Is your latest camera strictly necessary?

I bought an MP last month. Not because of any need but instead aspirations to change. Not sure if it’ll happen but will try my best to slow things down with that camera and be more mindful of exposure!
 
No it wasn’t necessary but I retired and didn’t want to carry around the bulky gear I used on assignments. It’s just too much when on vacation to deal with.

I have a Fuji X-E1 that I bought years ago to use on vacations that I never got to take because of business and really didn’t care for the finder, resolution and lag.

I’m now taking those vacations and decided to buy a later Fuji body that corrected the things I didn’t like about the X-E1. I wound up getting a new open box X-T3 at a great price and adding additional lenses. I’m really pleased with my new camera and lenses and haven’t touched my work gear in a year. No it wasn’t necessary but I’m really happy I bought it.
 
I have not bought a camera in years that actually added anything to prior capabilities. A Pentacon Six with a couple of lenses was the closest, but already had two other 6x6 cameras. At this point, I am more interested in "going back" to some largely overlooked systems to see how they could be useful. Am currently enjoying playing with M42, Praktica PB, and Konica AR bodies and lenses on film -- all very satisfying in a way that RF cameras are not.
 
The Mamiya m645 1000s I bought this week, basically, wasn't even planned, let alone necessary. :oops: I'd been trying to get a yashica D so I could use it's yashikor at its widest to hopefully help me produce photos that look a bit like they could be stills from old silent films, but when stopped down would give me more modern looking pics. Anyway, I got ne but it had fungus in but before I sent it back I did the old "aiming and focusing" routine and what I noticed was that I'd have to faff about focusing while using my glasses (and the magnifier) but move my glasses up to my forehead and hold the camera low down for the image to be clear enough to frame, but it would be a bit far away for me to see properly what was in the frame, so I decided to not bother with a TLR yet if at all, even though I've got a bag full of filters.

Now I've got a camera that I hadn't planned on, that has very expensive neck straps (£60-80, really? lol), not really got anywhere safe to put it, no real plan on what pics to do with it, and to cap it all, I find out that the frame-spacing issue that I read about in a review in either "What Camera" or "What Camera Weekly" in the 80's (same mag just different lengths of time between issues), which I hadn't noticed mentioned in any of the reviews I'd read just before buying the ruddy thing, (so I just decided that maybe the reviewer just hadn't advanced the film on the spool properly before putting it in the camera), IS an actual thing with some examples. Bah!
 
Many of my cameras do have various traits which I consider to be useful and which aren't on some (or more) of my other cameras. eg my F301 has ttl flash metering and a built in autowinder and my FM2n doesn't, when it was working properly my Ricoh 500GX had a built in meter and my other rf's don't, my fed3 a(5) has a (fairly) easily adjusted rangefinder and my other rf's don't. my canon demi S has speeds from 1/8th - 1/500th, my petri half only has 1/15th to 1/250th, my Gevabox and welta perle give me 6x9 but the perle has more speeds and apertures. Some of my cameras may have the same spec but they work differently, such as both my super silette and super solinette have the same specs but one needs the shutter tensioning manually and this must be done after setting the speed, the silette does the tensioning itself and the fed 3a(5) must have the speed set after winding the film on (which tensions the shutter) etc. so each camera needs different ways of working compared to the others.
 
seany65 said:
Many of my cameras do have various traits which I consider to be useful and which aren't on some (or more) of my other cameras. eg my F301 has ttl flash metering and a built in autowinder and my FM2n doesn't, when it was working properly my Ricoh 500GX had a built in meter and my other rf's don't, my fed3 a(5) has a (fairly) easily adjusted rangefinder and my other rf's don't. my canon demi S has speeds from 1/8th - 1/500th, my petri half only has 1/15th to 1/250th, my Gevabox and welta perle give me 6x9 but the perle has more speeds and apertures. Some of my cameras may have the same spec but they work differently, such as both my super silette and super solinette have the same specs but one needs the shutter tensioning manually and this must be done after setting the speed, the silette does the tensioning itself and the fed 3a(5) must have the speed set after winding the film on (which tensions the shutter) etc. so each camera needs different ways of working compared to the others.
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So, basically, if I follow, only the F301 and the Welta were necessary?
 
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I have two cameras. Since I'm about to put the X-100T up for sale, I'm confident my latest camera (X-Pro 2) is strictly necessary.
 
the only gear I ever bought that paid for itself was the 8x10 and it's been many years since then. now it's mostly just playing with toys, if i'm honest with myself. Now and then I accidentally produce something I'm happy to have made but by and large that's a side effect.
 
