The Leica R7 was the last in the line of electromechanical SLR cameras descending from the German-Japanese collaboration that produced the Leica R3 in 1977. That camera, which shared much of its DNA with the Minolta XE (released in 1974 as the XE-1 in Europe and the XE-7 in North America), was the lighter, smaller, and less-expensive-to-manufacture successor to the famously over-engineered and unprofitable Leicaflex SL2 that was produced by Leitz from 1974 to 1976. The partnership between Leitz and Minolta culminated in the release of the R7 in 1992, twenty years after the two companies had signed an agreement of technical cooperation. In 1996, the R7 was succeeded by the R8, which was designed exclusively by Leica and was a radical break from the R3–R7 line.
camera reviews
Nikon EM – The Story of a Camera /
My father’s Nikon EM mounted with a 35 mm f/2.5 E Series lens. Not clearly visible in this photograph is the fact that the rewind crank is missing.
This is not a review. This is the story of a camera. Not of a camera make and model, but of a particular camera in the world, a camera that made its way by route and hands unknown from Japan to sub-Saharan Aftica, a camera that found itself amidst the history of a country in turmoil, a camera that touched the life of my family. This is a story of life after death. And it’s an unfinished story that I intend to keep telling for the rest of my days.
Writing on Photography /
In 2010/2011, I ran a film-photography blog called The Photon Fantastic (now defunct). During this time, I wrote several among the following series of articles as part of a larger, collaborative project called The Beginner's Guide to Film Photography, which unfortunately was never finished. I am collecting them here as a navigational aid for newcomers to this blog, and also as the first step in my own return to the project. I intend to complete the writing by mid-2025 and publish the guide as a book by the end of that year.
Developing Black-and-White Film at Home: Introduction, Preparation, and Process
I've also written less technical, more philosophical, and much more opinionated articles about photography. They say I'm polarizing. Oh well.
I'm fascinated by the multitude of ways that photographers think and speak about their art. To my mind, photography is a very slippery thing and it takes a lot of thinking to penetrate the surface of what it is. Here's a (growing) collection of thoughts on photography by great practitioners and critics.
If you’re interested in the tools of the trade, I have begun to write detailed experiential and technical reviews of the cameras in my collection, beginning with the Nikon bodies. To date these are:
Mechanical. Rugged. Reliable. My review of the Nikon FM2 now Published /
The Nikon FM2 enjoyed a production run of almost two decades—and for most of that time, it was an anachronism, even by Nikon’s own standards. When the FM2 was released in 1982, the electronically controlled FE, which included aperture-priority auto-exposure—a feature conspicuous for its absence in the FM2—had already been in production for 4 years; only a year later, Nikon unveiled the “technocamera” or FA, which premiered what came to be known as matrix metering and also incorporated shutter-priority auto-exposure for the first time in a Nikon body; and, at the same time, the company added autofocusing to its flagship camera, in the F3AF model. Until the time the FM2 was finally discontinued in 2001, Nikon continued to iterate its professional line of cameras, including introducing the F4 (1988) and the F5 (1996), while only giving the FM2 a modest upgrade (in 1984, to the FM2N, which featured a new, titanium-bladed shutter and an increased X-sync speed from 1/125 s to 1/250 s). Nikon’s high-end line also underwent an evolution during this period, including introduction of the F90 (1992), F90x (1996), and F100 (1999) series of semi-professional cameras, while the FE was upgraded to the comparatively short-lived FE2 (1983-1987). In its consumer offerings, Nikon experimented across a wide range of cameras with plastic components, new form factors, and electronically-controlled, automatic shooting modes tailored to beginning photographers. And all the while, the venerable, rugged, reliable FM2 looked on, essentially unchanged, inheriting none of these improvements. The frothy competition between the major Japanese brands in the 1980s and 90s gave rise to many innovations, some useful and others faddish. This “progress” in camera technology left the FM2 behind—and yet, the camera only appreciated in value and found its way into the bottom of many a professional’s camera bag as a trusty back-up. The FM2 was a loyal friend that could be relied upon to keep shooting when batteries died and temperatures reached –40 ℃.
Nikon F100 Review /
Nikon F100 with mounted 58 mm f/1.4 Voigtländer Nokton manual focus lens.
This is the third in my trilogy of reviews of late-model film cameras manufactured by Nikon. The three cameras I cover–the F65, the F80, and, here, the F100–represent the culmination of design, engineering, and manufacturing expertise built by Nikon over four decades since the introduction of the legendary F1 in 1959. Though occupying positions spanning the entirety of Nikon’s amateur market segments, from entry level to prosumer, these three cameras share many technologies and features (some of which would later become incorporated into early digital offerings). Though constructed of different materials and ranging in size and weight, the cameras share a common design language and have similar ergonomics and haptics. Finally, the cameras are united by the fact that all of them were discontinued in 2006, approximately three years before I began taking photography seriously as a hobby. The only film camera produced by Nikon after this time was the flagship F6, which may be the finest 35 mm SLR film camera ever made.