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Photography is like any other hobby: its devotees sometimes
obsess over gear and forget to practice the hobby. When you deprive
the hobbyist of gear-- like, say, joggers are deprived of gear--
they find something else to obsess about. Joggers obsess over
heart rate numbers and socks. I've decided this is just human nature.
I might as well go with it. So here's my gear page.
I own three cameras. None of them were new when I purchased them. None
were manufactured in the last ten years. Two of them are older than I
am.
My workhorse camera is a Rolleiflex 3.5 Automat 4 with Tessar lens. This
camera was manufactured around 1953. That makes it twelve years older
than I am. It's a German twin lens reflex camera. My second camera is
also a Rollei, this one a 2.8E with a Planar lens. It was probably made
in 1956. I use it less at the moment because I've been worried about its
slow shutter speeds. I thought they were off. (The slowest is maybe
half a stop off, which isn't so bad.)
Both of these cameras take 2 1/4" square images on 120 roll film. This
makes them "medium format" cameras. I love the square image format. I
like composing in squares. I can always crop if I want vertical or
horizontal images. And the huge negative size means I have plenty of
image to crop from. The TLR design doesn't flip a mirror around when
I release the shutter, so the camera is quiet and doesn't shake.
I rented a Bronica SQai when I first got interested in medium format
photography. This is an SLR medium format camera, so it's a lot like
a bix boxy 35mm camera. When I first pressed the shutter button, the
noise shocked me. CLICK! Wham! And the mirror stayed up, so the
viewfinder went black and stayed that way. My Rollei just purrs
a little.
The feature I go nuts over is the viewfinder. You're probably
used to squinting one-eyed through a little opening in the back of
a 35mm camera at a tiny image with glowing red numbers along its
sides. With a twin lens reflex camera's waist-level finder, you look
down with both eyes at a big square of glass. The glass has a grid.
On the glass is an amazing view of what your camera is pointed at.
The image has solidity because you're using both eyes to see it.
You can read the
photo.net review to learn some other reasons why this is a cool
camera.
I own a random 35mm camera, a Fujica AX-5. This camera is old enough
that it has none of the whizzy battery-eating features people expect
35mm SLRs to have: no auto-wind, no auto-focus. It does have an auto
exposure mode, which I usually leave set to aperture priority mode.
(I set the aperture, it sets the shutter speed based on that.) This
camera was probably made around 20 years ago. I learned to appreciate
it when my father's modern all-whirring bulbous black new camera ran
out of juice at my sister's wedding.
Want to learn more? See my pointers to
more about photography.
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