The WORST Cameras of all time..

[konicaman]

Image quality - some Agfa instamatic clone, first camera I bought for my own money at age 10


Construction - all Topcon SLRs (anyone remember those?), would make lots of weird noises and usually fall apart at some point. Their lenses were ok though.

 

[valdas]

Smena 8M would probably be on my list (as many others plastic FSU cameras). The lens is decent for such a low price toy, but ergonomics... I don’t know how many times the shutter cock hit my finger while pressing the shutter release button 🙂 Oh I know, I should not have had my fingers placed there, but still...

 

[David Hughes]

edit: Smena 8m. Literally junk.

You must have had an awful experience with your one, assuming you owned one; I reckon that one of the qualifications for this thread but others may think differently.

Some people seem to be lucky with them:- https://austerityphoto.co.uk/perestroika-shooting-lomo-smena-35-review/

Regards, David

 

[Kai-san]

One man's junk is another man's treasure. Cameras are like us, we've all got something good and bad inside.

 

[Borge H]

Anything lomo. Cracked cameras, light leaks, plastic lenses, overlapping frames, you name it. Holgas and Diana will be the #1 for me.
Lomo aside I have a love/hate relationship with the B-series Prakticas. It was my first camera so my heart skips a bit when I see them in car boot sales but they all develop malfunctioning shutters - I haven't come across even one that works well.

My first serious camera was a Praktica Nova 1B, an East-German camera at a decent price new. As a young teenager I worked extra and saved mony for over a year for this camera. I got the Praktica camera and was happy, until I developed the rolls. A lot of blank images. After some more roills I found out that the camera shutter did not work at longer times than 1/60 second! I had to send the new camera in to repair. I waited several months, a long time for a teenager, before I got it back. Now it worked, but I had enough of it. The Praktica camera have my vote on a list of worst camera of all time.

I sold the Praktica after some time to my brother and bought a second hand M2. This was in 1969 and I still have the M2. I works in all weathers and is very reliable. The add-on light meter I have replaced two times! Now I use an external meter.

Some years ago I bought the M9 and some new Leica lenses (28/2.8 and 50/2). Both lenses I had to send back to Solms for repair. Front parts of the lenses were loose. My M9 had also to change sensor. I have also bought a Leica M (type 240), which is without problem up to now. Now I only buy second hand Leica lenses from the 70-ties. I was really suprised with the low quality of the new lenses and the problem with the M9 sensor. It seems that the Leica product today are not as reliable as before.

The sensor issue of the M9 gives it a list position on the worst camera of all time. How could Leica continue to sell it after the first malfunctions?

 

[giganova]

It is quite easy to calculate exact failure rates: you see how many cameras you had and how many of them broke down.

Great, a sample size of 1, very helpful. 🙄

 

[giganova]

Speaking of sample size of 1:

In 1985, when I was 17, my best friend and I flew on a big 4-prop Ilyushin propellor plane from Berlin to Moscow with Aeroflot. Worst vibrations, noise, and smell I ever experienced on any fight in my life. When we arrived, my friend opened his padded camera bag and his Canon AE-1 had all sorts of loose screws laying around, the mirror was loose and the camera was trash. I guess for him, that would be the worst camera which couldn't even survive a commercial tourist flight in a padded carry-on camera bag. 😛

 

[Timmyjoe]

For me it's simple. The Olympus Infinity Stylus. Man I hated that camera.

I bought one brand new from B&H Photo when I was living in New York. I wanted a pocketable camera to have with me 24/7 because in NYC there is always something photographic going on around you. The idea was, keep it in your pocket or backpack all the time, when you see something, quickly pull it out, slide the door open (which turned on the camera) and capture that exciting moment. What could possibly go wrong.

I'll tell you what, that damn camera failed to turn on when the door was slid open at least 1/2 the time. I missed so many shots because I couldn't get the damn camera to power on, even sliding the door back and forth, nothing would work. So I brought it back to B&H, and being B&H at that time, they were totally cool about it and gave me another brand new one. And it did the exact same stupid thing. After trying to get that one to work reliably for a couple of weeks, I finally smashed it into the pavement and then tossed it in the garbage.

Even now, 27 years later, I see one of those cameras and I just want to smash it to bits. A completely rational response I think. 😉

Best,
-Tim

 

[p.giannakis]

The Praktica camera have my vote on a list of worst camera of all time.

The M42 Prakticas are good cameras. You can still get an LTL-3 of 1975-78 and they work well. So do most MTL series. My issue is with the B-series, there is just no quality control whatsoever.

There is an issue with the shutters sticking open - that is probably dirt on the lens contacts, easy to correct. All the ones i had - if left unused for hours/days the first picture i would take, the shutter will stick open for 1 sec - after that it was back to normal.

Eventually the shutter will become erratic - it is an issue with the electronics.

 

[xayraa33]

The M42 Prakticas are good cameras. You can still get an LTL-3 of 1975-78 and they work well. So do most MTL series. My issue is with the B-series, there is just no quality control whatsoever.

