# What is...



## Mitica100 (Nov 21, 2006)

...the most expensive camera you ever bought and why did you buy it?

Yeah, another worthless thread but I'm curious.  

I'll start:

-the Hasselblad 500ELM (with lens, WLF and back)
-because I've always dreamt of owning one


There!:lmao: 

Your turn...


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## mysteryscribe (Nov 21, 2006)

In todays dollars the kowa 6 when new.  I bought it for the leaf shutter built into the lenses.  I forgot to figure in the cost of additional lenses.  The secondary lenses cost more than the camera with standard lens.


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## terri (Nov 21, 2006)

- Pentax MZ-S. It was a pretty expensive SLR when first released (body alone $799) and I added lots of rooty-kazooty Pentax glass to make it a hideous expense. :mrgreen: 

- Why? Despite all the cool bells and whistles, it converts to fully manual, and I took all my photo classes with it and learned on it, and took it everywhere. I still love it, though I shoot more MF these days. It's a rockin' little 35mm system I have there. :heart: 

Good thread, Mitica!


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## Jeff Canes (Nov 21, 2006)

Other that my Canon 1D MIIn and lenses it would be my Hasselblad. Unlucky I bought it about a year before the prices dope 40%-50%. Why did I buy it? It is one of the four cameras on my list to own one day. I have the Hassy & Rollei still need to get the Nikonos & Leica 

   Hasselblad 500cm (with 80mm lens, WLF and 220 back)
Add on 120 back & 60mm lens


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## usayit (Nov 21, 2006)

When i first started collecting cameras (I was pretty young), everything I purchased was around the 50-150 dollar mark... I had a focus on early Asahi/Pentax/Takumar stuff.  

that was history...

I then moved to a bit more expensive items such as my Pentax 67 and Pentax 645 systems...

then that was history...

I then moved on to Canon EOS stuff.... with a nice mix of primes and zooms (L and non-L) not exactly collectors stuff but so very enjoyable in their own right.

Once again.. history..

Then all notions of the young kid inside taking delivery on a expensive sports car flew out the window when I got a Leica.  It started with an M3 with a 35 and 50mm summicron from the same era.  It then progresed to my most expensive ( and will be for a long time) purchase; a mint Leica M6 Titanium with a 50mm f1 Noctilux.  

Why?  Its a rangefinder, a fast lens, and a very nice "look" captured on film.  Absolutely no regrets....


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## fmw (Nov 22, 2006)

Probably the camera in my avatar - a Cambo Ultima 4X5.


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## Don Simon (Nov 22, 2006)

Honestly, my new Pentax DSLR. Cost twice as much as any other camera I've bought.

I'm almost ashamed to admit this. Partly because I've never spent so much money on a camera body before, and partly because as great as it is, I get the nagging feeling I should have spent it on a _really_ nice film body instead - maybe a Pentax LX or the MZ-S like Terri has, a Minolta Dynax 7, Nikon F3HP... and thats before I even consider the medium format systems I could have bought into...

Realistically I know I made the right choice... but the voice of the gear fetishist in my head tells me that no digital camera is as classy as a good film one. Hmm, now that voice is trying to calculate how many meals I would have to miss to cover the cost of an LX and a Limited lens...

So, any advice on successful bank robbery?


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## terri (Nov 22, 2006)

> So, any advice on successful bank robbery?


Yes - whatever happens, don't get caught.  

It's hard for me to say anything bad about that MZ-S, ZaphodB. It's not a cheap camera so when beginners are asking for recommendations I am hard pressed to offer it up as a realistic choice, even second-hand. It was considered their "flagship" SLR when it was introduced, and it's been flawless in performance, so easy to use, plus the glass is superb - I know I made a great choice, if maybe not the cheapest one. If you start reading up on it, it can make you drool!  

So far, yes, as a whole it's been my most expensive camera outfit to date. My Mamiya 645 would have beaten it out just a few years ago. Thank goodness digital is around - it makes great MF cameras so affordable. :mrgreen: I have my eyes on a 4x5 next. I aim to be well outfitted.


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## santino (Nov 23, 2006)

my Hasselbald 500CM with 80mm CF Planar and A12+A16 backs.


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## santino (Nov 28, 2006)

btw. there is a problem: I don't use my Hassy much (I just have one lens!). My pentacon is a set of 4 lenses and I use it much more often than the Hassy (besides 35mm of course). As mentioned above it wasn't cheap and I don't like it to lay around but it would be a sin to give it away. any advice?


