[Ed. note: This post has been amended to add a paragraph about the fate of Yashica and Contax cameras, just below the header "Some things are not meant to be."]
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I mentioned in Part II of this three-parter that I audited a physics class in optics at the University of Maryland around the time the Contax RTS II came out. The professor was fantastic; I remembered his name for years and wish I still could. He had worked out his demonstrations to a fare-thee-well, and he was very personable and told stories to boot. The class was a fabulous illustrated introduction to the subject. I ate it up.
Waiting for class to start one day—this would have been in '80 or '81, before motorized film advance was incorporated into camera bodies—two students who were camera aficionados got to talking about their fancy motor drives, accessories that not everybody owned in those days. A friendly argument developed, and both boys (because of course they were being boys, even if they were technically men) unlimbered their cameras from their camera bags and attached the motor drives. One said "go!", and the battle was on. At first it sounded like both shutters were firing in unison, but then the shutter sounds gradually got out of sync as one camera began pulling ahead of the other. They ran this competition several times, but the result was the same—one camera owner won and was exultant, and the other lost, and was dejected, and had to explain until class started why his motor drive was plenty fast enough and why it didn't matter at all that the other guy's had won.
And this is part of how cameras evolve: by fashion, by status, and however we boys are trained (by all our varied influences) to "compete" with each other via our purchased possessions. Yes, it's all silly as hell, but we do it, and that can't be denied.
For a while, in the period we are talking about, the later '70s to the middle '80s, when I was in photography school and first teaching, the opposite held true for short, undefined periods as well, because pros resisted change. Pros resisted built-in metering, and then autoexposure—in both cases because they, and dedicated enthusiasts as well, had worked to understand what was happening with exposure, had learned how to use the tools as they existed, and saw not liberation but rather restriction in the advent of these various technical aids, which were for amateurs and neophytes. If not fools.
In 1982, at the time the RTS II was introduced on the market, it was, vaguely speaking, near the end of a period when a top autoexposure camera was expected to be either shutter priority or aperture priority—not both. The reason for that was that pros and advanced amateurs had already worked out their own ways of using match-needle cameras, and were in the habit of either choosing their shutter-speed first and then adjusting their aperture until the needle matched, or choosing their aperture first and then adjusting the shutter speed. They wanted their autoexposure, if they wanted autoexposure at all, to fit their already-established ways of working. With the most popular enthusiast camera of the era, Canon's AE-1 (1976–84), there were actually different variant models with different kinds of autoexposure baked into each: the AE-1 itself was shutter-priority; the nearly identical AT-1, which was made for export and wasn't even sold in Japan, was manual, with a meter but no autoexposure; the AV-1 was the same camera as the AE-1 but with aperture-priority autoexposure; and the AE-1 Program—which came out in 1981, just before our RTS II—added to the AE-1 the Program mode of the revolutionary but high-priced A-1, which had come out in 1978. (Few things were more divisive among Photo-Dawgs than Program mode in those days!) There were a few other brands as well which for a brief (but, again, only vaguely defined) period of years were associated with one kind of autoexposure or another: Konica, for instance, was a shutter-priority company.
A similar situation existed with regard to metering patterns. The famous Pentax Spotmatic was so named because it was originally intended to have spot-metering capability. It never actually did—it turned out the technology was not quite ready for prime time, and Pentax went ahead without it, but kept the name. But spot metering had become a thing by the early '80s, even though a lot of amateurs weren't quite sure how to use it. It reached its apex in the Olympus OM-4 of 1983. Also appearing in 1983 was the revolutionary Nikon FA, which featured evaluative metering, which Nikon called "Matrix" metering. Again, this was resisted by initiates, at first, and detested by pros, who considered it to be not only amateur nonsense for photographers who couldn't set their cameras, but also automation that took control away from them. If the camera was taking multiple exposure readings, processing them, and setting itself based on its secret mystical formulas, how the hell were you supposed to know what it was doing? The answer was, you didn't.
Commandability
This gets at an aspect of machines and devices I might call "commandability." That's when a device does what you tell it to rather than acting on its own to "help" without your input. I'll give you one example, as if you can't come up with many of your own. My iPhone has a switch on the side that used to turn it on and off. When I wanted it to be on, I turned it on. When I wanted it off, I turned it off. Simple, right? Straightforward. I got along well with this system; I grok the concept, and I am actually capable of pushing the switch. The switch served my wishes. It was at my command.
