As I confidently predicted last time, you can’t possibly please everybody when it comes to picking the best, the greatest, or the most influential cameras ever made. After we posted our list of The Top 20 Greatest Cameras of All Time, it came as no surprise that we received a ton of emails, varying in tone from pugnacious condemnation, to anguish, to polite suggestion, all begging to differ with our first top ten choices.
I’ve been an eBayer since 1998 and I’ll admit that buying cameras on eBay can be seriously addictive. Even better (and even more addicting): you can occasionally snag great deals!
The landmark Kine Exakta camera of 1936 was world’s first successful 35mm SLR. Although the Russians announced their Sport 35mm SLR a year earlier, this ingenious but ungainly clunker was made in limited quantities from about 1937-1941 and distributed only in the Soviet Union. The Kine Exakta, on the other hand, was an instant international success and its maker, Ihagee of Dresden, Germany, produced it and its successors in huge quantities, enjoying robust worldwide sales.
When applied to humans, the word “character” has two distinct meanings, an oddball or eccentric as in “Fred is a real character” or a morally upstanding person, as in “Charlie is a man of unimpeachable character.” When it comes to machines created by humans, the word “character” conveys a slightly different constellation of meanings, hovering somewhere between “having lovable defects” like an old Model T Ford, and expressing a distinctive personality, like a classic Ferrari.
Ever since digital supplanted film as the primary capture medium sometime in the early 2000’s, the number of new analog cameras available on the market has declined precipitously.
The flash bracket has become the “forgotten accessory” in photography but it’s still an essential tool if you’re looking to achieve consistent studio-quality lighting on the fly.
The hot topic for serious shooters going into the New Year: Should you stick with the traditional DSLR system that has served you splendidly, or opt for one of the latest mirrorless compact system cameras that promises to deliver the full interchangeable lens shooting experience in a smaller, lighter package?
I’m hardly what you’d call a Film Dinosaur. Over 98% of the images I shoot are captured digitally. But, after I recently ran a dozen rolls of Kodak Tri-X 120 through some ancient medium-format roll film cameras, and had it developed, scanned, and printed on Fuji Crystal Archive photographic paper, I’m a much better digital photographer because of it.
If you read our story on "7 Reasons You Still Need a Flash Bracket for Photography," perhaps you’ve decided it’s time to purchase one of these photography workhorses. Here are our recommendations for 8 Great Flash Brackets to help you achieve studio-quality lighting on the fly.
Practically any analog camera can be pressed into service as a street camera—the late great Weegee used a 4x5 Speed Graphic to expose the seamy and sentimental sides of New York City, and the incomparable Vivian Maier stalked the streets of Chicago with a twin-lens Rolleiflex. But when it comes to discreet shooting on the fly, nothing can quite match a 35mm rangefinder camera as proven by the timeless work of countless photojournalists over the past 90 years.