Worst camera you ever owned?

[Mablo]

At the moment my worst camera must be my Minolta Autocord. After I purchased it a few months ago it has been parked in a repair shop most of the time. I got it back again last week and took two rolls. Now the shutter triggering mechanism is stuck.

 

[Keith]

Probably not the worst camera I've owned but one I've never particularly liked is my Pentax SP500 Spotmatic. Very noisy shutter and rather dim viewfinder ... not to mention I don't like the look of it. Strangely I've owned it since the seventies and because it's worth nothing there's no point in selling it. I can't say I liked the Canon AE-1 program I bought much either ... and I got that to replace the Pentax. 😛

The OM series is it for me as far as SLR's go ... almost my ultimate camera!

 

[ruby.monkey]

Konica IIIa rangefinder.

I was eager to shoot it because of the Hexanon 48mm 1.7 lens. But the ergonomics were horror, it has a shutter speed and aperture ring that couple on the lens. I never got the hang of that EV-setting coupling, every time I changed a shutter speed the aperture would go as well and the other way round.

Drove me crazy.

In the end I sold it through eBay to a fellow member here who claimed it was partially non-functional and I had to chime in to have it fixed.

Grmpf.

The shutter speed and aperture can be adjusted separately, but it's a two-handed job.

I still own and (occasionally) use my IIIA. A beautiful camera with a great lens and superb finder - but ergonomically it's not the best. If I weren't such a sucker for pretty things I'd probably have passed it on by now.

 

[fiatlux]

You should have included a "compact digicam" category which must contain most of the worst cameras ever made 😀

My share of pain:

Minolta S404: extremely good IQ at base ISO, thanks to a great lens, natural processing and very low JPEG compression (4Mp images gave 5Mb files), but with two fatal flaws: extremely unreliable AF (would often lock in front or behind the subject, even if the subject filled the AF area), and mode dial too loose, meaning that the camera would often turn itself on in a bag, resulting in the telescoping lens being blocked and the camera locking up.

Kyocera SL300R: loved the idea of a tiny, twist-body digicam but IQ was closer to webcam grade and battery life appalling (1h or a dozen shot, whichever happened first).

Canon IXUS 800IS (aka SD700IS): great little digicam, if only its lens had been properly centered. Bottom 1/3rd was way too soft. Sent it to Canon for repair under warranty, came back unchanged with "within specs" note. Could not be returned.:bang: Gave it away to the kids...

 

[randolph45]

Never had a bad camera,only a bad user

 

[matthewm]

Never had a bad camera,only a bad user

AHA! Someone finally said it... Come on now... You HAD to have had at least one camera you didn't like...No?

 

[Steve Bellayr]

I owned a Nikon D1 not long after it came out (2.7 megapixls). It weighted a "ton". Images were below average. The batteries were always going out. I needed 2 batteries where ever I went. Since I had been using a Nikon F4 I thought the D1 would be about the same. Not really. I went back to smaller cameras with better lenses. At the time digital was over rated, IMHO.

 

[matthewm]

I owned a Nikon D1 not long after it came out (2.7 megapixls). It weighted a "ton". Images were below average. The batteries were always going out. I needed 2 batteries where ever I went. Since I had been using a Nikon F4 I thought the D1 would be about the same. Not really. I went back to smaller cameras with better lenses. At the time digital was over rated, IMHO.

I really hope that this doesn't upset you because I don't mean this in any mean way, but I'm kind of glad that I sort of missed the beginning of the digital age. I grew up with computers and all (our first family computer was a 486 and cost about $2800 with the 13" COLOR monitor 😀), but digital cameras weren't super mainstream and very affordable until I was maybe 18 or so (I'm 27 now).

I can remember working at Ritz Camera when I was in college about 6 years ago and people bringing in old 1 and 2 megapixel cameras and asking for memory cards or batteries or other accessories and me telling them, "Sorry, they don't make 8MB cards anymore," or "I'm sorry, but it's more economical to get a new camera." And them looking blankly back at me and saying, "Well, I paid $2000.00 for the damn thing just 5 or 6 years ago!"

I always kind of felt bad for them. At least you had the F4 to go back to. 🙂

 

[mrisney]

Fuji GW690II. I wanted to like it, I read, and re-read so much about Fuji RF's. The 90mm lens was not as sharp as I had hoped. No meter, and fixed - couldn't get it to focus (maybe I had a bad calibration) . I was not able to master it, and it was bulky. Sadly, I traded a M4-P for it to KEH, and they asked for an additional $400 to make it even. Big mistake. I have had some bulky camera's since then (The Polaroid 600SE) but somehow I found a way to get some images out of whatever camera I have owned, not the case with the Fuji, muddy, bad composition, and definitely not a hand held beast.

 

[Beemermark]

Bought a M4-2 new back in the '70's. Piece of junk.

 

[ChipMcD]

Argus C3-the brick.

 

[Lflex]

Panasonic GF1. Poor useability, ergonomics...
I still have it, but like my gh1 much better.
The Gf1 is the only camera I have bought and disliked after the first 10-20 shots.