What was the best decade for 35mm cameras?

[Diapositivo]

Olympus absolutely did not come up with TTL metering for ambient...cameras like the Topcon RE Super (Beseler Topcon Super D in USA) had TTL back in the early 1960s.

Olympus did develop TTL OTF flash metering with the OM-2 in 1975.

TTL flash metering was developed first by Minolta, and was used in the Minolta CLE, a rangefinder. Minolta then sold the technology to other firms. The Olympus version was the first to have been adopted in a SLR but not the first overall.

EDIT I went and check, and the Minolta CLE seems to have been introduced in 1980. So my memory failed apparently.

 

[Ian Grant]

Surprisingly few realise that the first SLR available with TTL metering was the Prakticamat which narrowly beat the Spotmatic. KW had introduced the Praktina the first true full system SLR with motor drive etc later merging with the East German Zeiss camera division to form VEB Pentacon. If these East German cameras had been made to West German quality standards things might have been very different.

Ian

 

[Thingy]

I think it would be both the 1970s with the OM1, with its light weight and TTL metering.... And...

1981 is also a very auspicious date, when Hiromi Sakanashi set up a company to design & manufacturer (all hand made) large format field cameras with rather more movements that were available at the time. In my childhood Gandolfi cameras were the best around, but with the Ebony cameras they offer movements that, whilst restricted, are nevertheless more flexible making the cameras more versatile, than earlier models.

The downside, of course, is the price. :eek:

 

[CGW]

I think it would be both the 1970s with the OM1, with its light weight and TTL metering.... And...

1981 is also a very auspicious date, when Hiromi Sakanashi set up a company to design & manufacturer (all hand made) large format field cameras with rather more movements that were available at the time. In my childhood Gandolfi cameras were the best around, but with the Ebony cameras they offer movements that, whilst restricted, are nevertheless more flexible making the cameras more versatile, than earlier models.

The downside, of course, is the price. :eek:

Probably the best reality check on all this would be a constant dollar metric to see how expensive things were in 2010-11 $$$. It's usually an eye-opener.

 

[BobD]

In terms of workmanship and physical beauty of the cameras themselves I would
vote for the 1950s and 60s which gave us the first M Leicas and and many other
fine German and Japanese cameras. They didn't have the advanced tech of the
80s and 90s machines but they sure were things of beauty and fine mechanical
engineering which we can still admire today. Many great classic lenses too.

 

[guitstik]

1958-1970 for this reason, Minolta developed the first SLR with an auto return mirror and aperture controlled by the camera body instead of the photographer so that you could focus and compose at full open and take the picture at the set aperture without remembering to set the lens.

Dead Link Removed

Minolta had more firsts than any other company. I would love to find an SR-2.

 

[mopar_guy]

1958-1970 for this reason, Minolta developed the first SLR with an auto return mirror and aperture controlled by the camera body instead of the photographer so that you could focus and compose at full open and take the picture at the set aperture without remembering to set the lens.

Dead Link Removed

Minolta had more firsts than any other company. I would love to find an SR-2.

That's not completely true. My Graflex Super D has an automatic aperture feature and it was made in the 1940's.

 

[Marvin]

I would say 1990s for best autofocus, Matrix metering, great lenses and some of the finest films ever made. From this decade I like Nikon N75, N80, and F5.

 

[guitstik]

"first SLR" being the key to my statement. My Super D doesn't have a lens at the moment but when it does the camera does not control the aperture in the lens where as the SR-2 will stop the lens down to the set aperture when you press the shutter release.

 

[mopar_guy]

The Graflex Super D is a single lens reflex camera. Graflex was making SLRs 100 years ago.

The aperture automatically stops down on the Super D when the focal plane shutter is released.

 

[benjiboy]

Probably his mind, Kepplers been around forever.

Sadly, he's not around any more he died in January 2008, he was a great writer on photographic matters, I admired his work a great deal.

 

[fstop]

thats too bad. I haven't keep up with Pop Photo in a long time.

 

[cooltouch]

To me, it isn't a decade of "firsts" that is important, rather a decade in which truly great, classic cameras that have withstood the test of time came into being -- and flourished. And that was, without question, the 1970s. The art and craft of building mechanical cameras reached its zenith during that decade, but by the end of it the writing was already on the wall with the introduction of such cameras as the AE-1 and A-1, XD-11, and others.

Still, the original Canon F-1 and the Nikon F2 and yes, the Oly OM-1 and Pentax KX and others -- will be capable mechanical photographic tools long after our current crop of digital wonders have been recycled into park benches.

 

[IloveTLRs]

The 1950s. Lots of chrome, no electronics, and rangefinders were king (Just my opinion)

 

[2F/2F]

The 1950s. Lots of chrome, no electronics, and rangefinders were king (Just my opinion)

Yes, they were definitely my favorite looking cameras of any one decade.

