Your worst camera ever

Over the years I have bought two used Canonet G(III) 1.7's . Both turned out to be dogs. I did have a Canonet 28 which was a very good camera.

What did you not like about them?

A Nikonos II with an erratic film winding mechanism. The spacing between frames was uneven so that when I got a roll with prints returned, individual prints would have part of one frame on a print and part of another, so I would bring the negatives back to the store and have them reprinted. The winding mechanism finally quit on the second day of a three week kayaking trip through the Grand Canyon when I lent the Nikonos to a friend to take my photo going through a rapid. The photo turned out great but that was the last shot the camera made before being repaired after the trip. Fortunately, I had my trusty (but not waterproof) Canon F1 along on the trip.

 

Among my least favorites, I must include my Canon T90 with the dreaded intermittent sticky magnet problem. It was a great camera when it worked properly, but was not to trusted for any critical photography, so I gave up on it and went back to my trusty F1. I still have the T90, because I would feel guilty selling it to anyone. After about twenty years of flawlessly reliable use, my trusty F1 got stolen.

Two years ago I 'repaired' a T-90 by banging the bottom on a table while pressing the shutter button. After a few tries the shutter worked again, and continues to this day. I ran it for a while just to be sure.

I still have the T90, because I would feel guilty selling it to anyone.

Good, but a sad story, 6-7 years ago I read a story about Luigi Colani (a designer) and the interview about how he creared the T90.

BTW, I have never held T90 In my hands - does it have any weather/water resistance? Rear door material is.....? Exchangable screens.....?

I really love the T90 - when it works, that is --

Canon T90 - Twilight, harbinger, and herald

I banged mine, but it only came to life for one shot and then back to EEE.

I never had a T90, but I do have a T80. I have noticed that the autofocus tends to decide to refocus, first going all the way to one end, right before you take the picture, resulting in blurred pictures. Other than that, it seems to work fine.

My first camera ever was an Imperial Delta, which uses 127 film. Remembering that, I got one on eBay ($1 plus $4 shipping) to remember how bad it is. It is hard to get the film to go in the right place, the film guides have sharp edges, likely scratching the film, and the back is held on with spring clips that could easily let go.

Then when I tried to develop the film, I couldn't get it into the reel. My hands were getting sweaty in the changing bag, and the film was getting stuck on the plastic reel.

(Yes that isn't the camera's fault.). I now have a stainless 127 reel for future 127 use.

I was a heavy T90 user for a while.

Mine came from KEH, and I actually ended up returning the first one. It had the somewhat rare "flashing arrow" problem, which I understand is related to the EEE problem but I think has to do with the mirror mechanism and not the shutter magnets. The last time I used mine was about a year ago, and it worked fine. Even though I'm now 99% Nikon for 35mm(and 100% for digital) I still enjoy using the T90 and New F-1 occasionally.

The back door on the T90 is nice, thick, solid feeling plastic. There's no "grippy" material on it other than the padding on the bottom and some hardish molded rubber on the palm swell. Even so, I always found it quite a comfortable camera to use. All the controls always seemed very natural to me, and I can still pick mine up and use it without having to think too much about it.

Focusing screens are interchangeable, although to do it "right" you really should use the special Canon tweezers. My second one from KEH came with the sort of hard to find C screen, which is a plain matte screen. I bought a complete E screen kit(with the changing tool) on Ebay-that's the standard split/microprism screen-I used that for a couple of weeks and then put the C screen back in. I found the matte screen really easy to focus on and to "pop" nicely when in focus-you can definitely tell that it was designed to be a manual focus camera.

Canon, of course, didn't come out with their version of a "Matrix" or multi-pattern meter until the EOS years, and the T90 had an interesting work-around that I really liked in the form of the "multi spot" meter. Nikon users might be confused by Canon's metering terminology, as what Nikon calls a "spot" meter is a "partial" meter in Canon land. A "spot" meter is a tiny dot in the center of the focusing screen-on the T90(and New F-1) it's the diameter of the split image. The T90 would let you meter up to 9 separate spots and it would average them-with a bar graph on the right of the finder displaying the distribution of the spots. You could even meter one particular area multiple times if you wanted to "weight" that area more. With a bit of practice, it's fast to use and is something of a manual version of the multi-segment/matrix meter.

The 600si was one of my favorite cameras. Yes it was "plasticky" but that meant light and the control layout was the best. As a landscape shooter, the AF speed wasn't an issue for me, but the control layout was. Never had an X700 in my Minolta days but I still have 2 600si's. Granted they're in a drawer somewhere.;)

One of the great things about the 7 (I bought one when my 600si developed a front dial fault) was that you got the same basic layout with a camera that was pretty much the fastest AF on the market for a long time. The 600si - while I loved the camera - was pretty slow. I had a bunch of little lock/recompose angle tricksI used to use depending on the scene to force the sensors to grab onto something at the same distance.

A Nikon EM turned out not to be a good fit for me

Why? I thought it had good reputation.

Why? I thought it had good reputation.

Auto only with limited exposure compensation (unless one changed the ASA). Totally unreliable as it failed intermittently to release the shutter at all.

I had a dream about a month ago that I was driving my old hand-me-down Pinto.

It was neat and I remember feeling good about the novelty of having it again.

Much like seeing an old friend, things have a way of attaching themselves to place and time no matter the quirks involved.

Mamiya Sekor 1000DTL

I did not know anything about it. Just have read. It is a didnosaur! Is it in working condition?!

in the yearbook work

Did you shoot for a yearbook on film? Whan was it?

a giant clunky beast of a SLR

I don't mind those (although not familiar with the mentioned Mamiya). My list:

• Pentax Program A. - New, broke way too early and after a fix again.
  
• LX - used - Fixing electronics reliably seemed over Pentax Hamburg's head.
  
• Kodax Disc 2000 - my first own camera. Absent image quality aside I wasn't fine with the shutter lag. - Proud to have sold it!
  
• Balda Rollbox made for "chemical focus" of blue and UV sensitive film beyond infinity according to it's manual.
  
• Nokia N80 & Medion E 6912 (died early) + any kind of shutter laggy P&S.
  
• iPhone IV, since it seems to require a valid SIM card to work and I don't need no phone functionality.
  

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There is other stuff I keep without too many complaints.

• Linhofs' bellows deteriorate & aren't cheap
  
• Praktica FX <- A shooting nightmare with it's pre-select aperture, WLF & add on prism, to mount on top of it.
  

Ticking time bombs:

• Pentacon Six (film spacing)
  
• Minox 35mm (shutter magnets)
  

I think it is unfair to call a camera "bad", because you weren't happy with it's (easily interchangeable!) kit lens.