OK, so I got a few cameras, but I also know a few people that got loads more than this. Besides, and to my personal pleasure, I have managed to stay away from the real big format cameras... as for yet anyway.

I am not a collector by any means. All my cameras is in more or less daily use, and that’s how it’s going to be. They were aquired for a reason, and built to take pictures, so that’s what I am going to use them for.

These cameras are all quite different, even though some of them seem to be very similar. Well, a few of them are very similar to each other, to tell the truth, but the reason is that I have been running into a couple of very good deals that I just could not resist, or that they were to good to be true. That’s why I now got three Nikon FM2’s, three Mamiya RZ67’s, two Nikon F3‘s, a Nikon FE2, and not to forget: an example of the totally useless Nikon F-301.

The only old fashion film cameras you still have to dig pretty deep for would be the Leica’s. I got a couple of them as well, and they are just fantastic pieces of engineering and really smell quality all the way.

Here is a short description of each and every one of them, more or less in chronologically order.

Minolta Hi-matic G:

This camera was given to me as a christmas present from my parents back in 1974. It was a good camera back then, and it still is a good camera today.

This was a real camera. Nothing like the cheapo plastic junk some of my friends had, if they were lucky enough to even have their own camera. The other guys usually had fancy bikes and other things though...

My father owned and used an old Pentax Spotmatic back in these days, but switched to an ME super shortly after. There were always quite a few cameras around in our house, and a dark room as well. Amongst other things I remember very well a beautiful Voigtländner with a small and nice lens. I never got around to test it, so I better go for a visit soon to see if I can dig it out from somewhere.

The Minolta Hi-matic served me very well for many, many years, until one day, probably very late in the 80’s or maybe 1990, when I bought myself a Nikon F-301 SLR. 

The Minolta got stuffed away somewhere at this point, and I completely forgot about it. Must have been hidden somewhere safe, I presume, because I somehow dug it out from it’s sanctuary at some time. The time in the dark is over now, and it has come out to stay this time. It’s still a good camera, and I love to play with it and to take it out for some cool streetshots or whatever. It’s small, light, simple and reliable. Has never ever failed, and it’s quite bulletproof it seems. Which suits me fine, by the way...

Nikon F-301:

My next camera was the Nikon F-301, mentioned above. I never really liked this camera. It was flimsy, and floppy, mostly plastic, and it sucked batteries like nothing else I have ever heard of. It was not even miles from being comparable to my fathers ME Super in build quality, and I never really got along with it at all. You could not use a remote release with this camera, and if you loaded a film that was not coded it would jump to bloody 100 or 200 ASA and stay there. What good was that for me, as I used to get Tri-X film in 30 meter bulk back in those days, and did the loading myself. You had to be creative of course, and I managed to get around that minor problem with some engineering at the kitchen table. The light metering was fine though, and I got a few fine shots from this camera as well, but it was mostly crap and more like a bad nightmare.

This is the only camera I have owned that I have ever sold. I was a happy man the day this camera went out of my home, but I know the lady who bought it was very happy with it, so that was nice after all.

Leica M3:

Just because I can...

And what am I supposed to say? This is the best small format film camera ever made by man, period. Even Leica themselves has not been able to build anything mechanically or aesthetically (my own opinion) close to this original M3. My camera came out of the factory in 1960, and have a serial number just barely over the important one million limit, right from the days when they changed the production line of the M3. It looks beautiful, has to be the perfect «suit and tie camera» and has to be considered «just barely run in» :)

For now I only have the legendary Summicron 50 f/2 (50‘th anniversary version) to attach to it, but a Summicron 35 f/2 is on my wish list. This camera will for sure give me a lot of pleasure and fine photos the rest of my life. When I am gone, it will still continue to do it’s job, serving someone else in the exact same way. Some cleaning and tender loving care every now and then, and it will behave as new for lifetimes to come.

Nikon FM2:

A new, but used Nikon, was bought not to long after I realized all the bad habits of the truly misserable F-301, and also the bad experience with the Canon AE-1.

This time though, I was determined to get a real workhorse and a professional camera. No more flimsy and floppy plastic junk, but a true tough bastard which I could easily also use as a hammer if I needed one. I remember paying quite a bit of money for this one, but nothing on the extreme side.

The guy who sold it to me was a professional news photographer, and he was kind enough to sell it with a fantastic Nikkor 105 mm f/2.5 lens after some negotiation. This is still one of the very best Nikon lenses I got, and if the camera could be used as a hammer, the lens is a sledgehammer (lens shown on next camera).

I recently dropped this lens to the deck of the ship I work on, and it was heading straight for the deep blue... I barely reached it with a good volley kick, and saved it from the ocean, but it smashed into the all to solid steel bulkhead a few meters away instead. I was quite sure I had to buy a new one, but this accident only cost me a couple of scratches and a totally smashed UV filter...

