What are your top 5 game changers?

Knjy

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I carry the idea (not original I'm sure) that 5 artists re-wrote the rule book for modern popular music, they are:
Elvis Presley
Bob Dylan
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Jimmy Hendrix
Everything else is derivative
(I'm not a big fan of Hendrix but understand his impact)

I started thinking about the Top 5 in camera game changers and came up with this:
The Leica 1
The Leica M3
The Hasselblad 500C
The Rolleiflex 2.8E
The Nikon F

What are your top 5?
 

E. von Hoegh

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I have one - L.J.M. Daguerre.

And, you forgot Led Zeppelin.
 

bsdunek

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How about Bill Haley & His Comets? ... and Henry Talbot Fox?
 

cliveh

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Not the M3, but the M2.
 

OptiKen

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How about Universal (Univex) with their 39 cent camera (appropriately called the Model A) putting cameras in everyone's hands.
Or the Kodak Brownie that did the same thing - put cameras into everyone's hands. (and introduced 120 roll film)
Polaroid for their instant camera.
And the ultimate game changer in my mind would be Kodak with the development of the first (don't shoot me, bro) digital camera. Now THAT was a game changer. It made us practically obsolete.
 

flavio81

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Roughly cronologically:

Kodak roll film camera
-- first roll film camera!
Kodak brownie
-- for the reasons indicated above
Polaroid B/W instant camera
-- breaktrough
First Leica rangefinder
-- 35mm film quality camera
Argus cameras
-- 35mm and interchangeable lenses for the masses
Rolleiflex TLR
-- workhorse
Asahi Pentax Spotmatic and Nikon F
-- the dawn of the japanese force
Polaroid SX-70
-- many innovations
Minolta Maxxum AF System
-- first real AF system
Canon EOS system
-- the modern camera
Kodak digital cameras
-- the beginning of the end
 

elekm

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Once again, people think it's all about Leica. Ugh!

* Kodak Retina - while Leica made 35mm popular, Kodak brought the format to the mass market. Without Kodak and the daylight loading cartridge, we'd all be loading 35mm by hand. Or maybe not, because 35mm might have remained a niche product for pros and amateurs. Most of the point & shoot crowd would never load a 35mm film cartridge by hand - never.

* Lens coating technology - without lens coating, none of today's modern lenses would be possible, because intralens reflections would have been too high.

* CAD - the ability to make lens calculations quickly rather than by hand allowed for more complex designs. Reportedly, some of the Zeiss lens calculations filled a book. Literally, filled a book.

* Japan - the country showed it could produce high-quality cameras and undercut the Germans on price. Through innovation, it led the 35mm SLR revolution and bumped the rangefinder as the choice for most pros.

* Plastic - First, it replaced the earlier film base, which was quite flammable. Next, plastic was introduced into cameras with varying success. Win some, lose some on that count. While plastic can look and feel cheap, it also can be resistant to the everyday knocks. Plastics/resins also have been used in lens components to lighten the weight and cost of consumer-grade equipment. Like it or not, plastics have changed photography.
 

Peltigera

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Goerz Anschultz camera - first production FP shutter
First Kodak - introducing film to the world
Ihagee Kine Exakta - first system camera
Kodak/Nikon - first digital camera

I'm afraid I don't have a fifth camera.
 

gone

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Those top 5 musical groups are, well, ha! John Coltrane is derivative? Janis Joplin, Sam Cooke, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Anita O'Day, The Allman Brothers, Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mahalia Jackson, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Aaron Neville, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, The Tubes (White Punks on Dope), The Ramones, Lou Reed, all derivative? Better stick to cameras.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agp2on83hrA
 
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summicron1

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No particular camera at all -- the real game changer was George Eastman's concept of "You push the button, we do the rest."

Before that, photography was a hobby and an art form, accessible only to highly educated, or rich, or both, people willing to go to one hell of a lot of trouble and learning.

After that it was an industrial object, mass produced and accessible to the masses. Quite literally, anyone could be a photographer.

Oh, and Elvis.
 
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flavio81

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Knjy said:
I carry the idea (not original I'm sure) that 5 artists re-wrote the rule book for modern popular music, they are:
Elvis Presley
Bob Dylan
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Jimmy Hendrix
Everything else is derivative
Click to expand...

You need to listen to more music...