Well, at some point, my iPhone updated its operating system (on its own), and one of the numerous changes it adopted is that the iPhone and I no longer shared our old understanding vis-a-vis the on-off switch. The infernal thing now feels it should turn itself on and off. I pick up the iPhone, meaning to turn it on, but, instead, I turn it off—because it, attempting to anticipate my intentions, has turned itself on before I press the button. Then I try to do whatever I wanted to do with it, I discover it is off, curse floridly, and press the on-off button a second time, which turns it on. I never know whether the goddamned thing is off or on. Riding around in my top pocket it sometimes thinks I'm picking it up, and I look down to discover that it is on. The number of times when I want it to be in the opposite state of the state it's in have gone from zero to too many—"too many" being defined as one or more.
This nutty propensity has gotten completely out of hand in the modern world. Dumb machines are forever doing what they think you might want them to do—as if they could know. My sad fate is that I like being the one in command. That's my pleasure, and that's my preference. Every time any modern gizmo takes that away from me, I become just that much less happy*.
Don't get me started on self-driving cars and driving aids.
Gee-whiz gimcrackery, by Jack
Anyway, during that time period, the period when autoexposure and fancy metering patterns were coming along, it was initially assumed that professional cameras—the best cameras—would be conservative about adopting those newfangled helper technologies and aids for the uninitiated. For the very sound reason that seasoned and experienced photographers already knew what they were doing and didn't need the camera itself to help. So the Nikon F3, easily the leading pro 35mm camera, had only aperture-priority autoexposure, and offered only traditional centerweighted metering.
The RTS II followed suit.
But of course, those tiresome boys with their toys were still lurking in the background, ready to open their fat wallets, and they liked all the new tech. So the later '80s saw a proliferation of do-it-for-you new tech that's still with us today, changes that by the early '90s included "plastic" (i.e., polycarbonate**) cameras that were highly electronic and did all kinds of things to "help," including focusing for us, which was also resisted at first by those who had never known that they had any trouble at all focusing.
So my argument here is this: the pro cameras of the early '80s—the Nikon F3, Pentax LX, Canon New F-1, Leica R4, and Contax RTS II—were all supposed to be cutting edge when they were introduced because they all introduced electronics and incorporated carefully selected mixes of the latest features, and reviews of all those ancient cameras even today still tout all those then-new features—but actually that is not their significance at all any more. Actually their significance now is that they were the last flowering of a period in which simplicity was valued, the photographer's knowledge and judgement rather than technical helper aids were supposed to be in control, and the technical features were supposed to stay out of the way and not do anything to confuse the camera operator.
I guess I have to walk back my comment from Friday about the RTS II's viewfinder being perfect. After using it for a bit I was reminded that the eye relief is a little too short—not for nothing did the F3's "High-Eyepoint" finder, which offered a smaller magnification but greater than eye relief, become a popular selling point. But the RTS II is still a camera that embodies those values that held sway in that brief golden hour when everything that was best about the "MMM" era (a term I coined, by the way, meaning "manual, metal, mechanical" in any order) was still being refined, but electronics were also being added sparingly and judiciously to help where they made sense, albeit not a way that was intrusive or confusing.
The situation changed quickly, and we're still in it, although I am firmly of the conviction that the "boys with their toys" have painted the ILC (interchangeable-lens camera) industry into a pretty dark corner. Cameras are just too damned complicated for newcomers to ever have a hope of understanding or mastering them—or even of detecting the basic concepts that are now well buried beneath many thick layers of obfuscation. But that would be a digression. Things changed radically by 1990, driven not by what was best but by fashion, feature-competition (more modes! More complicated metering! Higher top shutter speeds and sync speeds! Accessories for every conceivable purpose! Weird lenses in the system that everybody said they wanted but nobody bought! Wheeee!), and status.
Mike's verdict
And what of the RTS II? I promised you my unvarnished opinion. Gotta say I've always come away thinking it's a bit of a near miss, despite its awesomeness and beauty. The fault can probably be put at the feet of Porsche Design. Despite the supreme logic of its control layout, which is very shrewdly judged, I don't really find it that comfortable to hold and use. The beautiful zero-clutter finder requires you to jam your eye a bit too close in to see everything comfortably at once, that lovely meter-switch-plus-AE-lock collar is just too close to the right-hand end of the camera body to fall to hand naturally, and all that fastidiously engineered and carefully manufactured premium metal makes the little brick weigh too much for its size—about 4 1/2 ounces more than a Pentax LX, which itself, to be truly perfect, would be a tad lighter. I also have a vintage LX here, and the Pentax, with its handgrip, simply feels better. More comfortable and more natural.
