I have a lot of cameras, and none of them are ones that I think anyone would consider ‘good.’ A few are decent, but nothing really goes beyond that. The full list, as of this moment, is as follows:

  • Canon EOS Elan II E (35mm)
  • Canon EOS Rebel XT (dSLR)
  • Fujifilm Instax Mini 90 (instant film)
  • Holga 135BC (35mm)
  • Holga 120 WPC Panoramic Pinhole (120)
  • Holga Mini 110 (110)
  • Kodak Jiffy Six-20 (620)
  • Kodak Brownie Target Six-20 (620)
  • Kodak Brownie Starmatic II (127)
  • Kodak Brownie Starflex (127)
  • Kodak Ektar H35 (35mm)
  • Kodak Ektar H35N (35mm)
  • Minolta Maxxum 3000i (35mm)
  • Minolta Maxxum 8000i (35mm)
  • Nikon Coolpix (point and shoot digital)
  • Pentax MG (35mm)
  • Ricoh KR-5 Super II (35mm)
  • Ricohflex Mark VI (120/35mm)
  • Sawyer’s Nomad 620 (120/620)
  • Super Ricohflex (120/127/35mm)
  • No-name handicam (digital)

Annoyingly, I know that somewhere around here I’ve got two more, but I can’t remember what they are, nor have I been able to find them. I think I mentioned last time that I want to do a full roll from each camera for the Shitty Camera Challenge, and so far I’m four down. Five if you count doing vlogs with the handicam, which I am.

I love my shit cameras though. Even the really bad ones, like that Brownie Target, and the Kodak Ektars. But you might look at this list and spot a few that are genuinely good cameras. And they all were, once upon a time. The problem with the Canon Rebel is it’s literally 20 years old, and as such the sensor is tiny, it’s banged up from being dropped multiple times, and a lot of features that are standard on newer cameras aren’t even possible with this one. I need to shoot video? Why do you think I got the handicam?

The Ricoh and Pentax cameras are similar. I know they were both good cameras when they were new, and aside from topping out at around 1600 ISO, they’re just as good as any other SLR in the same range today. The problem with mine is I got them both from an antique shop. The same antique shop, in fact, from the same vendor. I don’t know who this person is, but their cameras all suck. They’re all broken and need to be wrangled into working through force. I do find it funny that on both, the shutter timer is so wrecked that it can prevent the shutter from working entirely. Whatever this person did, they must have really relied on that timer a bit too much. But that’s just one of their many problems. The Ricoh’s shutter is wholly inconsistent to begin with, and won’t always fire at the speed it’s set to. It has an internal light meter, which doesn’t know what light is, and the gears on the film advance are prone to slipping, resulting in frames that overlap into weird double exposures.

Black and white image of a telegraph pole against dramatic clouds
Black and white image of a house, with a small ladder in the path to the front door. Everything is poorly exposed and foggy.
A pile of trash in an alley. The pink and green haze over the entire image obscures the objects, instead giving them a vaguely-human shape.
Black and white image of an alley, with dramatic clouds overhead
Black and white photo of a cloudy sky with bare trees in the foreground.
Black and white photo of trees against a white sky. The tree branches are also a ghostly white where the sun hits them.
Photo of a river, with islands in the near distance. Everything has an ethereal, pastel look.
Photo of a door, with the words 'smallwood hotel' written on it. There's green artifacts on the photo. The left edge has been cut short, leaving a black bar down the side.
Photo of a Chinese restaurant. Most of the details are lost to a deep pink haze.
A brick and plaster building facade. The image is badly clouded with a pink haze.

The Pentax isn’t much better. It has no rewind lever, so I can only unload it in a dark bag, the film advance gears slip, the shutter button fell off while I was testing it out with a remote shutter cable (test result: fail), and sometimes the shutter will just fire whenever it feels like. A new problem it’s developed is the back door springing wide open randomly, which it didn’t do when I bought it. This seems to be a new problem from when I got hit by a car last month. I had the Pentax in my bag at the time, which is what I fell on when the car that clipped me with a wing mirror sped away. So, that’s fun. It’s caught me off-guard now a few times, and is going to need a piece of tape going forward.

A window on a green brick building. Barely readable in the window is a sign that reads 'sorry, we're stoned' in the style of a 'sorry, we're closed' sign.
Photo of a maple tree, taken at the same level as the leaves. The leaves are a variety of colours, including red, purple, yellow, and green.
Photo of a banana skin on the pavement
Photo of a pile of bones next to a cauldron. A coyote skull is in centre focus.
Photo of a street where it meets an alley. The colours are washed out and faded, giving it the look of a photograph that's faded with time.
Photo of a cityscape beneath dramatic clouds. Telegraph poles and power lines take up much of the photo. The colours are washed out and faded, or else too dark, giving it the look of a photograph that has faded with time.
Photo of a pile of bones. A plush Thor doll stands next to half a deer skull.

But if I hated any of this, I wouldn’t have bought them in the first place since I saw right there in the shop that they had the problem with the shutter timer. And at $30 each, it was hard to pass them up.

Often, my favourite photos aren’t the ones that look the best. I prefer the ones that are interesting. Usually, this means something has gone wrong. Occasionally, it’s because I did actually manage to take a good photo. But a lot of my ‘good’ photos don’t have much going on in them. They look good because the lighting was even, the film was a stock that’s been around forever, or I was actually trying to get a photo of a bird in clear focus for my field book.

Outside of a few rules I like to follow, like slower film fixed lens cameras, or using certain cameras for loading 35mm to get panoramas, I don’t really care what I do. Or rather, I do care, as long as I have a bit of control over what comes out. This is why I wound up disliking Harman Phoenix so much. Nothing I did got consistent results, even in my cameras that are ostensibly good. So I souped that shit, so the total lack of latitude was obscured by green and pink gunk all over the place.

Anyone who’s ever used a Holga knows that the appeal is because they’re awful. Brownies are a meme for how bad they are. And there are far better instant cameras out there than the Instax Mini 90. And yet, these are consistently some of my favourite cameras to use. My list of favourites seems to change month by month. Only the point and shoots masquerading as SLRs annoy me, because they don’t give you much control. I don’t have control with the Brownies, but that’s why I like them. If I’m shooting an SLR, I want to at least have some say in what ISO I shoot at, or my shutter speed. So with three cameras like that, I’m going to go through at least six batteries in order to get them knocked off my list.

Curious to see photos I’ve not uploaded here, or to Bluesky? You can browse my gallery by camera, film stock, or see everything all mixed up together.