Without a doubt, 1998 was an important year for the digital camera industry. For it was in '98 that the first really good, really usable, really portable digital SLR camera hit the shelves. A joint venture between Japanese camera maker Canon and...

"You don't actually use that thing, do you?" This was a question one reader asked me when he saw a picture of my Kowa/SIX in one of my books or magazine articles (I forget which, now). And the answer is that yes, I do, and increasingly often at that.
The...

There are plenty of people who know (and care) very little about photography, but feel that their dignity requires a camera with a bit of style and elegance. Today, they are spoiled for choice. Automation makes life easy: they can buy any number of...

Robots are probably the most underrated and underpriced world
class cameras on the used market today. They are built to at least the same standards as Leicas and Contaxes--actually, they're tougher and more reliable--and yet you can...

Mechanical precision has an almost sensual pleasure of its own. Think of the buttery wind-on of a 1950s Leica M3, or the way that the lens panel of an Alpa 12 glides into place, then fits solid as a rock. Recently...

Beware: heresy is about to be spoken. It is that you might care to take one of the most sublimely constructed and complex of all mechanical cameras, and butcher it.

The sacrificial victim is a Linhof Technika 70, which entered production (as far as I know) in the early 1960s: certainly...