So would I recommend the RTS II for film shooters today? Yes and no. Those simple electronics are robust, but they're at least 33 and possibly as much as 41 years old. Repair places are thin on the ground—I emailed several alleged Contax repairpeople, asking if they would exchange a phone conversation about the RTS II for a mention in this article, and didn't hear a peep back from any of them. And the famous Contax/Yashica lenses, for some reason, whether made in Germany or made in Japan, are quite expensive, not to mention that some of them are on the rare side now and the selection is limited.
Oh, but one good thing—I forgot to mention it on Friday. The RTS II takes a battery that's still common and easy to find, a 6-volt alkaline 4LR44 or equivalent. Always check to see what batteries are needed when buying an old camera! If you need diopters, some Canon diopters, which are easier to find, can be pressed into service, or so I hear.
But as a camera, considered in isolation, the bottom line is that the real joy of the RTS II, in retrospect, is not in the features it introduced, but in its simplicity and straightforwardness combined with high quality. It does only a few things, does them in a commendably commandable manner, and stays the hell out of the way while we're engaged in whatever we're engaged in. It wouldn't dare put a blanket of symbols and blinkies over my view through the finder; in fact the starkly plain finder, which is so easy to focus through, is a beautiful revelation now. The RTS II doesn't turn itself off or on (there's a very stout dedicated switch for that, which never confuses off for on or on for off); it never focuses itself on the wrong thing, never tells me in the finder what aperture I have set unless I ask it to, doesn't offer me modes or metering I don't thoroughly understand, etc. And all that, in today's world, is both rare and nice. Add a relatively petite Carl Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.4 Planar to this body (petite compared to the monstrous fast 50mms of today) and you'll experience how manual focus works when it works best, and understand what cameras of that era really were and why they were special.
Verdict? It's a nifty old thing. But, since I'll never shoot film again, for me it's "surplus to requirements" as my friend Nick puts it. It's a nice option for those with the discrimination to appreciate its felicities, it elegance and its build quality (it's certainly more deluxe than the Minolta-based Leica SLRs of the period). But it's not ideal. I'll do another post someday about the film cameras I'd recommend most strongly for people who want to shoot film in 2023.
Some things are not meant to be
In 1983, only one year after the RTS II came out, Yashica was bought out by Kyocera Corp., the former Kyoto Ceramic Company Limited, a Japanese multinational high-tech and electronics conglomerate. Within only a few years, Kyocera ended production of most of the higher-level Yashica TLRs and SLRs to concentrate on the Contax models. They made some wonderful cameras over the next two decades, including the G-series rangefinder-style compact models, the deluxe RX, the compact Aria, and the lovely and impressive 645. The original C/Y lenses were designed by Zeiss with manufacture shared between Zeiss and Tomioka, Yashica's optical division, and as time went on Tomioka made more and more of the lenses, causing a bit of awkwardness because certain purchasers were chauvinistic about German-made lenses over Japanese-made ones.
There was also, unfortunately, a string of high-profile failures. Contax got into a fight with Zeiss when Zeiss refused to make autofocus lenses for the C/Y mount, which resulted in one of the more amazing one-off cameras ever made, the Contax AX, which used manual-focus lenses and actually moved the entire film plane in order to autofocus. It worked beautifully, although it was a big, thick, bulbous camera body. It could focus non-macro lenses into the macro range. Way too late, Kyocera did finally bring a couple of conventional AF SLRs to market, the N-series, but the new cameras used a completely new lensmount that was incompatible with all the older Zeiss-branded manual-focus lenses, which were pretty much the reason why people bought into the Contax marque in the first place. Rumor had it, too, that the 645 had been terrifically expensive to develop. The company finally bit off more than it could chew with the six-megapixel N Digital, which nevertheless gets the credit for being the first-ever full-frame digital SLR. It was announced in 2000, didn't come to market until 2002 after a number of awkward delays, and had to be withdrawn within a year. The star-crossed N Digital imbroglio was apparently the last straw for Kyocera, which ceased production of cameras in 2005. CONTAX as a cameramaker had lasted 30 years.
