Any Future Classics in the Crowd?

[seablister]

What cameras that the industry offers new today, if any, will be looked on 30 or 40 years from now as "georgeous"... a term recently applied to a Nikon F2T that I had posted FS on this forum.

Actually, it was that comment from biglouis that caused me to wonder if any of today's contemporary cameras will be remembered by users, rather than the industry, as "classics" because they ticked all the boxes important to us... including aesthetics, simplicity, user interface, etc.

Seems to me that any discussion might include both specific nominees as well as the scarcity or abundance vs yesteryear.

 

[Vivek]

My gut feeling is that it is an end of an era to have such "classics". If you consider the fact that the F2 titan came after several decades of SLRs after Exakta basically as a pinnacle of that type of a camera that used canned film and also pretty much at the hey day of film itself, it belongs to a period.

Digital has not yet reached that peak yet. Probably it will never either as things are developing way much faster than they were with film.

 

[Pelorus]

Having owned a few classics from Nikon, Leica and Hasselblad, it's hard to see similar cameras today from these or other makers.

The one exception might be Alpa...the SWA is probably the one the majority would name.

 

[Lars]

Ebony LF cameras for sure. Timeless design (they look ancient even new hehe), independent of technology. Handmade by a family business in Japan, using titanium and ebony hardwood.

Leica S2? It was the first really good digital Leica.

Nikon/Canon, and now Sony, are spitting out new models like crazy so it's hard to see any specific camera as standing out from the crowd.

I think in this age with new cameras every week it's more interesting to nominate lenses. Glass is less tied to a certain technology generation.

 

[jlm]

Monochrome and the hassle lad cvf50-c back

 

[bradhusick]

View attachment 116411View attachment 116412

 

[BANKER1]

+1 for me. It is a gorgeous camera, and it doesn't have a display that will bite the dust at some point in the future.

Greg

 

[4season]

Not conventionally pretty, but I think the Ricoh GR deserves mention: As a picture-taking instrument, it's just about perfect, from the gritty finish to the lozenge-shaped shutter button.

OTOH, although I'm tempted to get one, the new Olympus Pen F is sort of silly: They've taken what in a film camera would be the rewind knob and turned it into the power switch, but in so doing made the simple act of powering-on the camera into a 2-handed affair. But otherwise the tongue-in-cheek retro design looks like it shouldn't be detrimental to the operation of the camera. Maybe not so much a design classic as a novelty overall.

 

[Godfrey]

Special editions like the Leica ME60 rarely become "classics" in the sense that I know. Not because they are not special, but because classics are good working cameras that prove their value in the hands of photographers who keep using them long past their oft-presumed "due by" date.

The digital genera of cameras haven't been around long enough for many such classics to emerge yet. One that might make it is the Olympus E-1: A dozen years from their introduction, woefully slow, limited sensitivity, and low resolution compared to anything current, and there are those still who discover this camera for the first time and are blown away with how nicely it handles and the quality of the photos it makes... The E-1 might well become a classic.

Nothing is guaranteed, nor is being a classic of great value to the manufacturers. Classics tend to hang around and stay in use, limiting sales in a perverse way. After all, once you have a classic in your hands, what else do you really need? ;-)

G

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

It says something about the status of cameras that the Nikon F6 is arguably the best SLR camera launched by Nikon the last 15 years. Being the last top model film camera from Nikon, or any other SLR manufacturer for that matter, it more or less qualifies as an instant classic. Luckily, it also has the looks to support the status.

I do agree that the Olympus E-1 is something special. For some reason, the M9 has a special status for me, being the last "real" Leica rangefinder and the first one with a full frame sensor. Should I ever buy a digital Leica, it would probably be an M9.

The Nikon D700 and the Sony A900 may qualify in the future. They both have the utilitarian looks and functionality of a Jeep or a Land Rover. If they still made them, they would still sell them, like a modern day Nikon F3, another true classic.

But we don't know until another 10 or 20 years have passed, do we?

