The best camera you never liked?

[jeremyk]

Fuji X-E1. Wasn't quite as fancy as my 5d2/3, not quite as simple as my M9, and not as small as my GR. I guess I knew that going in, but I let the hype carry me. Just never bonded.

Also processing with ACR wasn't that great under heavy pixel peeping, although when I used C1 it was superb.

 

[35mmdelux]

Hasselblad 503CM

 

[Shac]

Leicaflex SL2 - just too large, clunky and the viewfinder was not as good as I'd been led to believe.Many many others love these of course. C'est la vie

 

[maddoc]

1) Leica MP (spent more time at Leica for being serviced than with me to be used for taking photos)
2) Nikon S3-2000 (the VF is a frame-line mess ...)

 

[semilog]

Nikon FA.

Best lens I never liked: Summicron 50/2, gen IV.

 

[Frank Petronio]

It's funny that after using Nikon FM-2ns for lots of professional work in the late 80s-90s, when I went to try one a few years ago I thought the shutter release sounded like a dying cat scratching a chalkboard. It was probably all those intermittent years with F3s.

Then I also gave the classic Nikon F and F2 a go and thought they felt like Brass bricks!

Can't say that I liked any Nikon body between the F3HP and the F100... what's that, a 20 year gap?

Saved up to get a nice Hasselblad outfit and then always took the beater Rollei to make the best shots ;-p

I think I've ended up being disappointed with the recent higher-end compact digitals, none of them live up to their preorder hype... X100s was still slow and the interface was dumb, the control dial felt like something from the $100 Walmart P&S range. Ricoh GR was better built but it felt like they crammed 24-ounces of complexity into a 12-ounce tin... I wanted all those buttons in theory but once I got it, dang there were a lot of buttons! Played with Oly, Pany, Nex and they all left me unwilling.... glad they are making nicer compact cameras but they don't know how to make them usable, they are just cluttered up with marketing features.

 

[furbs]

Then I also gave the classic Nikon F and F2 a go and thought they felt like Brass bricks!

But that's half their appeal. No need to carry a weapon, just play a liitle whack-a-mole with an F2 😀

 

[grapejohnson]

i never got on with the canon a-1. it was trying too hard to be a camera from the future, but the tech wasn't quite there yet. it's a pain in the ass to use in manual mode, but they figured "we got auto, who the hell is gonna use manual?"

 

[Harry Lime]

Canon 5D (original)

Lousy dynamic range compared to film.
Hated the command dial on the rear.
Canon cameras are very much geared towards automation (or lest they were back then.), so running it in manual mode always felt awkward. Back then there also were no manual focus lenses in EF mount.

Nikon always gave you the choice of running full manual or all auto and everything worked equally well in either mode. And you could use most of your legacy MF glass without too much trouble. So, I went Nikon (D700/D600) for digital (Leica digital is too rich for my blood).


Leicaflex SL
Great camera, but we never bonded. The viewfinder is brilliant, but I'm not a fan the round corners in the viewfinder. Really hated the very long throw on the film advance. That really killed it for me. I swapped the lever for one from an SL2. It helped, but in the end I went with Nikon F/F2/F3P and Leica R8.

Leica R6.2
This could have been once of the greatest manual SLR bodies ever, but Leica crippled it with one of the worst shutter releases in the history of photography. It's a mushy mess with a travel that is a mile long. Don Goldberg tried to sharpen it up, but to no avail. I have no idea how Salgado took all of those shots with that camera. Really, really a shame, because otherwise it may be the best SLR Leica ever made.

Leica LTM
I have a IIIc that is charming to no end, but the framing on these cameras is so far off and fussy to use that I just gave up. What did work was a 21 or 28mm with an external finder. Little parallax and lots of DOF for scale focusing. I don't use it a lot, but just can't bring myself to sell that camera.

 

[Brian Legge]

Hexar AF - It produced great images but recently accepted I'm a manual focus sort of photographer.

 

[Harry Lime]

Film: Nikon FM3a, feels cheap and tinny in the hand, VF meter is hard to read in certain lighting conditions. It's a nice camera to look at, but that's all it is. (prepares for lynching)...

Hahahaa...

