Modern Camera Build Quality.

I would like to think that I can recognize cheap manufacturing methods and sub-standard material when I see it.

As the policeman said to me when I turned on a red light at a multiple intersection, "that fools a lot of people"

It's often something called the "Dunning-Kruger Effect"

Before I switched to Canon 5D and successors in 2008 I had a decade or more shooting Medium format Bronicas and Mamiya 7ii. With most medium format you were supposed to have the equipment serviced every few months and I still had a whole series of electrical issues. Frankly they were not made in sufficient volume to bring the reliability you expect from true mass production. It was imperative to carry a spare body. I had an aborted trip due to camera malfunction. Servicing and repair was a budget line in my business. Meanwhile my Canon gear has never been serviced, and I've had just one malfunction with body or lens with probably 15 000 actuations a year.

Frankly in my experience it was the old stuff that was, by comparison, shoddily made by comparison with more recent cameras. Even my EOS 10's from the 1980's couldn't hold a candle to my last decade's experience. Just goes to show how much mass production techniques have improved. Frankly these days I suspect margins are so slim that businesses just can't afford to pay for a high incidence of warranty claims.

Camera build quality is where I think this started. While my D4 is well designed and well built and functions quite well the same can be said about the F2 and F4s. Still I’m pretty sure the F2 could beat the crap out of the other two. It runs on common batteries and is smooth as can be.

Rick H.

Although they are many times more complicated than earlier Nikon F's, the D3's -D6's were professional level cameras. designed to operate in extreme conditions like war zones, and I haven't really heard that they were poorly built. Instead, just the opposite.

Likewise the high end Sony and Fuji's are really solid. It all depends on the camera maker and model.