Collecting Uncollectibles

[rxmd]

Hi RFF crowd,

this is the gearhead talking. When I look at the few cameras I have I find there is a number of uncollectibles. Unconsciously there have been a hidden kind of favour for the underdog at work, some kind of care for giving them a good home to the unloved and disfavoured. Now I'm trying to arrive at a definition and an understanding what I really mean by this and I'm wondering if you could help me get a grasp on this. (As you can see from my signature, I'm not taking pictures with most of these cameras, and incidentally this makes me feel kind of guilty. So actually I think I have camera uncollectibles as a side-hobby besides photography.)

What are uncollectibles?

• Common but underappreciated cameras. The proletarian workhorses, the camera working class that is used and working everywhere, yet never allowed to bask in the light of their elite and professional cousins. The point & shoots. The Beirettes and Werras and Zaryas and Arguses and Canonet 28s out there that took most of our elders' family albums, yet get shunned by the photographer bourgeoisie for their ugliness, cheapness, lack of features or lack of collectibility. Their most recent incarnation is the disposable P&S: after recording the magic moments in our lives, it gets thrown away and discarded. The moor has done his duty, the moor may go.
• Cameras that are shunned and disliked by users. The ugly ducklings in a company's lineup. The underappreciated entry-level models after everybody has upgraded. The stripped-down mass-market cameras. The low-end cameras outsourced to nameless third party producers; the Vivitar and Cosina workhorses with Minolta and Canon and Nikon on their labels.
• Cameras that were too sophisticated, too quirky or just too far out to be understood by users.
• Cameras that killed their company or at least made a honest effort at doing so. The great cameras that never took off but took their company down instead. The king of this class is, of course, the venerable Contarex.

Some uncollectibles include:

1. FED-5. The ugly duckling of Soviet rangefinders. The camera produced to the end, when tooling was worn and innovation had ceased and nobody was interested in consistent quality, let alone good design. The single most ubiquitous rangefinder on the Soviet domestic market, and beneath all the ugliness, still a good picture taker with a top-notch lens.
2. Leica M5. The camera that nearly killed Leica rangefinders. Shunned by users who weren't ready for it and bought M6s ten years later. Remember, all ye Leicaphiles who complain about the M8's top LCD placement and lack of a rewind lewer: this is what happens to a company when this attitude gets taken too far. Collected only by a few completist Japanese, to this day used and appreciated by a few enlightened individuals.
3. Canon EF-M. The only manual body in Canon's EOS line, where Canon was too ashamed to put the name EOS on top of it in 1991. 100% plastic, inconvenient manual focusing with autofocus lenses - but good body ergonomics, better viewfinder than any other entry-level EOS, and dead cheap. The $20 body that you can strap just about any lens in front of with an adapter and still get TTL metering, electronically controlled speeds from 2 to 1/1000, 1/90 flash sync, AE, self timer, motorized film transport and convenient exposure compensation.
4. Nikon FM10/Canon T60/Olympus OM2000/.... The Janus of cameras. The changeling that can be viewfinderless P&S, rangefinder or SLR. The underappreciated underling, ubiquitous, yet frowned upon by the user community of the brandname stamped on its front. Nikonians shun the FM10, Canoneers despise the T60. Unloved until the Bessa, then subject to the scathing sneers of the Leicaphile crowd. (And, incidentally, probably with a place in the top ten of mass-produced cameras.)

So, do you have any other suggestions for the list? Any other class of uncollectibles, entirely overlooked here? Any other must-haves considered must-not-haves by the average camera collector? Any other ugly ducklings slumbering hidden at the back of drawers that you were too ashamed to speak of? 😉

Philipp

 

[clintock]

You could add the olympus OM-2. Often you will see on ebay the om-2 go for far less than the om-1, often 'locked up' which usually means the battery is dead or missing, and doing the shutter reset procedure will wake it up.
The om-1 may be more highly prized for it's mirror lock up lever, which the om-2 lacks, making it more desireable to astronomers.

The big gotcha of old oly bodies is the evil foam between the pentaprism and the top shell. The foam changes state after a few decades to some gook that eats the paint protecting the mirror surface on the pentaprism, causing the mirrored surface to degrade. Easy prevention, not so easy fix.
Unless you like to work on things, always ask about the finder, and if there is something that looks like peeling paint at the bottom of the image.
Even with a bum pentaprism, the damage does not effect the vf image, nor the function of the camera.

Guess focus or zone focus cameras- the olympus XA-2, almost free on ebay compared to the 'just gotta have a rangefinder' complex XA.
If you take photos during day time or in a place with electric lights, the 3.5 XA-2 lens is plenty fast. The finder is great- huge image, and bright, and since it's so close to the lens, little parallax.

