Stupid things Camera Companies leave out...

[pen s]

Built in adjustable diopter for eyepiece. Al my manual SLR's from 70's don't have them and getting correct diopter for my eyepiece is a pain. If you can't see, you can't focus.

[Newt_on_Swings]

Film windows. So helpful when shooting lots of different cameras and films. Love the slits on the back for 35mm, and good slide open windows on 120/220 cameras(so you can see the backing paper type).

Centered tripod mounting holes under the lens at the film plane. So many have them on the right or left side that need a special bracket or grip attachment that has it in the center.

Spot meters, I wish all my cameras had them so I wouldn't have to carry my handheld one around.

I don't care much for the shutter locks but do use them when they are available. I try to not put away or store cameras with the shutters cocked.

[desertratt]

I have an Exacta and for a while I thought it was broken because the shutter would not fire. There's a sort of secret thing that flips around and locks the shutter. I hate it. I could do without the film cutter inside the body and the third flash/sync terminal. But my people come from Germany and I understand the old fashioned mind set over there. The last thing they wanted you to do is take a photo in a hurry. Many German cameras of the 1950s lacked a coupled rangefinder. You were expected put the camera on a tripod, take out a measuring tape and measure the distance. The old fashioned idea is that taking a photograph is an event and you should take your time and show some respect. Others, however, are now working on a camera that takes the photo before you take it out of your car trunk.

[Poisson Du Jour]

A film boxtop memo holder; whatever happened to these little things on cameras post-classics? The Olympus OM4 was a gem, even more so for this small, often overlooked little detail, completely missing on today's cameras.

[MARKNABIA]

i got double exposure all the time...

[lxdude]

A film boxtop memo holder; whatever happened to these little things on cameras post-classics? The Olympus OM4 was a gem, even more so for this small, often overlooked little detail, completely missing on today's cameras.

The cartridge window is what happened to them.
My first 35mm camera, a Fujica ST 801, did not have a box end holder or window. A company was selling inexpensive self-adhesive holders, which were a thick piece of slightly translucent rather soft plastic folded over to make a clip, into which the box end was inserted. Worked great, but what I really liked was I stopped rubbing the skin off my nose on the rough leatherette.

[StoneNYC]

The "newest" film cameras from Canon/Nikon from the 1998-2005ish timeframe have all of these.

-Diopter
-Shutter lock (which I agree is super useful if you have a camera bag or walk around all day with a camera on your shoulder, inevitably you hit that darn button)
-film top holder (they don't often have that but mostly because the camera reads the DX codes and sets the ISO for you. [I agree still would be nice to have it]).
-PC socket
-30 second long exposure
-Mirror lockup

I wish they had a programmable super long exposures like up to an hour, 30 seconds is not enough sometimes. (Still offer shutter release cable but prefer it in camera).

But more than anything... Time lapse... I don't for the life of me understand why they can't have an internal timer that allows for you to take an image every 10 minutes or 30 minutes or every hour, it would be easy to program. Drives me nuts....




~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

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[flatulent1]

Canon cameras used to have shutter locks, separate from a switch that turned the meter on and off. Many people were confused by this arrangement; Canon eventually combined them into a power switch on the T-series and have never looked back. Mamiya 645 Pro TL has a circular switch around the shutter button on the body. The power grip also has a switch around its shutter button. I keep forgetting to turn one of them off, and I don't know which is necessary to keep the batteries from dying.

The film window in the camera back is a wonderful thing. My Canon F1 doesn't have one; I can't remember how many times I've had to remove the lens, set the shutter to bulb and fire the thing so I could peer inside just to see if it was loaded, nevermind with what. I was quite surprised last year when I picked up my Contax AX wanting to see what film was loaded and discovered it had no window! It also had no memo holder. Fortunately I happen to have a few of the last Hama memo holders floating around somewhere and was able to stick one on.

Ya know Stone, if you want time lapse, several cameras that came out in the 1990s also have intervalometers available. Good luck finding them, of course! There are also remote switches with timers built in, available on ebay, for those really long exposures. I considered that such a good idea that I bought a few a couple of years ago. They are still in their boxes, of course.

[blockend]

If you standardise on film types, memo pockets are unnecessary. On my cameras 100 ISO means transparency, 200 equals colour print and 400 is black and white. If I deviate, it's on a camera with a rear window. Checking the rewind tensions tells me whether the camera is loaded.

[cliveh]

Anyway, why did they leave the optical image stabilizer off the M2?

Bill, I’ve often thought that. All those shots I could have got while diving through the air in front of the subject.