leica "M3", for a general walk about camera.

A Leica IIIc

I got one of these for my 8th birthday - a pretty good way to start:
View attachment 390134

Did you get/use a flash gun and bulbs?

 

[MattKing]

Did you get/use a flash gun and bulbs?

IIRC, AG-1B bulbs.
It was 6 decades ago!

 

[Melvin J Bramley]

Nikon F80.
The matrix metering performs better than my centre weighted metered cameras.

 

[eli griggs]

IIRC, AG-1B bulbs.
It was 6 decades ago!

Matt, bulbs are one of those photographic tools that'll outlast an awful lot of other kit and digging up the right ones allows you to work with that all day, with period gear.

Sort of like bulb type assemblies, that just sit about, waiting to be used

 

[MattKing]

Matt, bulbs are one of those photographic tools that'll outlast an awful lot of other kit and digging up the right ones allows you to work with that all day, with period gear.

Sort of like bulb type assemblies, that just sit about, waiting to be used

That may be true, but how are you going to make the photographer wide eyed and eight years old again!
This guy:

 

[Ivo Stunga]

I have an itch for a quality half-frame camera to try out and to project diptych slides. Once I get around picking up such a camera, that ought to have rather strong impact on what's being shown and could open some storytelling opportunities.

Currently I'm thinking Olympus Pen FT or FV

 

[runswithsizzers]

That may be true, but how are you going to make the photographer wide eyed and eight years old again!
This guy:
View attachment 390842

Is that a crime scene photo of someones irises being murdered?

 

[MattKing]

Is that a crime scene photo of someones irises being murdered?

Nah
It is a small crop of a much larger image of a bunch of people in our garden.
I don't have much ~1964 (the year I turned 8), which both shows me and has been digitized.

 

[Laurent]

I was to say it's my Rolleiflex, but in fact it's the Yashica Mat 124 I owned just before.

Fun fact, I bought it out of frustration for missing ebay sales for a Zorki. I got it almost by surprise and discovered a whole new world. Before that, I had an EOS 3 system, great camera but suite heavy.

The Yashica travelled with me, a thing I did not do with the EOS. It made me discover how fun is street photography and how much I love it.

I sold it for no good reason except I had two TLR at that time and I had a preference for the 'flex ( despite lacking a meter, and a lens that's no better than the Yashinon)

Since this time I sold the EOS system (not sure it was a good love, as for wildlife it would have been great, but I have fun with my F1) and acquired two Leicas (M4 and IIIa) which are great for street, landscape and casual photography, just like the Rolleiflex.

TLR also made me discover that SLR are not really superior and sometimes even inferior to other systems.

The practice of street also made me stop snapshootinv, and actually look at other photographers' work

 

[Steve York]

Plain prism Nikon F forced me to shoot by Sunny 16 and learn that I didn't need a meter. Limiting myself to the 35mm lens on a Leica M2 for six months taught me that's all I really needed, for me, for the most part.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

In my early twenties (early 1980's) I sold my Pentax 6x7 gear and ordered a Zone VI 4x5 field camera outfit after seeing an ad in the back of a magazine. I had never seen a large format camera in real life before and had only developed a couple rolls of film up to that point. That was jumping into the deep end transformational.

 

[Kodachromeguy]

My first Rolleiflex taught me to frame square. It was a new way of composing for me. I lived in Houston back then:

https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2023/04/from-archives-washington-avenue-houston.html

 

[RezaLoghme]

My Rolleiflex did not unleash my inner Jim Rakete.

 

[loccdor]

The Olympus Pen D. It fits in my pocket without the need for a camera bag so I take it with me pretty much everywhere. Sharp lens, full manual control, no focusing aid but it focuses close enough to measure with arm length. Super quiet leaf shutter and thumbwheel advance allows one-handed operation. 75 shots before a reload is needed. I like portrait orientation being the default. Simple enough camera that even I can take apart and CLA it without disaster.

If I don't want to carry a bag I can still take it along. If my back or muscles are hurting I can still take it along. I can make a large print with it that looks good to me if my technique is careful.

The other thing that changed my photography was discovering that I see and compose most naturally in the 100-135mm focal length. It took a lot longer to get used to the "normal" focal length, but after some years I finally did.

 

[RezaLoghme]

And the SL 601 unleashed my inner dentist!

 

[Kodachromeguy]

And the SL 601 unleashed my inner dentist!

What does this mean?

 

[RezaLoghme]

Some people believe that only dentists and lawyers buy Leicas, to show off. It was a humorous word play on that trope.

 

[Michael Howard]

The other thing that changed my photography was discovering that I see and compose most naturally in the 100-135mm focal length. It took a lot longer to get used to the "normal" focal length, but after some years I finally did.

Same. When I first got my Konica Hexanon 135/3.2, I wondered how I ever lived without it. It is still, by far, my most used lens. Its best feature is it can focus at 1 meter, so it's an almost-kinda-macro lens.

 

[MattKing]

What does this mean?

Some people believe that only dentists and lawyers buy Leicas, to show off. It was a humorous word play on that trope.

I found it funny.
Of course I sold a few Hasselblads and at Leicas when In worked in camera sales, and at least some of them were bought by doctors and dentists. No lawyers as best I recall, but definitely a couple of university professors!

 

[mshchem]

Polaroid Big Shot that I found in thrift stores. I used type 669 Professional pack film, delivered amazing results. I miss that camera and the Magicube flash cubes. Perfect device, tremendous rangefinder. Single purpose, portraits.

 

[chuckroast]

I found it funny.
Of course I sold a few Hasselblads and at Leicas when In worked in camera sales, and at least some of them were bought by doctors and dentists. No lawyers as best I recall, but definitely a couple of university professors!

In my youth, I worked at one of the largest photo retailers and pro rental facilities in the Central US. One of my many jobs was to clean up used equipment we'd just taken in to make it presentable for sale. It is there that I learned the many wonders of Nikon, Hasselblad, Leica, and such.

It is also where I learned that having the well-heeled buy- and then later trade-in the latest high end camera or lens was good for the rest of us: It put great equipment in circulation for purchase by mere mortals.

I also learned that some of the aforementioned doctors, dentists, and their fellow travelers were pretty serious photographers.

An interesting (to me) aside was the guy I worked for was a walking talking Leica encyclopedia. There wasn't much he didn't know about those cameras, lenses, and accessories. He was Jewish and of an age that he would have been a young man during the horrors of World War II. I always found it ironic that he was so drawn to German equipment. He was a tough old bird, though, and taught this callow youth a whole bunch about the photo retail industry and all things Leica.