 

[Lars]

We'll also know in a few decades which electronics will stand the tooth of time. Sensors and LCDs decay for sure, as does any plastic and composite material. From that perspective Leica seems like a somewhat better bet. All the synthetic rubber that wraps my Nikons will surely either decay, go gray or go sticky.

 

[Vivek]

It says something about the status of cameras that the Nikon F6 is arguably the best SLR camera launched by Nikon the last 15 years. Being the last top model film camera from Nikon, or any other SLR manufacturer for that matter, it more or less qualifies as an instant classic. Luckily, it also has the looks to support the status.

Useless without a functional battery.

A fine review at the classic site: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/f6.htm

 

[GrahamWelland]

Possible classics as unique cameras might be the Sigma DP1M, DP2M and DP3M Merrill trio. Not pretty but I consider them forgotten classics that'll be remembered and appreciated later. Heck maybe even SilkyPIX will be reliable by then (or more likely hit that big bit bucket in the sky).

 

[JoelM]

The Epson R-D1 would be a modern classic for me. It was the first digital camera that I could use my M6 and M7 lenses on and the CCD sensor has a very nice look to it.

Joel

 

[GrahamWelland]

Nothing is guaranteed, nor is being a classic of great value to the manufacturers. Classics tend to hang around and stay in use, limiting sales in a perverse way. After all, once you have a classic in your hands, what else do you really need? ;-)

G

Using this definition I'd include the Nikon D3s (& potentially D700) cameras. When I was still a Nikon user, I really felt that the D3s lacked for nothing as a workhorse camera and had no desire nor real need to move to it's D4 successors. I have friends who still use the D3s as their sports cameras and only the D5 now being a potential worthwhile replacement.

 

[Tim]

This is a difficult question to separate. Design classics or cult classic cameras?

Back in the early 2000's the Leica Diglux 2 was a user cult classic.
There was a small frenzy around it IQ.
As a digital camera they commanded high prices looong after things had moved on.
The Digilux 2 was of course slower than later cameras but users still flocked to them.
Not sure I could say the Digilux 2 was a design classic though.

Another user classic was the FujiFilm F31d. There was a cult following for its low noise low light rendering.
Ugly little thing design wise IMO.

Digital and design wise I think the Fuji X-T1 is pretty good. Just look at that top deck bristling with techy dials and numbers.
For some they would ask, "what does all that mean". Looks speccy though.

 

[4season]

This.
http://www.fujifilm.com/products/instant_photo/cameras/instax_mini_hello_kitty/

 

[Tim]

I'll join in on the silly ones. this - http://petapixel.com/2014/08/22/sonys-new-kw1-part-perfume-bottle-part-selfie-camera-facepalm/

 

[4season]

KW1: What a cute ("kawaii") model name You may have hit closer to the mark than you realize.

I used to collect old Apple computers, and often the ones I found most interesting weren't necessarily the landmarks which set the tone for everything which followed, but some of the dead-ends and "I-can't-believe-they-made-that"s. Like the 20th Anniversary Macintosh, or the "flower power" iMac.

 

[Tim]

I used to collect old Apple computers, and often the ones I found most interesting weren't necessarily the landmarks which set the tone for everything which followed, but some of the dead-ends and "I-can't-believe-they-made-that"s. Like the 20th Anniversary Macintosh, or the "flower power" iMac.

I was an Apple tech back in the day. Started when the IIe was first released, however I used to work on the II+ as well. Did a lot of 5.25 floppy alignments. Lots of 74XX chip swaps and faulty 4116 RAM swaps to fix II+ boards.

I saw the release of the Lisa when the twiggy floppies were new. The first batch of Mac 128Mb we had were all US power supplies so we used step down transformers. Back then we dreamed of a colour Mac, and was excited when the Mac II came out. I stopped doing Mac tech work when OSX was released. I miss those days of SCSI and Appletalk.

The Apple III was a bit like the dead-ends you mention.

Now where did I put that torx driver and Mac pull apart tool? and my ProDos disk is scratched again! DOH!