 

[Leigh B]

1970's, the dumbing down began with the Canon's and multi mode cameras wth Program, Av, Tv etc followed by autofocus. This also coincided with a drop in manufacturing quality (except for a very few high end cameras), so most 70's cameras will outlast later models.

Very true.

I was repairing Nikons in the 1980's, and we started to see the decline with the introduction of the F4.

- Leigh

 

[semi-ambivalent]

Decline in F4

Leigh,

What do you remember as being the nature of this "decline" in the F4? The start of a general decline in build quality, or changes in build robustness made necessary by having to find room to put the electronics?

I have a couple Fs and an F3 so I don't have a stake in this but If I needed to replace all of these boxes I sometimes wonder just what I'd buy. F3s or FM2ns or whatever the last film box was. What, F6? I don't even bother to find out.

 

[Leigh B]

What do you remember as being the nature of this "decline" in the F4?

I don't remember the specifics. It was a long time ago, and I didn't like the F4 when I saw it, so I didn't spend much time analyzing it. We got one in to play with before it went on sale, since we were the premier non-factory Nikon service shop on the right coast.

As I recall it was just not as robust as the F3, and didn't have the feel of "permanence" that you had when you picked up an F3. The F3 was built for pros who routinely beat the crap out of it and expected it to continue working flawlessly. I very much doubt that the F4 would take the same kind of treatment unscathed.

- Leigh

 

[Edtog]

For me it was when the EOS1 first came out, late 80's, made the F4 look (and perform) like an antique. Still got mine and it's still a joy to use.
I was lucky enough to have one when I was a student, unfortunately when I got my first staff job I was given a F3 (worst camera I've ever used) and FM2, it was like going back 20 years...

I used a F4 for a few years, it survived me so they were built to with stand a hammering and were much stronger than the F3. One thing I did like about the F4 was that you could remove the pentaprism, made for some interesting shots on a 20mm at ground level.

 

[j-dogg]

Ron I believe I still owe you a Polaroid Model 80 Land Camera, just been broke as hell and can't afford to ship it yet.

Someone needs to convert this thing to 120.

 

[narsuitus]

What do you remember as being the nature of this "decline" in the F4?

As a pro photographer who has used the Nikon F, F2, F3, and F4; and still uses the F2 and F4, I think the “decline” was caused by the shift away from the manual/mechanical cameras like the F and F2 toward the auto/electronic cameras like the F3 and F4.

Therefore, I think this “decline” has nothing to do with the high manufacturing quality of the Nikon F camera series; but has more to do with the difficulty of making automatic and electronic components bullet-proof.

For me, the “decline” began with the discontinuance of the F2 not the introduction of the F4.

 

[fstop]

The electronic cameras were reliable enough, with the big advantage they have over mechanical when shooting kodachrome sold me on them. A mechanical camera will almost never expose slide film correctly.Its not a simple matter of adjusting processing because the exposure will be high in one frame and low the next and theres no prints than can be adjusted, its either right or not.
Bracketing is not an option with action shots, and exposure requirments can change if following a moving object from the start of a pan to the end. It has always cracked me up seeing a motor drive on a FM at the track. Unless they are shooting print film they are wasting film.
The shift away from full mechanical was after people learned the electronic controlled cameras had better exposure control.
The decline had been under way before the F3 was on paper. The saturated pro market is why companies like minolta shifted focus to the amatuer market, there were buyers there.

 

[semi-ambivalent]

Fs have been good to me so far

As a pro photographer who has used the Nikon F, F2, F3, and F4; and still uses the F2 and F4, I think the “decline” was caused by the shift away from the manual/mechanical cameras like the F and F2 toward the auto/electronic cameras like the F3 and F4.

Therefore, I think this “decline” has nothing to do with the high manufacturing quality of the Nikon F camera series; but has more to do with the difficulty of making automatic and electronic components bullet-proof.

For me, the “decline” began with the discontinuance of the F2 not the introduction of the F4.

I have been told that, shutter aside, the F3 is at its heart a mechanical camera, and the more you use it the better it will run. My single data point seems to bear that out.

Never had an F2 and with the prices being what they are I'm not likely to. About those I recall reading Marty Forscher (sp?) saying they were even better than the F because they were more modular and could almost be field repaired.

I once dropped my first F about four feet onto the sidewalk. The prism popped off and skittered about fifteen feet out into the street. But it all snapped together again and I haven't heard a complaint from it since. That was thirty-some years ago.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Leica M3 - Nikon F2, inclusive. Mid-50's to early 70's. Era includes the Leica M4 and M5, Nikon F and SP, Canon F1, Leicaflex SL, Alpa 10d, Zeiss Contarex Bull's Eye through SE.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

didn't have the feel of "permanence" that you had when you picked up an F3.

Funny, I like my F3 but it feels awfully fragile. Not a camera to stop an AK-47 round and keep working...

http://www.fine-grains.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bullet-hit-Nikon-F.jpg