I joined this forum to learn more about vintage watches, but if I’m being honest with myself, my true passion is for vintage cameras and film photography. Camera design used to be an art form, and in my opinion, many cameras made before the 1990s are beautiful. Here’s my first example:


The Rollei 35 is an amazing pocket 35mm film camera. This camera is so small that they couldn’t squeeze a rangefinder into it; you have to use zone focusing, which is basically guesstimating the distance to your subject. You typically walk around with the aperture set to f8 or f11 to make sure your photos are in focus.

Here is #2:


This is a Yashica EM. Yashica made a lot of “poor-mans Rolleiflexes”. This is a 6x6 frame medium format camera. You look from the top of the camera: waist level shooting is fun and provides a different perspective compared with eye-level. I love this camera because I hate editing. When I post photos to Instagram, I don’t even have to crop! Here’s a few photos from this camera:





Here is camera #3, perhaps the most special of all:


Fuji GW690II aka “The Texas Leica” The 6x9 cm frames produced by this camera are sharp and absolutely stunning. You can blow up large prints from this camera, assuming you have loaded quality film. Main downside of this one is it is an absolute lump to haul around, hence the Texas part of its moniker. A few shots from this one:





Last but not least, the workhorse:



Overshadowed by the Nikon F series and Canon F1 in its time, this was Pentax’s professional level film camera. Due to its lower popularity, they can be pretty difficult to find in good condition. Lighter and smaller than the Canon or Nikon but just as robust, this is the camera I would choose if I could only have one.









Show off your vintage cameras!

 

You might want to get @ICONO in on this one.

 

Or how about @JwRosenthal ?

Also, I forgot to put that the last camera in my post is a Pentax LX, to clarify the model name.

 

Part of my "Vintage Photo Equipment" display
On the left is my Dad's old movie camera, sitting on a metal box with a bunch of his slides inside

 

The Bakelite Collection, with a Gossen Luna-Pro and another old light meter
The "blown-out" yellow and black are Kodak cine filter holders; then some Ernst Leitz Wetzlar and Franke & Heidecke and Carl Zeiss.

 

Just a few
Nikon SP original and SP2000
Some Easy German snap camera
A ICA folder

 

I have never have had in my hands something of such a quality. Linhof Mastertechnika.

 

Well I pretty much flipped all my film cameras when I "discovered" watches.

I still have this, it's a Rich-ray 35 and maybe there's an Olympus Trip somewhere....

 

Leitz Synchroblitzer

 

Please excuse the three previous iPhone images.
This one is titled: "Classic Glass"
The OP likes shooting film using vintage film cameras - my preference is using vintage lenses from the film days on my modern Nikon DSLR's.
You lose a little in resolution ( modern lens design is better ) but I like the way these look, I like the build quality ( metal vs plastic ) , they are generally smaller and lighter and seem to impart some personality to a digital image.
The Nikon 50mm F/1.2 is a great normal lens, there are also a few Olympus Zuiko lenses modified for Nikon's mount.
You cannot beat the Zuiko lenses for compactness.

 

"Overshadowed by the Nikon F series and Canon F1 in its time, this was Pentax’s professional level film camera. Due to its lower popularity, they can be pretty difficult to find in good condition. Lighter and smaller than the Canon or Nikon but just as robust, this is the camera I would choose if I could only have one."

This pic is for the OP.
My very fist camera was a Pentax.
This Sigma 70-210 zoom is made for Pentax.
I believe I have owned it since the early 70's.
Have not used it for 45 years!

 

Those nikons are sick!

 

Still have a Pentax camera body for that lens?

 

Can the folks who have posted so far add some information about their respective cameras? I haven’t heard of most of the ones shown so far!

 

No I do not.

 

About a year ago I picked up a Mamiya 645 1000s with 80mm f/1.9 lens and a prism finder w/ light meter. It's been really fun to shoot 120mm again.

The Mamiya Sekor C glass is really cheap on eBay ($150-500) depending on the model, but it looks terrific. I'm seriously thinking about picking up a few and paying to have them modded for a modern lens mount. I have a feeling others might do this more frequently as the big companies start introducing more medium format sensor sizes...

 

I have often thought about picking up a 645 system, as I don’t currently have a camera with that frame size. Mamiya glass is awesome, or so I have heard.

 

This is my 1959 Zeiss Ikon contaflex slr, with 50mm, 35mm and 115mm lenses. The lens system is very different. The back element is fixed within the camera and only the front element is changed. It takes good pictures and the selenium meter is still pretty accurate after 60 years.
I'm just about to wander up the Bondasca valley to meet my wife coming back and will take the camera along.

I used to have a Leica IIIc but it broke, a pity as it was a lovely thing to use.

 

When I was a teenager back in the late 60's I was really into the Single Lens Reflex game, it seemed every month Popular Photography and Modern Photography were covering the latest and greatest SLRs coming out of Japan......Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax, Topcon, Miranda and others were coming out with more and more complicated thru-the-lens metering systems which was relatively new at the time. I had a Canon TL which was about $200 at the time, all metal, all mechanical, a great camera. There was another genre of compact 35mm cameras....Rollei was the standard bearer with their Rollei 35S line of compact, full frame cameras. This was way before IC chips, these were full mechanical cameras with a battery operated light meter, and Rollei shoehorned all of this into a relatively compact camera of 950mm x 670mm x 400mm weighing about 350 grams. It was really ingenious, all metal, no cheap plastic parts, very stout, back slid off. Shutter speeds from 1/2 to 1/500 sec, f2.8 Sonnar lens, it was the best compact camera for professionals to carry when they just had to have a camera available to get an image. I dug my 35S today and took some pics of it, it hasn't had film in it for probably 35 years but it still works. Good memories. Now everything is plastic and throwaway.

 

Just saw this thread, sorry @Taybharr - didn’t even see the shout out. Seeing the above cameras made me laugh...
Got one
Got 4
Had 2
Got one
I’ll dig through my stash and post some bad iPhone pics in the coming days- this forum is fun, real pictures are work.