The Best of The Best...

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Our guests from San Francisco have moved on to the next destination on their month long tour itinerary, staying tonight with another old friend of ours in Cheshire. I was saying to Anne earlier on about choosing the Desert Island Discs selection thing [blog post passim] and that I'd compiled a loose list of cameras I own or have owned in the same vein. Which are the best eight cameras I've owned/used over the years, and which would be the one to save, push come to shove, from the waves at the end of the programme?
It's an interesting exercise, and I'll admit somewhat easier to solve than the music one, which, as I've said before, is an impossible task which can only elicit a snapshot of one's current take on one's history, certain landmark memories aside: one disc I would always include would be The Kinks' "You Really Got Me", as that was a firm game-changer in my musical awakening, back in the mid-sixties. From there, though, it gets a bit fractal and the choices I would make as evanescent as the day. Difficult.

As to the cameras, though; as I've a much smaller experience set from which to draw, it is a rather easier task to make the choices. I'll list the top eight cameras I've either owned, still own or simply used professionally, and in no particular order. Over the last sixty years I have used - and often owned - many more than eight, but the ones of significance to me for reasons various are: Pentax Spotmatic [I include S2's, S1a's, SP500's SP1000's, etc., etc.], Olympus OM1, Olympus OM2SP, Nikon F, Nikon F2, Mamiya C330, Hasselblad 500CM and the Canon F1. I left the Canon till last, as it it was the first proper 'pro' camera I owned, bought for me by my Dad in the late seventies, after I graduated. I unfortunately don't still have that original - which had a beautiful 50mm f1.4 lens of impeccable quality - as I traded it in back in the early eighties for my first Olympus - an OM1 with motor-drive and f1.4 lens; which led on to the purchase of a succession of cameras that continues to this day.

As to the one I would rescue from the waves at the expense of all others in the service of the Desert Island artifice, it would still be the Canon F1, despite the fact that my Olympus OM2SP was the last camera that my Dad bought me, although I might just try and sneak that one in too, for obvious sentimental reasons. My reasoning on the F1, though, is that it is simply, in my opinion, the best quality and simplest to use, and frankly most bullet-proof, 35mm system camera of its era, and I'd trade my beloved Nikon F2 for it all day long, no contest [OM2SP hiding at the bottom of my bag: cheers, Dad]...

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