Which cameras did you make your favorite / best photos with and vise versa?

[narsuitus]

When I was shooting daily for a newspaper and when I was shooting a lot of medical macro for a University, the Nikon F cameras (F, F2, F3, F4). I still use the F2 and F4.

When I was shooting a lot of weddings and portraits, the Mamiya TLR cameras (C3, C22, C220).

When I started shooting with digitals, the Fuji S5 dSLR and the Fuji X-Pro2 mirrorless.

 

[karateisland]

Love this question. Find that, personally, wildly different cameras do the trick. My two personal favorites are the Contax G2 (that 45mm lens is just unbelievably lovely with Portra 400 in the summer), and my Rolleiflex 2.8D (which has taken 80% of my favorite pictures). I just wish the Rollei were a LITTLE smaller so I could use it more! Lots of great shots with the X100F, too.

As for cameras that didn’t work: Got a bunch of great photos with the CLE but never clicked with the 40mm lens (and, I suspect, the manual focus rangefinder). The Nikon Z6 was the same, stunningly sharp results but the photos never really had the personality that I get from my other cameras.

 

[icebear]

Very simple: MM
Since I have the orig. Monochrom I hardly used any other camera.
I get along with the Leica RF quirks just fine and I like the images I am able to capture. The camera doesn't get in my way seeing and composing the image. I am in control and there aren't 3 layers of sub menues to get lost in. I like simple choices and hate "nice to haves". The choices I make directly impact the output.

 

[Dogman]

I started with Nikons. Used them for many of my favorite pictures over about 20 years. Switched to Canon when I wanted AF--Canons were better at the time. Used them for nearly 20 years, film and digital, and got a lot of pictures I liked. During these years I also used Leica and Olympus, Pentax and Mamiya medium format and Wista large format. Got some nice shots with all of them. Started using Fuji about 4 years ago and the XPro series became my main cameras. Made some good pictures with them. Last year I started using digital Nikons along with the Fujis and I'm very happy with what I've shot with them.

I've also made some of the crappiest, most gawdawful, embarrassing photographs ever taken with every single one of these cameras.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Always good fun with the Epsons, and with the Leica M-E, before the sensor went haywire -never again. Today, still good fun with the Epsons and some of the analogue cameras, and with the Fuji X cameras. I am not concerned with 'the best'.

 

[jsrockit]

I think it boils down to which cameras I've used the most. The more I use them, the higher the likelihood of getting good photos with them. And if the camera isn't suited to me for some reason, the less I tend to use it.

This is certainly true for me, but I used my digital M cameras a lot and have little to show for them. In film, they were my favorites. Maybe I was just trying to figure out how to make photos again too. I think my style just changed and I learned to rely on autofocus. So, for many of us... if you like camera a lot and it doesn’t get in the way, you tend to use it a lot. If you use it a lot, you will be happier with your output from it.

 

[Photog9000]

I have images from just about all of the cameras I have used but one of my favorites was the Nikon D2H when I was working for a small newspaper. When the Nikkor 18-200mm hit the streets, I picked one up as I wanted something to use when I traveled that did necessitated carrying two bodies with different lenses. And I actually liked the look that the D2H gave me with that lens. Today, I have just two X100S bodies (one w/TCL, one w/WCL) but am thinking of trying an X-Pro with the Fujinon XF 18-135mm. Haven't pulled the trigger yet but am perusing eBay for a used X-Pro1/2 to match up with the lens.

 

[Orthogonal]

Best:

5D3: Delivers most consistently hands down. It's quick to use and the files are easy to get the look I want with little to no effort, there's a kind of creamy richness to the images that I haven't found in other cameras I've used, even with cheap lenses. With the OVF I feel like I'm concentrating a lot more on composition instead of exposure (which is fine since the metering so so good). I've taken so many pictures I love with this camera.

Contax RX + Zeiss 50mm 1.4: Really beautiful lens and a solid but sometimes awkwardly hefty body. Somehow makes cheap 35mm film like C200 and Ultramax look almost as good (to my eye) as Portra and Ektar.

Worst:

X-Pro1: A camera I loved for a long time and has taken many pictures I like with, but looking back at the actual files I often feel disappointed. They tend to be either muted and drab or thin and plastic looking in JPEG, RAFs feel like they have a more limited colour depth than Canon or more recent Fujis, though on the plus side the files NEVER show any banding. B&W conversions look great but I only shoot colour on digital.

A7RII: The JPEGs show strikingly ugly shadows noise even at base ISO and the RAW files are better but need a significant amount of work to coax them into anything useful. I'd blame it partially on the lenses but we only use Zeiss so I doubt that's the problem. Even after a year of using them I generally feel like the camera is always "in the way" which I think shows in the images.