The camera itself has been fantastic ever since I bought it, and I still use it more or less on a daily basis.

This is how a good SLR should be. Fully manual, a good light meter which I don’t use to much anyway, strong, tough and fully and totally mechanical. If you should run out of batteries, for some reason, you still can shoot forever as they only see to that the light meter is working. I simply love it!

Nikon FM2n:

Sure! Another FM2.

This was bought well into the digital era, and I therefore got it for peanuts. It’s just as good as the oldest one, but has a wee bit different flash sync. speed. Not that I care about that at all, to be honest. I guess it was made back in the days when Nikon had to put out a new model for some idiotic reason, and just put in a small change on the old design, put on a small «n» at the end of the serial number, and that was considered good enough to take some peoples hard earned money away...

I asked the seller of this camera to put a cover on the camera house before he shipped it, but he didn’t have one so he put on a lens instead. Had to smile when I saw that one, because it was the exact twin to the lens I gave away with the F-301 I had sold a few years earlier. So now I had a zoom lens as well, even though I have sweared I will never again buy a zoom, ever! Don’t ask why... I just don’t like them. They are poison when it comes to composition, and they are ridiculously slow unless they cost the price of a fighter plane.

Nikon D300:

It was late in the autumn of 2011, and I had lost track of my old cameras years ago. Had packed them away, thinking that film was dead. I had bought a cheapo Panasonic or whatever digital pocket camera (will not get mentioned anymore...) a few years earlier. I had also decided that the DSLR’s was to expensive, and that I didn’t need one. I had basically given up on photography years ago, just shooting the usual holiday pics with this small camera I don’t even remember the name of.

But the photo interest never left me, luckily, and I started searching the internet for a good but not to expensive camera. I suddenly found out that a few of the top range Nikon’s still accepted the old lenses from yesteryears... Holy Joy, now we’re talking!! So, instead of searching any further it soon became obvious that a Nikon D300 was exactly what I had to look out for.

Started to search for the right advertise, and soon found my victim. A guy that was in the need of not to much money, but rather pretty quick! 

A few days later I was the lucky owner of a nice D300, and could start testing. No lens followed this purchase, but quite a lot of memory cards, one extra battery and a vertical grip.

I bought myself a cheap 50 mm f/1.8D lens to have something with autofocus, but otherwise used only my old lenses from the FM2 era. The AF 35-70 mm zoom still became well hidden in a corner of my drawer.

Searching through my old camera bag for the old lenses, I also found my two old FM2’s. I picked them up, had a good look at them, trigged the shutter a few times, listened to that sweet sound, and put them up on the shelf.

Old, but good memories...!

Nikon F-301:

History repeats itself!

I never thought I wold be stupid enough to buy another one of these cameras, hence the bad memories connected to my first SLR ever. But this story is actually not about buying a camera, but a lens.

I had been looking quite a while for a good Nikkor 24 mm f/2.8 D but I could not find the right one. I could easily find the right lens, but not at the right price. I wanted one for free, but no one was willing to give it to me. Not until some weirdo one day wanted to sell this piece of junk, the F-301. He thought he was selling a camera worth nothing, and he did for sure, but what he didn’t know was obviously the fact that one of the lenses that followed the camera was still worth a nice lump of money. I transfered a ridiculous small amount to his bank account pretty quick, to be sure he did not sell it to anyone else!

I now had a piece of really good quality glass that looked and felt like brand new, for which I payed almost nothing. I was also, quite unfortunate, sitting on  another example of this fantastic piece of junk, the F-301.

As I, at this point, had built up a bit of distance timewise to my first F-301, I did not follow the temptation to throw it in the bin. It’s sitting there on a shelf, reminding me not to be this stupid again. This plastic is definately not fantastic!

Btw. the camera itself didn’t work, of course...

Mamiya RZ67:

A lot of things had happened between the purchase of my digital D300 and the moment late in 2012 when I bought my first Mamiya RZ67. I had rediscovered film, and I had also figured out the fact that you could now buy high quality cameras that I could not even dream of just a few years ago, for almost no money at all.

The search was on for a good medium format film system that would not set me back a fortune. I had never even tried such a camera before, but I knew I had to get one.

I finally came over a nice example not to far away from home, previously owned by a female photography student and apprentice. She had not used it in years, but assured me that if it didn’t work, I would get my money back. She had it tested before she shipped it, but not with film.

A couple of days later I picked it up in the mail. Big, heavy, bulky and simply beautiful and lovely! This was a real Camera!! And did it work? Of course it did!

This is built to last, and built to take a punch or two. It is probably kind of self destructive though, because if you drop it to the ground from waist height, it will probably do so with such a force that any seismograph will register the impact. The camera itself will also, most likely, self disintegrate to some extent.

I fell totally in love with it, straight away.

Mamiya RZ67:

This camera, and the next one, came to me more like a surprise and a sad story than anything planned.