My own RTS II, I'm sorry to say, was stolen shortly after I got it, from the art teachers' faculty office at the high school where I taught photography. I shot a whole lot when I was student, but hardly at all once I started teaching. So I barely used it, really. Although my memory is vague on this point, I think the school's insurance company eventually sent me a check for my loss, and I used the money toward an Exakta 66, which at the time was the cheapest medium-format camera you could buy new. And of course I still had my trusty old Contax 139Q.
In 1988 I joined a professional studio, where the other three photographers all shared equipment in 35mm (Nikon) and medium format, and the unspoken assumption was that I would participate in the sharing of gear too. Not only did I want to be able to borrow their stuff, but I wanted to own some things that would be useful to them, as well. I contributed a Zeiss 150mm to the Hasselblad inventory even though I didn't own a Hasselblad camera, and I switched to Nikon. Collectively, we had a great deal of Nikon equipment, pretty much all that any of us ever needed. I bought a then-new F4s and replaced my Zeiss 35mm and 85mm manual-focus lenses with the Nikkor AF equivalents. (The photographer who owned the F3 called "Darth Vader" dubbed my F4s "Luke.") So that was the end of the road for me and Contax.
It's possible that the main reason I have such fond memories of the RTS II is because it's what I coveted when I was young and the world was new. That is to say, I'm being nostalgic and sentimental. That's possible, and I will concede the point. Years later, I re-bought another RTS II when I lived in Oak Park. Or maybe I just tried one out, borrowed from the local camera store. Whatever the reason was, I didn't have that one for long either. It seemed too old, and that was twenty years ago.
Now I have one yet again, sent to me in a box of old equipment donated by a kind reader who has great taste. That's the one in these pictures. Seems these old RTS II's just won't let me alone! Every now and again, I pick it up to look at it, play with it, and admire it. It's a nice old thing. It takes me down memory lane, like re-watching Annie Hall or American Grafitti yet again. And nothing wrong with that.
One thing's for sure: those were the days, and they don't make 'em like they used to.
Mike
*You can restore the "commandability" of the iPhone side switch by turning off Settings > Face ID and Passcodes > Attention Aware Features, and also Settings > Display and Brightness > Raise to Wake.
**Actually, polycarbonate was the secret to the AE-1's success too—the reason it was so cheap but generated so much profit was because the top plate, the most expensive part of a metal camera to manufacture, was actually cleverly disguised, plated plastic.
Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
Brian O'Connor: "I have used Yashica/Contax for 40 years now. I love the RTS II, but it has interchangeable focusing screens and the one I have is a micro-prism, not split-screen. My 62-year-old eyes have problems with that. The split-screen replacement FS2/3 screens are available, but hard to find...and the RTS versions don't fit the RTS II. I have purchased them online twice now, only to find a micro-prism screen in the box. I.e., people have replaced the micro-prism with the new split-screen and put the micro-prism in the split-screen box...sigh.... But the camera is great. Both that RTS and RTS II that I own needed a CLA to work properly. I would say I prefer the 159MM to either, but I would also shout out the Yashica FX-2. A robust mechanical Y/C lump that is great, and only needs a battery for the meter :-) .
"By the way, I like these retro series...."
Mark Sampson: "It's been enjoyable to re-live my own twenties with these posts. The photo magazines were full of the feature comparisons that were so important then, and I read them carefully. But I walked into a camera store in 1978, intending to buy a Nikon or Olympus, and instead came out with a 19-year-old Leica M3. I was otherwise broke, so I wasn't even in the camera feature game. Until 1984, when I was hired by Kodak as an industrial shooter and lab rat. My department used Nikons, so that's the way I went, when it was time to buy my own. And there I've stayed. But what was it that David Hume Kennerly told you, once?"
Mike replies: I too had to switch to Nikon, when I joined a professional studio with three other photographers who all shared equipment with each other and who expected me to participate in the sharing as well. All three of them shot Nikon for 35mm, so that was the end for me and Contax.
As for David Hume Kennerly, I ran into him walking across Rose Park, near 26th and P in D.C., when he was the unofficial photographer for President Ford and one of the most prominent and well-known members of the Washington press corps. Considering I was nothing but a raggedy young photo student, he spent a generous amount of time speaking to me. But when I asked him what kind of cameras he used, he got a bit worked up, and said, twice, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter."
