Worst camera designs

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Originally Posted by Roger Cole

Why?

If I had friends who were critical of my choice of camera based on aesthetics, I'd get new friends.

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Well ... I know a few people like that. I don't actually consider them friends and avoid them. My true friends would just smile and shake their heads :D

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Originally Posted by E. von Hoegh

Perhaps I should have explained that while I am right-handed, I am left-eyed, so when using any "normal" 35mm, I have trouble with the film advance and associated paw fouling my face, with the Exakta's left hand advance and my left eye on the viewfinder it's actually an advantage for me.

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So, in order to make the ultimate camera, design-wise you have to have 4 models. One left handed/left eyed, one left handed/right eyed, one right handed/left eyed and one right handed, right eyed. Or a way to modulate or reverse the camera.

Hey, maybe my Graflex isn't so bad with its tall chimney finder and 2-eye focusing.

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Originally Posted by David A. Goldfarb

Hey, maybe my Graflex isn't so bad with its tall chimney finder and 2-eye focusing.

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RB too, David?

BTW, I was recently bitten severely by my little 2x3 RB Ser. B. The back rotates but the mirror box is, as it should be, fixed in the body. Turns out that the mirror box vignettes with long lenses. Vignetting starts around 250 mm with the back in portrait orientation, around 500 in landscape. So much for my little Baby Bertha.

Nobody mentioned the Holga yet. The plastic piece of $hit makes some pretty interesting pictures, and is like a liberation army in escaping technical mumbo jumbo. Basically, aim, shoot, wind, repeat.
But I have never had a camera that scratched my film so badly, and needed so many modifications just to function. For example, the high tech foam that's supposed to tension both spools of film comes off in hot weather and gets wound up with the film on the take-up spool. A very interesting feature. I have to tape the back door with gaffers tape or it comes off mid-roll. I've had to polish the interior with the finest grit sandpaper I could find, and then use coarse paper to get it even finer, in order to avoid scratching the film along the film guide, and it STILL scratches my film (I had two of them do this).

So, I gave up, put one of the cameras in the street, and ran it over with my car. Felt great. :)

But, to me that is by far the worst camera design of all time. There is no comparison.

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Originally Posted by Steven L

So, in order to make the ultimate camera, design-wise you have to have 4 models. One left handed/left eyed, one left handed/right eyed, one right handed/left eyed and one right handed, right eyed. Or a way to modulate or reverse the camera.

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Design-wise my "ultimate" camera is either my Linhof STIV or my Deardorff V8, which have no film advance and are viewed with both eyes open. :)

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Originally Posted by Steven L

So, in order to make the ultimate camera, design-wise you have to have 4 models. One left handed/left eyed, one left handed/right eyed, one right handed/left eyed and one right handed, right eyed. Or a way to modulate or reverse the camera.

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No.

One camera with two viewfinders, two shutter buttons and two winding levers!


Steve.

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Originally Posted by Dan Fromm

RB too, David?

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Yours, perhaps, but alas not mine. Eventually I'll get around to finding a Home Portrait model.

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Originally Posted by Thomas Bertilsson

Nobody mentioned the Holga yet. The plastic piece of $hit makes some pretty interesting pictures, and is like a liberation army in escaping technical mumbo jumbo. Basically, aim, shoot, wind, repeat.
But I have never had a camera that scratched my film so badly, and needed so many modifications just to function. For example, the high tech foam that's supposed to tension both spools of film comes off in hot weather and gets wound up with the film on the take-up spool. A very interesting feature. I have to tape the back door with gaffers tape or it comes off mid-roll. I've had to polish the interior with the finest grit sandpaper I could find, and then use coarse paper to get it even finer, in order to avoid scratching the film along the film guide, and it STILL scratches my film (I had two of them do this).

So, I gave up, put one of the cameras in the street, and ran it over with my car. Felt great. :)

But, to me that is by far the worst camera design of all time. There is no comparison.

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The Holga wasn't designed. Eggs from a Brownie and sperm from a mutated Zorki were mixed on a hot rock; the resulting fertile ova were then moved to a dark room next to a research reactor in Magnetogorsk. A few weeks later, they had the Holga prototype, which was then put in production by insane dwarves living in the sewers of Kiev.
After Chernobyl, and then the fall of the Iron Curtain, imprisoned schizoid peat diggers were put in charge of production while marketing was taken over by refugees from the mountains of Albania.

Any camera without the shutter release on the left side is not as good as an Exacta. I think the Argus C3 has to be the worst design, a hollowed out brick. The camer itself isnot bad, just the shape.

A southpaw from Toronto