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## Mitica100 (Nov 28, 2006)

santino said:
			
		

> ...and I don't like it to lay around but it would be a sin to give it away. any advice?


 
If you decide to give it away...   I want it...  

Hehe...

Well, there's the Ebay option or you can try to trade it together with the Hassy for something else.


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## nealjpage (Nov 28, 2006)

Mitica100 said:
			
		

> If you decide to give it away...   I want it...



I'll arm-wrestle you for it!


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## Mitica100 (Nov 28, 2006)

nealjpage said:
			
		

> I'll arm-wrestle you for it!


 
You're on! layball:  :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:


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## Torus34 (Nov 30, 2006)

Cost can be relative. 'Expensive' can be in terms of how much money you can afford. Lee Travino [the golfer] was asked, after dropping a putt on the 18th for a $50K first prize, whether he felt much pressure. His reply was that he didn't feel much, but that he felt real pressure when he was just breaking into the sport and bet $50 on a putt -- with just $25 in his wallet!

In that vein, my most expensive camera was a Minolta Autocord, purchased to provide enlargements with less grain than 35mm. I ate cheap for quite a while. Now I can buy whatever gear I wish. There's no pressure. Curiously, the most recently purchased rig, and one I'm most pleased with, is an Argus C-4 at $6.99. After a while, cost drops off the short list of importance.


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## mysteryscribe (Nov 30, 2006)

To go along with the story above my son in law who operates my business is always going on about all the things he had to buy to update the company.  I hear it and just smile, my wife never made a sound about it for over two years now.  Lately he says, "I don't see how you ran a successful studio with the equipment you used.

After he left my wife said to me.  "I want you to arrange to go shopping with him when you both have time.  I want you to buy the most expensive camera you ever wanted and write a check for it.  Then I want you to turn to him and say, I operated all those years like that because it's what I enjoyed doing, not because I couldn't buy something different.  You got to love a woman like that.... Even if she did hint that I should take it back the next day.

But the problem really  is that the most expensive camera I want right now is about thirty bucks and you cant get it here.  I want an argoflex 40.


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## Don Simon (Dec 1, 2006)

Torus34 said:
			
		

> my most expensive camera was a Minolta Autocord



And worth every penny!


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## Torus34 (Dec 3, 2006)

Up-date;

The Minolta, 50 years old, is still alive and well.  Ran some film through it a couple of months ago.  I had to re-stitch the case recently.

I wonder how many of today's rigs will still be working 50 years after their date of manufacture.


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## Mitica100 (Dec 3, 2006)

Torus34 said:
			
		

> I wonder how many of today's rigs will still be working 50 years after their date of manufacture.


 
Oh, quite a few! I have a few cameras from around 1911 that are still immaculate and still work perfectly. Of course, they are much simpler, mechanically speaking. I also shoot with a 1939 Leica RF, still in great shape after almost 70 years of service. There were no plastic materials then to substitute for the metal.   Up to around 1965-1970, a lot of cameras were made to last, save for the amateur level (bakelite body, meniscus lens, simple shutter). Now it's a different story, your dig. camera gets 'updating' every 3-5 years, like the computers, newer models with more bells and whistles. Sometimes we forget that photographers like Cartier Bresson et al used to work with RFs and much-simpler-than-today cameras. 

Oops... didn't mean to start something else here...


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## mysteryscribe (Dec 3, 2006)

oh hell twist the thread everybody else does.  I went out to shoot a camera today with a 1920 something lens and realized that it was going to outlast me by decades.


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## Don Simon (Dec 3, 2006)

I'm not so sure today's cameras will last as long. It's not so much the build quality or materials that concern me, but simply the way the work, i.e. very few are designed to be fully mechanical, they're mostly electronic. To put it another way... there's more to go wrong!


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## terri (Dec 4, 2006)

ZaphodB said:
			
		

> I'm not so sure today's cameras will last as long. It's not so much the build quality or materials that concern me, but simply the way the work, i.e. very few are designed to be fully mechanical, they're mostly electronic. To put it another way... there's more to go wrong!


Exactly. Even sticking to film cams, I would wager my Mamiya 1000S will still be going strong long after my Pentax MZ-S sputters out. The Mamiya seems little more than a box camera, just with great optics and the ability to accept a metered prism viewfinder.  It's a tank! I fell for it for that very reason.


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## markc (Dec 4, 2006)

My most expensive was the 10D. For film, it was the EOS-5. Most of cameras have been rather cheap though, like trading my old Palm Pilot Personal for a YashicaMat EM, or $10 for an Agfa Brick, $12 for an Agfa Clack, a Holga, etc.


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