There is an issue with the shutters sticking open - that is probably dirt on the lens contacts, easy to correct. All the ones i had - if left unused for hours/days the first picture i would take, the shutter will stick open for 1 sec - after that it was back to normal.

Eventually the shutter will become erratic - it is an issue with the electronics.

I agree, my first good camera was a Praktica LTL with the 50mm Tessar lens which I bought new from Sears with my paper route money when I was not even a teenager yet. Sold it years later to buy the new on the block Olympus OM 1 but I still missed that Praktica as it was a very reliable camera ...and years later bought a used one which I still use.

The L series Prakticas were very good cameras, not refined at all or very solid feeling but in my book they were very reliable and easy to load film in.

 

[John E Earley]

I never had any luck with any Kodak Retina camera.

These were always expensive and rather mechanically delicate cameras.

I loved the individual features on my Retina IIIC but in practice it was finicky and not terribly reliable. I bought it in mint condition for $18 dollars a flea market and wanted so much to love it but I just couldn't and so I sold it.

 

[xayraa33]

I loved the individual features on my Retina IIIC but in practice it was finicky and not terribly reliable. I bought it in mint condition for $18 dollars a flea market and wanted so much to love it but I just couldn't and so I sold it.

I never seen a Kodak Retina camera selling for that cheap, even the non RF simple ones and certainly not in past decades...every one I tried was very unreliable, maybe just my bad luck. They certainly looked exquisitely built.

 

[Graemea]

Just my 2c worth.

I've owned just about every brand of 35mm camera and a few stand out.

I never had an Olympus FT stay working for any length of time, though I bought a few. The shutters seemed to self destruct. Lovely little camera otherwise.

Praktica M42's - in spite of good reviews always felt clunky and crude. A masterpiece of refinement compared to a Zenit. Just don't compare them to an M42 Pentax.

 

[David Hughes]

The worst of all time was registered in the USA in 1926 and in GB a couple of years later. It was called the "Wonder" camera in the USA and just the "Coronet Camera" in Britain.

In a nutshell, it was a cardboard double wall box with a tight fitting lid one end and a lens and shutter the other. It also had one simple reflex VF. The shutter was pivoted one end and spring loaded. At the other end was the shutter lever sticking out of the box side. You pushed the shutter down for one second and released if to spring back up and closed. They advised putting it on a wall during the exposure.

The lid at the other end came off - in the dark - and a 3½" by 2½" glass plate was fitted in with the dull side to the front. They said the darkroom could be a cupboard or wardrobe and the safelight a red bicycle lamp with the air holes covered.

They gave them away, perhaps, and few used them as all the ones I have seen had the original box, chemicals in envelopes and a single glass plate and contact paper.

The instructions include this:-

"If you don't get a good photograph, you can take it for granted that it is entirely your own fault - you have gone wrong somewhere."

Funnily enough they are rare and expensive these days.


Regards, David

 

[Papercut]

Came here to post this, so +1. I had one of these. I think somewhere I even still have a print or two from it. Grainy and smudge-y even at 3x4 size. Miracle that it didn't sour me on photography for life.

No votes for this yet, though it must make this list. Any camera using the 8x10 disc film format. All the terrible image quality of a Minox, without the coolness of feeling like James Bond. Thin, clumsy, hard to hold and easy to drop. I knew three people who had these, and all went back to their 126 snapshot camera after one disc.

Camera_Kodak_Disc_4000_with_disc_film by Daniel Ingram, on Flickr

 

[Horatio]

Came here to post this, so +1. I had one of these. I think somewhere I even still have a print or two from it. Grainy and smudge-y even at 3x4 size. Miracle that it didn't sour me on photography for life.

+1. They were really bad.

 

[AlexBG]

Leica minlux, view finder is so bad that it really did make it useless for me and my eyesight is very good. Was gutted.

 

[MrFujicaman]

Those 3D cameras back in the eighties were pretty terrible. Can't recall their name.

NIMSLO-which some language must spell "crapola"!

 

[KoNickon]

Funny, I have found every Retina I've used to be really excellent quality, jewel-like, great picture takers. Viewfinders can get hazy, and the shutter winding should not be forced, but fine cameras withal. (And I'm always impressed how many I've seen have still working and decently accurate selenium meters -- Gossen I think.)

Smenas -- never even seen one, I think, but I gather they were very much the simple camera of the masses in the USSR. I looked up "smena" and it means "change" -- I get the sort of revolutionary meaning, but still, a pretty bland name. Based on comments on this thread, maybe that's fitting.

 

[oftheherd]

Image quality - some Agfa instamatic clone, first camera I bought for my own money at age 10


Construction - all Topcon SLRs (anyone remember those?), would make lots of weird noises and usually fall apart at some point. Their lenses were ok though.

I knew a man who was the photographer for 8th Army in Seoul. He swore by Topcons which I think he may have had a couple of, and several lenses too. I forget now who made the lenses, but I think it was a well respected camera and lens company. As I recall they were quite expensive also.