John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Duke Ellington
Stevie Wonder
Magma
Gong
Yes
Frank Zappa
Captain Beefheart
Prince
Pat Metheny

None is derivative and the list can go on and on...
 

narsuitus

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OP
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Knjy

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Here are my top 5 photographic game changers:

1. from wet film to dry film
2. from sheet film to roll film
3. from black & white to color film
4. instant film (Polaroid)
5. digital
Click to expand...

Yes Nice list Narsuitus! On message too which is a triumph. (One of my other theories is that it takes 6 posts on a forum for the subject to be left behind completely)
 
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Knjy

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Ok Nice suggestions and refreshingly different takes on the same question. Although some of you have taken the wider brief already lets try this:

What are the five game changers in photographic processes?

Over to you

P.S. my thanks to all who pointed out the errors of my musical ways, of course, I'll try harder :-/ It is an observation I have made over the years that Camera enthusiasts are as tribal about their music as they are evangelical about their cameras.
 

colonel

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Camera Obscura
Daguerreotype
Kodak Brownie
Rolliflex TLR
Leica M3
Canon AE1
Sony Mavica MVC-FD5
Canon 5D
Sony RX1
Sony A7S

sorry, that wasn't 5 ...
 

Regular Rod

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Fortunately I was not eating when I read your first list, else I would have choked laughing...

"Derivative"?

Elvis Presley freely admitted that he copied black musicians in his music sanitised for the tastes of white folk.
Bob Dylan owed much to his folk music predecessors such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie
The Beatles desperate and frustrated, tried again and again to mimic the music produced by Phil Spector, even to the point of asking their producers why they were unable to replicate it
The Rolling Stones still mimic the accents of the black singers they base all their repertoire on, their first releases were all pastiches of already well known blues music...
Jimi Hendrix was inspired by American blues music and certainly explored the outer limits of the electronics available in his time but even he derived much of his repertoire from those he admired in the Blues scene

Of your list Jimi Hendrix produced original work that is standing the test of time and is even appreciated by some classical musicians.

RR
 
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Regular Rod

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narsuitus said:
Here are my top 5 photographic game changers:

1. from wet film to dry film
2. from sheet film to roll film
3. from black & white to color film
4. instant film (Polaroid)
5. digital
Click to expand...

Of course today the path is reversed for many photographers:

1 Point and Shoot Digital
2 DSLR
3 Mirrorless DSLR
4 Roll Film Camera
5 Sheet Film Large Format Camera

Just sayin'...

RR
 

filmamigo

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This thread proves why APUG folks are better off talking about photography than music!
 

filmamigo

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You've all covered the main themes in "photographic game changers." So I offer my personal game changers:

1. My Dad's Spotmatic F, taught me what a camera was, how it worked. Many decades and cameras later, it's fair to say it's still the only camera I need.

2. Nikon F80. I won it from a radio contest. Autofocus! Wow! What are these control dials! This is confusing! I can't believe it's more than a fad, shutter speed dials will return! Uh oh, all the digital cameras work like the F80 too....

3. Yashica 12. I saw medium format slides for the first time and my jaw dropped. The Yashica 12 was my entry into a whole new world of detail and tonality. I finally understood why those 35mm cameras never gave me what I was looking for.

4. Agfa Isolette. My Dad had taken some nice shots with this camera... in the sixties. He gave me the camera as it was SEIZED. The value of the camera was low, and the construction was simple, so I completely disassembled it and did my first Clean, Lube, Adjust. It works like a fine swiss watch to this day, and I now LOVE cleaning and restoring cameras.

5. Bronica ETR. This is my goldilocks camera - not too big, not too small, waist level or prism. But it's also my first choice for FLASH! I love having flash sync at every speed. It's opened new doors and improved my portraits to be able to do daylight fill.
 

AgX

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darkosaric said:
Sony fan ?
I needed to google this one - no idea what are they.
Click to expand...

The Sony Mavica was the first marketed camera for electronic still photography.
The first model did the image storing electronically, but still analogue.
 

colonel

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darkosaric said:
Sony fan ?
I needed to google this one - no idea what are they.
Click to expand...

I have had loads of other cameras, Nikons too , but these are the most exciting ones which changed things for me.

The Mavica was a great breakthrough. The first consumer digital camera. It wrote to a 3.5" diskette photos at 640x480. The diskette was the first film I could reuse

In some ways I have regressed. My favourite camera at the moment is the Leica M7 ... My A7S is needed when zoom is required .....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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