I love the olympus 35-ec and ec-2. Feels like it has the same density as a leica m3. Same 2.8/40 lens as the more famed 35rc.
The viewfinder on the ec is pure joy, with it's four symbols telling you what the lens focus is expecting. Bottom rewind crank that stowes makes it seem that much cooler. I also like the asa dial on top of the camera, easy to use as an exposure compensator.
Uses two merc cells in series, but there are many ways around that. On two mercury cell circuits, a common 1n4002 diode provides the exact drop to bring the voltage of two silver oxide cells down to the correct level.

Minolta himatic G. Zone focus like the oly ec, but feels lighter, and has an exposure indication in the finder.

There are many zone focus variants by konica etc..

Point n shoot auto focus plaastics..
The Leica AF-C1-also sold with an ugly skin as minolta freedom tele...
with a 2.8/40 and 5.6/80 dual-range lens, it's actually quite useful..
Like when you are at a posh pool party or beach and would like to actually be able to get into the water without worrying about your m6 walking away or getting splashed. Outdoors in the day light at the pool nobody will be trying to get plush wide open bokeh shots anyway.
you still get to say it's a leica.. (for less than the price of a couple of b+w filters).

 

[Jocko]

FED 50 - a solid, classic compact camera, blessed with a full information viewfinder, capable of excellent results and the equal of any Japanese counterpart, but completely overshadowed by the much inferior Lomo.

Cheers Ian

 

[pshinkaw]

Vivitar SLR's. Mostly if not entirely made by Cosina. They make up a nice collection with the Canon T-60, Nikon FM10 etc., which are based on the Cosina chassis also. Buy them for $10 -$20 ea. 2 out of three that sold as "jammed" are easily repairable. One, the Vivitar 450 SLD, has a dual spot/averaging TTL meter and out features the stop-down metering Pentax Spotmatics.

-Paul

 

[Xmas]

Leica M4-2 same as M5, except it rescued Leitz from the M5 'problem', even if it is shunned today

Leica M8 ... mayhap another M5 - oops did not mean to say that

Noel

 

[Ash]

Cosina's seem to be a bit underrated. There was a link (cameraquest?) that shows how they were under so many other names.

My favourite lens for slr was a vivitar wide-angle.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Nikkormat. Or most any Argus brick.

 

[KoNickon]

A fun topic! I may need to think some about this, but I can come up with the following:

Minolta SRT MC or SRT SC: I'm not sure I have the designation exactly right, but these were "de-contented" SRTs that were sold through certain American chain department stores like Sears and K-Mart. Among other things, they didn't have a 1/1000 shutter speed, mirror lockup, or (if memory serves) a self timer. They are of the same build quality as the other Minoltas (i.e. very high), but certainly don't have the cachet of actually having been purchased at a proper camera shop.

Rolleimagic: An unreliable autoexposure TLR from Franke & Heidicke, complete with selenium meter. The "redheaded child" of the Rolleiflex line; pretty hard to find a working version of either Rolleimagic model these days.

Rollei 35 B, C, LED: These were the bottom of the Rollei 35 line, and featured the lesser Triotar lens.

Argus C3: The word "ubiquitous" comes to mind here, at least in the U.S. Ugly as sin, though a competent (not more) picture taker. But think how many family snapshots in the '50s and '60s were taken with these.

Konica Aiborg: Hard to be unobtrusive with this point and shoot's bizarro styling. And what's with that name?

 

[clarence]

I might suggest the Mamiya 35mm SLRs. They are well-built and designed cameras, nevertheless, Mamiya seemed to have disowned or at least disregarded it's 35mm past.

Clarence

 

[giellaleafapmu]

Hi RFF crowd,

[*]Leica M5. The camera that nearly killed Leica rangefinders. Shunned by users who weren't ready for it and bought M6s ten years later. Remember, all ye Leicaphiles who complain about the M8's top LCD placement and lack of a rewind lewer: this is what happens to a company when this attitude gets taken too far. Collected only by a few completist Japanese, to this day used and appreciated by a few enlightened individuals. (I don't have one of those. Yet.)

Philipp

I can't help you defining "uncollectibles" but what you write sounds surprising to me... Does the M5 really belongs to this cathegory (whatever the definition will be)? I love the camera and could never manage to get one in good conditions at a reasonable price. I found a few which were incredibly abused, one which looked mint but had an erratic light-metter which turned out to be impossible to fix and one which...well, it evedently was considered collectible by his owner because it was sold as "mint" with all the original boxes and paper (it really looked as if it was new) for something more than 2,500 US$ body only (ouch!)... If you know of someone who is indeed considering the M5 uncollectible and has one she does not want anymore I could be more than happy to consider it...

Giella lea fapmu

 

[santino]

All kinds of praktica SLRs, the B200 electronic is one of my fav. SLR's ever.