This last Nikon FM2n was certainly unnecessary. I should have kept my eye on the ball. what I wanted was an Leica R5 to pair with the R8. The R8 is so beautiful and fun to shoot......I seem to think it should be in a glass cabinet. The R5 is about my speed.....
 
hap said:
This last Nikon FM2n was certainly unnecessary. I should have kept my eye on the ball. what I wanted was an Leica R5 to pair with the R8. The R8 is so beautiful and fun to shoot......I seem to think it should be in a glass cabinet. The R5 is about my speed.....
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The R5 is much better than the R8 - at least for me.

The R8/R9 seemed to be the pinnacle of Leica 35mm SLR’s, which is what I thought when I bought my R8. The modes, the metering, an absolutely great viewfinder display, and it fits very nicely in the hand.

In actual usage, the one thing that completely sours the R8 experience is the constant turning of the mode dial. I want to select a mode, such as aperture priority, and just leave it there. But I turn the camera off between periods of not actively shooting, so I’m constantly turning that dial. The R8 really needs a separate on/off switch.

A few years after buying my R8, I bought an R5. Much better in actual usage. The only advantage the R8 has is use of its spotmeter in all modes.

An R7 is also a good buy with a few more niceties over the R5. But, unless you absolutely need spot metering, the Minolta XD-11 (XD) from which these R’s are based is equally nice.



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jsrockit said:
So, basically, if I follow, only the F301 and the Welta were necessary?
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No. The others are sort of necessary as they generally have different specs, different limitations, different negative sizes or different methods of use, so they force me to at least try and use my head to cope with those differences.
 
I use my Fuji X-T1 for work. I’m in food manufacturing so I need photos for the website, social media, sell sheets, and the like. It‘s much easier to turn that kind of thing around quickly with a digital workflow. I mostly use the Fuji with vintage Nikkors, however, because I prefer the look. So that’s my only ‘necessary’ camera—I even itemized it on my taxes. The other ten are for fun. I bought a Leica IIIc recently and that was probably the least necessary. It’s a ridiculous camera to use in 2023, but really fun.
 
agentlossing said:
Ooh, interesting question. My latest camera purchase is an Olympus OM-2n, which is definitely not necessary... especially when I think of acquiring more lenses for the system (I have none but the 50mm 1.8 it came with). In fact I question myself as to why I bought the camera. It's a very nice camera, but it wasn't the most practical purchase.

However, when I read the title of this post, I didn't think of the recent OM-2n, but of my last bigger camera purchase, which, interestingly, is the K-1 Mark II. It's the most expensive camera I've bought (paid around $1400 after recouping the cost of the kit 28-105 which I did not keep), and I'm not made of money. But whenever I consider the wisdom of this expensive and hefty DSLR purchase, I come back with yes, it was worth it. The K-1 scratches the itch of a full-featured, "pure" camera that does everything I could want (except fit into a pocket or small bag!) and impresses me with its IQ even after a year's use. I mean, I've learned it a bit better, such as how the JPEGs leave a lot of the sensor detail on the table. I shoot DNG and convert in DXO PL5, using the Color Fidelity profiles to improve the out-of-the-box color treatment in DXO, and I'm not afraid to shoot quite high ISO and utilize DeepPRIME NR, which works really, really well on these files. Not to mention, there's so much of the Pentax lens stable remaining unexplored and beckoning to me.

So I feel better about my biggest purchase than I do about smaller ones like the Olympus. I may still fall in love with the Oly. We will see.
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Updating this thread, I think with a more necessary purchase than this last one. The OM-2n broke down right after purchase, and I waffled a little while after sending it back but ended up buying the best-condition Pentax MX in black I could find on the Bay, from Japan. Since I'm invested in Pentax glass, it makes the most sense, and it is a really, really nice camera. My old MX has been slowly dying (it was mishandled in a prior life and finally succumbed to its injuries). So having a general-purpose, do-it-all film camera is what I would consider somewhat necessary.
 
Latest: Rolleicord Vb. Partly redundant with two previous purchases: C-220 +4lenses (bought new 45 years ago) and Perkeo I (Skopar). Overlap, yes, but in some way, the goldilocks camera: lighter than the C220, more precise (framing, focusing) than the Perkeo. With two filters (Y,O) and a rolleinar 1, I'm equipped to bring the negative home in most cases. And such a nice-handling camera!
 
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