Most disappointing cameras?

2F/2F · Sep 10, 2011

A pro-bodied Nikon seems more like an Acura or high-end Honda to me. Finely made, full featured, reliable, easy to maintain...but not boutique/snooty. Try treating a Land Rover like you can treat a Honda and see what happens. I put 244,000 hard miles on my '91 Integra 5 speed, and aside from maintenance items, the only things I ever had to replace were the starter, the distributor, and the alternator. Under $1,000 of repairs over 244,000 miles with limited maintenance sounds analogous to a Nikon F to me.

agfarapid · Sep 10, 2011

I know that I'm in the minority on this one, but I have to admit that my recently purchased 500c has been the biggest disappointment of all my camera purchases. Don't get me wrong, it's a well made camera and very versatile. I finally succumbed to buying one after fondling one at my local camera store. Previously, I had been turned off by it's bulk, comparing it to my Mamiya M645's and (now don't laugh) my Mamiya RB Pro S. I'm used to the latter's bulk and for a beast of a camera it handles very well. I bought it primarily as an alternative to my Mamiya C33 twin lens (yeah, I know I'm just a Mamiya whore!!) which is kinda heavy when I'm out shooting on the street. The biggest Hassy turn off is the focusing ring on the old style 80 Planar. It's physically sharp and unyielding to the touch, and after a day of shooting my fingers looked as if they'd been mining rocks. I guess I've been spoiled by the rack and pinion focusing on the C33 & RB and the much smoother focusing rings on my 645's but I find focusing the Hassy a chore and I'm continually going back and forth to find the focus, even with the brighter screen that my 500c has. In addition to the focusing issues, I'm not fond of the EV method of changing aperture and shutter speed--it slows me down. Optically, the 80 Planar is marginally sharper than the 80 Mamiya but I find my RB lenses are equally as sharp or better than the Zeiss glass. Well, those are my gripes. Am I getting rid of the Hassy? No, not yet. I'm going to give it some more time and maybe it will grow on me.

fstop · Sep 10, 2011

2F/2F said:
A pro-bodied Nikon seems more like an Acura or high-end Honda to me. Finely made, full featured, reliable, easy to maintain...but not boutique/snooty. Try treating a Land Rover like you can treat a Honda and see what happens. I put 244,000 hard miles on my '91 Integra 5 speed, and aside from maintenance items, the only things I ever had to replace were the starter, the distributor, and the alternator. Under $1,000 of repairs over 244,000 miles with limited maintenance sounds analogous to a Nikon F to me.

You can push a rhino out of the with Rover or throw the F at it, won't hurt either of them, but hit an average size dog with a honda and its totally totalled.

wblynch · Sep 11, 2011

Minolta XG-1. POS - DOA

$15 shattered dream

Photo-gear · Sep 11, 2011

Canon T90. Although the camera is attractive for its potential functions and its ergonomy, it is very capricious and it has an unpredictable behaviour. Intermittant breakdowns showing "ERR" for no apparent reason. On top of all this disappointment, there is hardly a technician still able to fix it. Welcome to the land of broken dreams with the T90 !!!

fstop · Sep 11, 2011

wblynch said:
Minolta XG-1. POS - DOA

$15 shattered dream

thats a shame,put it on ebay for parts and get another one, the XG-1 is good camera but the XG-9 offers DOF which is useful.

Selidor · Sep 11, 2011

You can push a rhino out of the with Rover or throw the F at it, won't hurt either of them, but hit an average size dog with a honda and its totally totalled.

Fine, Toyota Landcruiser then? Although I can't believe the analogy is getting this specific

semi-ambivalent · Sep 11, 2011

2F/2F said:
A pro-bodied Nikon seems more like an Acura or high-end Honda to me. Finely made, full featured, reliable, easy to maintain...but not boutique/snooty. Try treating a Land Rover like you can treat a Honda and see what happens. I put 244,000 hard miles on my '91 Integra 5 speed, and aside from maintenance items, the only things I ever had to replace were the starter, the distributor, and the alternator. Under $1,000 of repairs over 244,000 miles with limited maintenance sounds analogous to a Nikon F to me.