Mark P Morris: "I had a Minolta XD-11 in the early '80s. It was a nice little camera. The Rokkor Files said that 'the XD11 was the world's first camera with aperture priority and shutter priority, as well as a fully metered manual mode.'"
Mike replies: It came out in 1977, just before the Canon A-1, and became the basis for the "middle" Leica R SLRs of the period, R4 through R7.
Tex Andrews: "Good reads. I think a lot of problems with devices—especially computers and their phone cousins—is that they are designed in what I'll call 'the engineering bubble.' This is the space in which all the engineers play and design things, without serious input from end users who are not engineers. Things work beautifully for those guys because, well, they effectively designed them for themselves.
"As to simplicity, while I love my current cameras greatly, and they are arguably the best photographic tools I've ever had, the most enjoyment I got using a camera was with a Fuji medium-format rangefinder and a Luna Pro meter. The meter forced me to assess the entire scene, all of the light in it, and I had the spot attachments to do spot readings for the Zone System, and the model I had was the one with a Zone scale on it. Just lovely. It made you slow down and think a spell. And the viewfinder in the camera was a crude rangefinder which I barely used because the ranging part was too small, so I just used it for framing, and zone focused. It was a very pleasant camera usage experience, and of course the 6x9 negs were wonderful. I was reminded about this listening to the latest YouTube video from Pentax about their new film camera project."
John Denniston: "Your comment about photographers resisting automation in cameras reminded me of a day sometime in the late 1990s when one of my staff photographers, Colin Price, was assigned to photograph someone sitting in the driver’s seat of a car outside on a sunny day. Tough shot, especially with the NC2000s we were using at the time—but not for Colin, who cut his teeth taking pictures like this in the 1950s with a Speed Graphic. Colin set up a small flash in the back seat, another in the foot well on the passenger’s side, and filled with a flash from the camera. He took the picture, gathered up the flashes and was about to leave when he stopped, saying, 'I want to take one more,' and pulled out one of the just-introduced small point-and-shoot digitals from his pocket; a camera he picked up to take family snaps. He put the dial to 'P' took one quick shot and left.
"Back at the office while he was processing his pictures he called me over. 'You should look at this.' He pulled up the picture taken with the NC2000. 'Good picture,' I said. Then he pulled up the picture taken with the point and shoot. I looked at the picture, I turned my head and looked at Colin, Colin looked at me and then we both turned our heads back towards the monitor and sighed. It was better, a lot better, and we both knew what it meant. All our skills so carefully learned replaced by 'P' for professional."
Mike replies: And now people probably take better pictures with their iPhones! The baby pictures of my grandson that are arriving to me in a torrent from Illinois are excellent, despite often difficult lighting. Or what might have been difficult in the past.
Reminds me of a pro friend of mine who had a lot of strong skills, the best of which was probably his mastery of manual flashes, guide numbers and all that. Really came out at weddings, where all the amateurs and wannabe pros would fall down in difficult lighting situations and he would handle it with aplomb. Of course he used Nikon. Anyway I remember that when he first used my then-new Nikon N8008 and SB-24, c. 1988, he was morose. I think he realized right then that the days of his flash expertise being valuable in the marketplace were numbered.
It would be great to hear your thoughts on which film cameras people should use now, however the only problem I can see with that will be that will then increase there price as people rush to take your advice.
