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What's your oddest camera?

Cholentpot

Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2015
Messages
7,083
Format
35mm
As the title says. Also, please post photo and description of said odd cameras.

What's your oddest, strange, rare or weirdest camera? Currently mine is a Univex Mercury CC. Just a strange duck. It's got a rotary shutter, interesting looks, and took a proprietary film that was just paperbacked 35mm in essence. It's also half-frame...sort of. It's got a hotshoe (the first camera with one!) and a cold shoe. Two focus calculators, one on the hump and one on the back. Shutter speed tops out at 1/1000 which is something for a camera designed and sold in the 30's.


 
Tessina


WideLux F7


Graflex Model D
 
Cholentpot said:
Always wanted to try a Tessina.
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Frankly I do not use it very often. You could PM me to talk about it. I have the prism with a small chip in the corner, a completely broken light meter, the cassette loader, many cassettes some with Tri-X film, a wrist strap, the view finder has a small chip, but no flip up waist level view finder [I could never find one available] ...
 
My first 35mm camera. Sadly, I don't have it any more.
 

And tempt me to buy yet another camera?

MattKing said:
My first 35mm camera. Sadly, I don't have it any more.
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I'd assume the Signet 35 series was developed off of this?
 
Cholentpot said:
And tempt me to buy yet another camera?
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The primary purpose of APUG Photrio is to enable GAS, specifically cameras, lenses, and other photographic things that we really do not need.
 
Sirius Glass said:
The primary purpose of APUG Photrio is to enable GAS, specifically cameras, lenses, and other photographic things that we really do not need.
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With money we don't have...on things we don't need...for things we'll never use.
 
Sirius Glass said:
The primary purpose of APUG Photrio is to enable GAS, specifically cameras, lenses, and other photographic things that we really do not need.
Click to expand...

I spent some effort during the worst of the covid house arrest era to make lens heaters for astral photography. I was doing time lapse and star trail experiments. Also got a fast 20mm lens to do it, and etc... you know the drill.

Gathering a lens heater kit -- controller, the heating blankets, a portable power supply -- is rather a ridiculous effort for a star trail photo taken from my yard (coastal with lots of haze and light pollution) when you can get a million better examples online. But I told a friend about it and his response was "But, that's equipment you NEED" because, in his mind, he didn't care that I don't need to take middling pictures of stars.

If you want to do it, you need the kit. Whatever "it" is. Even if it's a subminiature camera that requires its own cartridges. If you want to take cold war era spy photos, you need that camera and some cassettes.
 
And on topic, I don't have any "odd" cameras by this place's standard. Though my Texas Leica is kind of funny to me, and whenever my GX680s are out they draw lots of attention. Too much attention, actually. They're comically large cameras:

 

Subminiatures. You're talking my language.
 


This little guy, w/ essentially no user-operational features. Only a change of the ISO dial gives you some form of exposure override, and that's pretty fiddley to use. I had to hack the 50 2 lens to give stop down metering in order to get an idea of what will be in focus and what won't.

It also has a light leak on the back door hinge side (fixed w/ gaffer tape), and a focus screen w/ multiple issues. But it's absolutely the best camera to have w/ you because it's so small and light. My exposures have been spot on letting it figure things out, and the lens is really, really good.

It's a $25 reminder that more money doesn't necessarily give me better results.
 

But it's got the pro looking hood so...
 
I was going to share pictures of my cat camera and my cheese camera, but they're digital. This is my dog camera:
 
I guess KMZ FT-2 is a little less-common than most.
 
My oldest camera is an E&HT Anthony 5x8 tailboard, probably from the 1880s. I also have a Watson & Sons half plate camera from 1895.


Kent in SD
 
My oddest camera is my first 35mm - a Kowa. What makes it odd is that it is an SLR with a leaf shutter. The shutter mechanism is very complex and most no longer work. Mine works just fine. Bought it at Kmart.
 

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My oldest camera is an 8x10 deardorff. As perc the specs, I believe it's from the 1940s or early 1950s. The lens is much older.

 
Oddest, not oldest!
 
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