I've never followed cars so I never really get the analogies. I would liken an F to a Pelikan 140; beautifully made and a joy to use, but still pedestrian in some way and by no means rare (I've read Nikon manufactured 1.1 million). The attainment of cache certainly alters our views of things. Among the wealthy of my town there's a lot of Rovers but before those it was "cool" to display your wealth by driving a rusty, smoke belching, beat-up Volvo 240 sedan. Then it changed, almost en masse.

Roger Cole · Sep 11, 2011

I understood the cars analogies but had no idea what a Pelikan 140 was so I googled it. A fountain pen? You're comparing cameras to fountain pens? Do they still make ink for those?

wblynch · Sep 11, 2011

fstop said:
thats a shame,put it on ebay for parts and get another one, the XG-1 is good camera but the XG-9 offers DOF which is useful.

There are already dozens of XG-1 parts cameras on ebay. I think that's a sign.

BradleyK · Sep 11, 2011

BradleyK said:
Agreement here on the F4. I have owned and used Nikon F series cameras going back to F2s in the late 70s. I currently own a pair of F2s (DE-1 variety), an F2A and a pair of F2ASs, an F3, F3HP, an F4s and an F5. I bought the F4s on a sort of whim (big mistake): it was the newest thing, it had autofocus, etc. Somehow the camera has never really felt right: ergonomics are awkward, changing batteries in a hurry is a pain in the *** and, compared to the marvelous F5, the auto-focus is slower than molasses in January. As a result, on most shooting excursions, an F2AS, F3HP and F5 are first into the bag; the F4s tends to get pulled from the shelf only in the rarest of instances.

Finally pulled this camera off the shelf and gave it away to friend who, until I convinced her of the error of her ways, was a digital shooter. Hopefully she gets a lot more use out of this beast than I ever did; I doubt I shot more than 30 rolls in the time I owned it.

snegron · Sep 11, 2011

fstop said:
Thats better than ebaying it where the great unwashed can get their grubby paws on it.
Yeah its top heavy, the solution is to put the motor drive on it.But to be honest its still a match needle manual camera that gets its butt kicked by the less expensive more capable F3 at every turn.However the F3 doesn't have the cache the F2 does and will not appreciate as much.

MD2 on my F2A wasn't much help; it just made it weigh about as much as my car!

Here are a few pics. I un-bubble wrapped my F2A with MD2 just for you today. I quickly re-wrapped it and placed it back in storage.

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976958

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976983

http://www.pbase.com/image/137977004

BrianL · Sep 11, 2011

Load those Nikons like that and they are heavier than my Bronica. They could be standard issue at the work out room to build up those biceps.

fstop · Sep 11, 2011

snegron said:
MD2 on my F2A wasn't much help; it just made it weigh about as much as my car!

Here are a few pics. I un-bubble wrapped my F2A with MD2 just for you today. I quickly re-wrapped it and placed it back in storage.

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976958

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976983

http://www.pbase.com/image/137977004

Nice looking pair.
Odd how we use digital to take pictures of film cameras...

The weight doesn't bother me much, makes me appreciate the F3 even more.

djacobox372 · Sep 11, 2011

fstop said:
You can push a rhino out of the with Rover or throw the F at it, won't hurt either of them, but hit an average size dog with a honda and its totally totalled.

Id rather the car crumple instead of me and my family. Besides its kind of hard to hit anything with a rover, since theyre always in the shop.

tomalophicon · Sep 11, 2011

djacobox372 said:
Id rather the car crumple instead of me and my family. Besides its kind of hard to hit anything with a rover, since theyre always in the shop.

Any smart Land Rover owner fixes them himself.

snegron · Sep 11, 2011

BrianL said:
Load those Nikons like that and they are heavier than my Bronica. They could be standard issue at the work out room to build up those biceps.

That F2A with MD2 is almost as heavy as my RB67 with CDS metered prism!

semi-ambivalent · Sep 11, 2011

snegron said:
MD2 on my F2A wasn't much help; it just made it weigh about as much as my car!