 

[biomed]

Kowa Six - the most unreliable camera I ever used.

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

The mention of the Pentax 6x7 made me think,
about a camera i was offered as a trade.
The Canon EOS-3. The one with the special focus thing that
locked onto your eye. A miracle.
Sadly i needed all my psychic powers to get it to go off,
never mind focus!:bang:
The other thing is that the EOS-3 was same size body as my 6x7!
Anyone out there? The same bulk.
OK it was quieter. Well that's relative compared.

I love the EOS3. The eye focus thing works wonderfully for me. It's not 100%, but it's far better than using the dial to go round and round until the red square reaches what you want focused. And better than any of the current joystick methods.

It isn't quiet, though - the motor.

But, come on — which 6x7 SLR is this size? Take the aux motor off the bottom and it's a great size.

 

[Chris101]

I've never hated any camera.

But then I've never expected a camera to be perfect either. They are all flawed - like us! Of cameras I've spent time with, perhaps the Olympus Auto Eye was the most difficult. As fixed lens rangefinders go, it worked pretty well - until it came to getting the exposure right (a useful function in a camera, eh?) It's a shutter speed priority, auto exposure only camera with a nice rangefinder and a selenium cell meter.

Ya, bummer.

 

[Kent]

35mm-Film:
Canon EOS 300 and 500, never got used to the plasticky feel.
Sigma SA300, hard to say why but it really never could win me.

Medium format film:
Yashica-24. Gorgeous looks, but it left me in the middle of the first roll with a stuck shutter.

Digital:
Sigma SD9 and SD10. I really wanted to like them for their Foveon sensor, but the cams were awfully slow and the handling of the files was terrible. (I like the DP1s a lot, though.)
Sony DSC505. Nice lens, but the poor battery life let me down several times. The same is true and even worse for the Minolta Dimage S404 - you get like 30 photos out of freshly charged powerful batteries!!

 

[maitani]

m6ttl (for the loud shutter, compared to my M4)
Olympus E5 (too little, too late)
fuji x100 (its just not for me)
Olympus E-M5 (ergonomics)

 

[Keith]

Another camera I could add is the OM-4 ... which seems a little odd coming from someone who loves the OM system as much as I do.

A lot going on in that camera with AE, spot function etc. Too many bells and whistles for an OM.

 

[George Bonanno]

Less is more...

Less is more...

Zeiss Ikon ZM... don't know why really. Maybe it was the overly big picture window viewfinder. Or the Ricoh SLR feel.

Something about it just didn't sit right with me for $1400.

To this day I still love shooting with my Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super.

 

[Robert Lai]

Cameras that I've tried to love

Cameras that I've tried to love

Now that I'm drastically cutting down my gear, I've re-evaluated what I'm using. Here's what's going:

Leica M system - so expensive, and for such a small format?

Nikon SLR - so big and heavy, for such a small format?

Zeiss Super Ikontas - beautifully constructed, but the front cell focusing and long minimum focus distances were a turn off. The Agfa Super Isolette has a much closer minimum focus distance, and far better sharpness at that distance. The Super Ikonta C with the long struts always seemed a bit wobbly and loose, even though it locked solidly in place. The BX seemed far more rigid in that respect.

Fixed lens 35mm cameras - they don't weigh less than a thread mount Leica, yet they are much more limited. I'm thinking of the Konica 1 and Aires IIIL. I'm on the fence about the Certo Dollina II, which is tiny and quirky enough to keep me intrigued. However, it has 1930s ergonomics.

So what may remain after the culling?

Possibly some LTM cameras - IIIG and Canon 7s. I like the viewfinders on these. The IIIF finder seems so squinty.

Agfa Super Isolette - for those days when I feel like a folder.

Rolleiflex 3.5F - compact, light for the size, and with superb images.

Kodak Medalist II - bulky, but you get 6x9 cm images and as much automation as the 1940s could give you. The retracting lens makes transporting the camera much easier. Also, the case is thing of beauty. It even has a plastic liner on the leather strap to prevent sudden strap breakage. Kodak was truly a first-class company in those days when they introduced this camera.

 

[doolittle]

Leica M3. Just felt too heavy coming from an M6.