Digital cameras have reached maturity in just a decade. My breast-pocket-sized Canon Ixus 960 (or SD950 in the USA) has image quality to match any camera I've ever used, an astounding feat.
Now I'm just waiting for somebody to make digital cameras which look as nice as for example this Zeiss Ikon ZI, which is new, but it's a film camera. Dang me if I'm gonna run around getting film developed and scanned again.
("Liebhaver", is a danish-germanic word meaning something you own just for the love of it. Beautiful things for those who can afford it, in other words. Collectors' items in the best sense of the word.) (The worst sense of the word would be items which are made solely to prey on people who consider themselves "collectors". Like the same comic book in five different covers.)
(Mike J's review of the Zeiss Ikon inspired this rant.)
Reading Mike's review on the ZI put me in a strange mood, the proverbial "walk down memory lane".
ReplyDeleteMy very first camera, I must have been about 5 years old, was a Zeiss Ikon Ikomatic F, which I loved dearly. It was only a "126 Instamatic", but the best one I've ever seen. Then I moved on to a Yashica Mat 124G, along with a Konica A3 (which I still have). Oddly, I don't remember which of the 2-1/4" or the 35mm came first... but I wasn't even 15 at the time!
Btw, it was by looking for pictures of the Yashica that I stumbled onto the camera leather site.
Holy crud, there was a Zeiss Ikon Instamatic camera!?!
ReplyDeleteDid Leica ever make a camera for the Kodak Disc format? :)
Ah well, unlike the 110 format, the 126 format had a half-decent size.
How could I have forgotten my Polaroid Land Model 103! That was an expensive bugger to shoot with. Would I have ditched it earlier, I would have had money to buy the T3 instead of the A3...
ReplyDelete"Ah well, unlike the 110 format, the 126 format had a half-decent size."
What do you mean, half-decent? 'Twas 35mm without the sprocket holes, no?
OK, I looked it up:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/126_film
Effective image area was 27mm X 27mm.
So given a good lens it could give about the same quality as 35mm, which of course is a decent size.
Of course I never tried a 126 with a good lens. Maybe the Zeiss had it.
The Nikon Coolpix 990 or 995 would be fun to own as objects. There was a Fuji digital camera with the case done by Porsche Design. It was the FinePix 6800. I think it will be a collector's item.
ReplyDelete