Here are a few pics. I un-bubble wrapped my F2A with MD2 just for you today. I quickly re-wrapped it and placed it back in storage.

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976958

http://www.pbase.com/image/137976983

http://www.pbase.com/image/137977004

Would you just look at that F3/MD4. Those Italians, they do that Design Thing pretty well, don't they.

snegron · Sep 11, 2011

fstop said:
Nice looking pair.
Odd how we use digital to take pictures of film cameras...

The weight doesn't bother me much, makes me appreciate the F3 even more.

Thanks! To make it even more ironic, I shot those pics with a point and shoot!

fmajor · Sep 12, 2011

The solution to your *very unfortunate* XD experience is to buy a Minolta SRT102 or SRT202 - then you still get to use your lovely Rokkor lenses AND have match needle exposure!!!

As to Land Rovers..... I currently have a Defender 110 (2.4Tdi) and whilst the drive-train is OK the rest of the car utterly and profoundly sucks. The door latches/locks, window lowering mechanisms, wipers, *lack" of an effective window defroster/heater assembly (essentially *anything electronic*) are just a few examples of the most absolutely pathetic bit of 'engineering' I've ever seen!!! I've *never* seen such poor quality in a vehicle (design and/or manufacturing) and that includes comparisons to American autos and/or the 'lowly' Yugo (which i see daily).

Selidor said:
I was going to say the XD-7/11 too. My copy has slowly revealed an African Hornets nest of issues, including but not limited to:

- Battery drain; drained a brand new Duracell set within 2 1/2 days.
- Shutter lag; by the end of a 36 roll it was over 10 seconds. (!)
- Irratic meter; only half of the 36 roll were properly exposed. The rest were under-exposed to varying degrees.

In short, it's totally unusable as a photographic tool. I dont know what to do with it, Im not sure how much it'll fetch like this...if theres one silver lining its that the leatherette miraculously hasn't shrunk at all.

I also dont like the LED meter execution. I prefer the way Canon do it in the A1/AE1, but neither outdoes a classic match needle, as you said.

Furthermore the veiwfinder ticks me off. Sure its bright, but has poor eye relief, speaking as an eyeglasses wearer. I've tried Nikon's high eyepoint type and they for me remain the gold standard, but the OM series and AE-1 Program are pretty good. Minolta seems to have gone the opposite way and made a "low eyepoint" style, to better fit the body shape. I noticed it in the 7000 too.

The whole experience was gutting, to be honest, to have such anticipation slowly transfigured into a hollow sadness . Its put me off ALL pre-80's cameras entirely. Next time I'll just buy a black FM2 and be done with it. Variety may be the spice of life, but only if those spices work!

tomalophicon · Sep 12, 2011

Bad luck fmajor, that's why I sold mine.
You'll be much happier with a Disco...

zenrhino · Sep 12, 2011

Same here with the Seagull. I loved the lens and adored the fresnel in it. But that shutter was just crap.

zenrhino · Sep 12, 2011

Contax G1

After hearing people just rave about the G series Contax, I got a G1 and returned it after 1 roll through it.

That teensy little viewfinder and inscrutable autofocus just made me angry that someone could get camera design that close to perfect and not go the rest of the way.

Laurent · Sep 12, 2011

Photo-gear said:
Canon T90. Although the camera is attractive for its potential functions and its ergonomy, it is very capricious and it has an unpredictable behaviour. Intermittant breakdowns showing "ERR" for no apparent reason. On top of all this disappointment, there is hardly a technician still able to fix it. Welcome to the land of broken dreams with the T90 !!!

Ditto... The T90 can do as much as my EOS3 with booster for 1/4 of the weight... But mine has a sticky shutter that needs replacement( would be the second shutter change for this camera !)

Smudger · Sep 14, 2011

Rollei 6006 Mk 1 :
Never did work right -bought new under warranty. Hopeless.
And I sold a Hasselblad outfit to buy it.

Most disappointing cameras?

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