 

[tedwhite]

(I'll probably get hunted down and flogged for this).

FED 2. Very early Leica look is its strong point. But I couldn't see through it and it was a career to find the patch and focus. What I finally did was zone focus and use the viewfinder as a framer. And the FED 3.5 collapsible was friendly to old people's faces.

Second strong point: with the lens collapsed you could put it in a pocket.

It ended up just sitting around. Photographer friends would come over and peer through it and then smile politely - as in "good luck with this one."

Then I got my Bessa R.

Ted

 

[rxmd]

Does the M5 really belongs to this cathegory (whatever the definition will be)?

I think it should. It's a great camera that (a) was completely underappreciated (and partly is until today) and (b) nearly killed its company, so it fits two of my preliminary criteria already 🙂

I would love to have one. And I would definitely use it. BTW over here it's the cheapest M with a built-in meter, they sell for about 500 to 600 EUR.

Philipp

 

[rxmd]

Some more that I just thought of:

• Canon EOS IX. EOS-series SLR for APS film. Everybody hates APS, including myself because I can't process it at home. But this was possibly the best APS camera ever. Even such, it is one of the smallest EOS bodies, solidly built, very good featurewise, interesting design. And I guess nowadays you could strap EF-S lenses or some Sigma compact lens in front of it. (Here's a tribute page.)
• More APS glory: Leica APS C11. APS point&shoot with the red dot. Final proof that we're all sinners in the end. Did I mention the lens is a 23-70/4.8-9.5? But hey, it's marked ASPH! They should try selling a Tri-Elmar based on these specifications. No tributes for this one - that should be another criterion, a camera that nobody likes enough to give it an honorable webpage somewhere. At least there's a camerapedia entry.
• But then, this is a rangefinder forum! So here is a rangefinder contender in the "quirky" and the "workhorse" categories: Kodak Pocket Instamatic 60, the pocket compact rangefinder for 110 film. Probably one of the smallest rangefinder cameras ever. (Tribute page.)
• More 110 glory: Canon 110 ED 20. Another pocket rangefinder for 110 film. One of these amazingly quirky 1970s cameras whose quirkiness was all but lost because they used a doomed film system. Incredible styling from the same age that brought you the Apple II and the LED wristwatch. There was even an accessory close-up lens. (A tribute page, another with pictures.)

Philipp

 

[varjag]

Can't agree about Contarex, given it's clearly collectible status.

 

[Sonnar2]

Sometimes even a "mass" camera or lens gains collectable status if it has flopped on the market for various reasons and is, therefore, rare to find.

Some hardcore collector really like to collect ugly pieces and lemons as well... 🙂

I'm not concentrated on beauty but just have one ugly camera in my collection, the Zeiss-Ikon SL706.

regards Frank

 

[rxmd]

Hi Frank,

the camera that I like best in your collection is the Icarex 126. Everything Zeiss should have built, in a nice package, but unfortunately for the wrong film. A camera company goes down the drain, while all the while the product that could have made the difference was there right in the portfolio, but made for the wrong film and probably by the wrong subdivision. :bang: Quite telling about what is wrong with German engineering.

In a way, the Icarex 126 symbolizes the death of Zeiss Ikon just as well as the Contarex and has the added uncollectability advantage 😉 Only it's a pity that there is next to no Instamatic film anymore. Fotoimpex is still selling a 200 ASA colour 126 film according to their latest catalogue; I wonder how long it's going to last.

Philipp

 

[Sonnar2]

You have one? A couple of weeks ago I've seen a nice Sonnar 2.8/85 for that camera, going for 35,50 €. This lens costs some money in C/Y- or QBM-mount... Since I don't have a Contaflex-126 and already have lens for my Rolleiflex I let it go.

 

[jody]

I collect any camera, Amoung my auto s and yashica gt are a poloroid instamatic, a Kodac disc camera [remember those] I have three brownies. Two argus bricks which I willprobably never try. I have people give me thier old cameras they don't want so I just stick them up their with the rest.

 

[rxmd]

You have one?

No, I don't. It's on my list eventually, but at the moment I have other more pressing things ranking higher.

If you're interested, there is a Contaflex 126 on eBay at the moment with the standard 45/f2.8 Tessar (200035213803), together with a couple of nice lenses in good shape, some of them in their original boxes: Tele-Tessar 200/f4 (200035213686), Tele-Tessar 135/f4 (200035213733) and Sonnar 85/f2.8 (200035213758). Also there is a Distagon 32/f2.8 (260038633485) with a stuck aperture by another seller, shouldn't be hard to fix. No connection with sellers.

Looks like a good way to start a near-complete collection.

While the camera is no beauty and has very little collector value, it certainly is in an awkward cornerstone position of Zeiss history.

Philipp