Early summertime 2013 I got a kind of sad and  definitive phone call from this guy I know, and the next day I went to pick up two cameras and a lot of extra equipment from his house.

It had a surprisingly light shutter release, but everything else was just as I was used to from my first RZ67. The same weight and the same fantastic beautiful shapes and user friendly operation.

This one has previously been used a lot more than the first one, but there is nothing wrong with the camera at all. Another keeper...

Mamiya RZ67 II:

The second camera that came to me the day mentioned above.

This is the newer version of the RZ, exactly similar to the two others, except it got half steps on the shutter dial and a fine tuning wheel for the focus.

This camera was not working when I got it, but after a few hours of fault finding and engineering, a download of the repair manual and some head scratching, I managed to sort it out and therefore now got a fully functional RZ67 Pro II in addition to the two older ones :) I am considering myself a lucky man!

Three beauties and a lot of lenses for almost no money at all.

With three such heavy cameras you get some carrying to do at times, so I have to say that all three on tour together is not happening very often.

iPhone 4S:

Just because it’s handy... and lots of fun...!

I guess this is the one that first will become outdated of all my cameras, if we just would be able to forget about the F301 of course. It’s nice to have though, and very versatile. Sits in my pocket all the time, and I use it quite a lot. Your best camera will, any way you look at it so just face it, be the one you always bring with you...

The only digital camera I got right here and now is my iPhone, so have to wait a bit for this pic! Or, as a second thought... you have seen this before...!

See somewhere below. You’ll find the same thingy down here somewhere.

Please leave a comment. You have to type in your e-mail adress, but it will never be revealed to anyone else, nor used in any other suspect way!

Rolleiflex 2.8E

Just because it’s a bloody thrill... and a legend!

I have always loved the look of these TLR’s (Twin Lens Reflex), and I also love the results people are getting from them. It uses the same 120 roll film as my Mamiyas, but this camera gives me 12 frames in one roll, using the 6x6 cm format.

This camera was built in the late 50’s, and is in excellent mechanical condition. Not the «brand new» looks as my Leica M3, but absolutely good enough for me and my use. It’s absolutely new to me as I write this, so I have only shot three of four rolls without any chance of getting any developing done yet. Any results will therefore have to wait for a while. It’s a true pleasure to use, and the marvelous nice and quiet sound of that shutter... Sweet like Candy :))

Really looking forward to see how the negatives comes out!

Canon AE-1:

And I see that I have forgot about one camera, so had to edit this in... This was something that seemed to be a bargain at the time when I found out that the Nikon F-301 did not work as intended, or expected. Bought this Canon used from one of my co-workers some time early 90’s. The camera was delivered to me in a nice leather case, with three lenses.

It served me fine for a couple of years, but I never got it really under my skin. The build quality was good enough, because the camera is still alive today, and my negatives came out at least as good as on that Nikon F-301, but I felt like there still was some factor missing. My uncle used to «drive» Canon’s all the time, so I thought I would give it a try... but for some reason it all stopped right there, with this AE-1 in the early 90’s.

The illustration picture was taken with one of my Nikon FM2’s a few years ago, from a photoshoot my two daughters did outside our house. The elder girl using the Nikon taking photos of the youngest, holding the old Canon. Dad totally ruined the film during developing, but that’s a different story not to be told here.

Nikon FM2n

Well, what the heck! If you got two of them, then why not three? This brand «new» example came up for sale not to long ago, and considered the prices are really going up these days, I Just had to get it. The bloke who sold it wanted a fairly small sum for it, but I still managed to get it for quite a lot less for some reason.

It came in the original box, wrapped in the original plastic bag inside the box... looked brand new, and sounds brand new as well. I was a bit afraid that the shutter may have got stuck or something, because of the amount of time the camera had not been in use, but these Nikon FM2’s never seem to fail, no matter what you throw at them.

My elder daughter has just decided to start shooting some film (eventually). She therefore borrowed one of my older FM2’s just to see if she would get her own real camera some day, which made me realize that I could need another one of these beauties in the house. I usually bring a couple of cameras just for the convenience of shooting two different films, and also to be able to swap between lenses in a more effective way.

Why I want to have a brand new looking camera is more than I can give a good answer to... It’s probably going to end up looking like something heavy has run over it in a few years time anyway.

Leica M6

Another Leica, more fun! The reason for buying was the lens, a Summicron 35mm V4, and as both were up for sale, I took the opportunity to take both the camera and the lens. Just barely received, so need some more time to shoot through a few more rolls before I write more about this one.

Very similar to my Leica M3, but I like the finder on the M3 better. The M6, however, got it’s own exposure meter, so I feel it’s a bit more user friendly in that way.

Nikon F3

Pictures and text will be added soon.

Nikon F3

Pictures and text will be added soon.

Nikon FE2

Pictures and text will be added soon.

Fujifilm X-pro1

Pictures and text will be added soon.