 

[Bill Clark]

Kind of hate to say this, but I have gone away from most of my cameras to using an iPhone and it’s just a 6s.

Two trips my wife and I made last year, hiking the Grand Canyon for a week with Road Scholar and two weeks in Egypt wih Viking almost all photos I made with my iPhone. Panos are easy. Videos are easy. I can send them off easy peasy. Maybe I’m just too darn old to lug around equipment anymore. The iPhone is always in my pocket. Battery lasts a long time and it’s easy to recharge. And it’s easy to get through security at airports.

Just my thoughts.

 

[raid]

My favorite images were taken with Canon T90 and F1N on transparency film many years ago. My lenses were few, and I used them a lot. When I travel these years, I use mainly the M9 and my iPhone 8 plus. The phone allows me quick street photos as nobody really worries about phone photos anymore.

 

[joe bosak]

Since I started playing with cameras again [around 2016] I took my favourite pictures with DP1M/DP3M, X-Pro1. and an old Digilux-1 with an IR filter.

What really didn't work for me was the X100T I bought as my first decent digital camera in 2016. I used it more than anything else for a few years but too often I ended up with images I was unhappy with.

 

[oftheherd]

Interestingly, my first SLR was a Yashica TL Super. When I got interested again in photography. Prior to that I mostly used a Welta Welti and a Minolta 16. With renewed interest came an insatiable desire to read everything in print about photography, then to experiment with everything I had read about that I could get materials for. The result was that I learned how to do a lot well. That got me a lot of photographs I really liked, including a few local contest winners. When I later got my Fuji ST 901, I had the basics down and learned how to use the -3 to 18 EV aperture preferred exposure control to great advantage for crime scene photos. What more to want. Both cameras got treated hard and the Yashica finally finally started failing to return the mirror. The Fujica likely got used more and still works.

I did come to like my Mamiya Super Press for the 6x7 negatives, and won a local contest with a photo using it, but it sure was heavy. Add the 50mm and 250mm lenses and you need an artillery caisson to transport the kit.

If I can get my back in better shape, I expect I will crank out those two 35mm SLR (one at a time) and maybe a 4x5 on a tank platform for bigger negatives.

 

[santino]

Probably EOS 1NRs. I used it a lot and it was super fast!

 

[charjohncarter]

The photos I like the best come from my Olympus 35RC (although in some ways it drives me nuts). Also, the Pentax 6x7 hardly ever gives a bad photo, but it doesn't have the portable appeal of the 35RC. The camera I use the most is the Bessa R, it gives me reasonable images and I can change lenses.

Like you I like a shutter dial and setting the aperture, so the Pentax zx-5 does this and has AF.

EDIT from Raid: The phone allows me quick street photos as nobody really worries about phone photos anymore.

EDIT-2: I never thought of that, that is a good one.

 

[John Bragg]

Best and most memorable images are made with a variety of Cameras, but the ones that I can rely on the most are my pair of OM1n. Worst by far are Mju ii, if only that failure to focus always happens at the worst possible moment and in a very unpredictable way.

 

[Creagerj]

Best:

Rolleiflex. Love that thing.

Worst:

I've pretty much made bad photos with every camera. However, I've never really made the images I hoped to make with my M2 and it sits on the shelf more than it should.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I have been reading these replies with curiosity as I simply have always used whatever cameras results in the best photos. But many here refer to the cameras that yielded the best results in the past tense. So I ask:

If you are not currently using whatever cameras made your best favorite / best photos, why not?

 

[jsrockit]

If you are not currently using whatever cameras made your best favorite / best photos, why not?

I currently use my favorite cameras that have allowed me to make my favorite photos. Reasons why I sometimes use something else? Boredom, fun, grass is greener feelings, experimenting, and just because I not only enjoy photography... I enjoy cameras.

 

[zenza]

Bronica SQ-A by a long shot.

I
If you are not currently using whatever cameras made your best favorite / best photos, why not?

It has less to do with the gear and more to do with where I was mentally/creatively at that point in life I think.

 

[sreed2006]

The favorite pictures I've taken were with a Nikon Coolpix 950. It was a 2.1 Megapixel digital camera, with a swivel body (the lens section could rotate almost 360 degrees relative to the main section). Besides its ability to do very good macro shots, the colors were wonderful. I upgraded to the 995, didn't like it as much, but gave the 950 to my son who dropped and broke it. The style of the 950 allowed a lot of creative freedom, and I really enjoyed it, and the pictures that came out of it.