I was recently at King Charles coronation and was surprised at how many people I saw with film cameras and all of them were 40 or under. Us older photographers have fully embraced digital, but for some reason younger photographers want to use film. I suspect it is something along the line of wanting to experience the analog aspect of live and there is something tangible in film that is lacking with digital and especially with the rise of images made with word prompts via MidJourney and Dalle computer programs,
Posted by: Michael Wayne Plant | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 03:12 AM
Aaaah, thanks for the memories, Mike.... I worked at Ted's Camera Stores, Melbourne, Australia from 1973 till about 1984. Went through lust after most of those you mentioned, (except Contax.... we didn't have a good Contax presence here in Australia... they were here, but weren't main stream .) I knew about their superiority and advanced features, but only saw one relatively rarely. Bought an Olympus OM-1 in 1974 to replace my faithful Pentax SV and more -or-less stayed with Olympus till digital, graduating to repairing Olympus cameras after departing retail. Had a lot of WONDERFUL Zuiko lenses, and moved up to OM-2s, that's not OM-2S) but never OM-3 or 4s. During those halcyon days, each of our staff had favourites. I was the only OM boy. I sold more OM-1s than everyone else combined ( they also had the second best profit margin), by enthusing about their lightness and quiet operation; especially with the mirror lock up. It rivalled an M3 Leica in sound) I often pulled a rather sneaky trick when comparing any other 70s SLR in shutter sound.... I'd surreptitiously flick up the mirror up lever on the side of the lens mount and fire both shutters almost at the same time, and Olympus killed all opposition. Ooooooh, naughty, Bruce, but very rarely did we get anyone back to change the camera under our (revolutionary-at-the-time) 45 day bring it back for exchange policy. I knew they were getting a good camera. I now recognise that any of those fabulous MMM cameras of the day were wonderful. I had a soft spot for Minolta SRT 101s, and 303s... they were built like tanks, except for their complex TTL metering mechanism. The camera we all aspired to, but were put off by, was the Nikon F, then the F2 Photomic ... solid, heavy, reliable, photojournalist camera, but expensive, and lenses even more expensive. Then Canon burst on the scene with THE TANK. The Canon F1 was indestructible. But the lenses were also priced stratospherically. I remember being blown away by the release of their FD 24mm f 1.4... an unheard-of combination. And then came the 300mm f2.8. Wheeeooo. All manual focus, of course. I remember a conversation about future of cameras with a colleague. We all predicted exposure automation and motor drive, but no-one thought auto focus possible. Let alone digital. Aaah, the memories! ... the local rep gave us staff members a REALLY good deal on a Konica Autoreflex T , but I never warmed to it, possibly because the lenses were limited, complex, and expensive. Nowadays, I really do wonder where photography is going with AI, etc.
Posted by: Bruce Hedge | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 05:15 AM
Re: iPhone on/off ... for dummies says the following ...
"You may not want your iPhone turned on all the time. You can certainly turn the phone off, but you can also put it to sleep and keep it locked or unlocked."
The four modes of on/offness and sleep/awakeness are: Sleep, Wake, Locked (or Lock screen) and Unlocked.
Dummies.com
The only time I ever turn my phone off (really off) is before getting on an airplane.
Posted by: Speed | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:25 AM
Speaking of heavy cameras, let us not forget the Contarex Bullseye. In 1983 I bought one from my 80-year-old neighbor. He had bought it after discovering that all his slides from a Grand Canyon trip were blank due to his failure to remove the lens cap on his new Leica M4. I was smitten by the Zeiss propaganda. After several months of shouldering the Contarex weight I sold it, and bought a new Minolta CLE.
Posted by: Allan Ostling | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:47 AM
Y'all might like the "I Dream of Cameras" podcast. Hosted by writers and film camera collectors Jeff Greenstein and Gabe Sachs, from shows like Will and Grace and Freaks&Geeks and several others. Entertaining, GAS-creating episodes.
Posted by: Mark Bridgers | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 10:08 AM
What they did to the iPhone was remove the "home button" at the bottom of the phone, that let you always get back to the home screen.
In the newer phones where you "unlock" the phone with your face you instead swipe up from the bottom of the phone to get this to happen.
But, holding down the home button also used to activate the "talk to the phone and ask it questions" function. So where to move that? The only choice was to put it on the side button ... so where you used to hold that side button down to get the "turn me off" UI, now you get the "talk to me" UI ...
So to shut the phone off using the buttons you have to hold the side button _and_ one of the volume buttons on the other side of the phone.
Which is annoying.
It is arguable that removing the home button was possibly the worst UI decision Apple ever made with the iOS devices. But people don't seem to care enough to make a stink about it.
As for cameras ... I have never been all that attached to the standard top deck camera controls from the 70s that everyone seems to have so much nostalgia for. Those dials are hard to use and hard to see when you are looking through the viewfinder. The anonymous front and back electronic dials in more modern computerized cameras work a lot better.
But you are right that the rest of the interface is a complex hodge podge of 58,000 menu settings that are not put together with any particular kind of care, because they are all implemented by different contract software firms. I just set up one set of settings that work OK for me and then shoot away on P or A after making sure the camera is doing mostly the right thing.
Posted by: psu | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 10:39 AM
This has been a good read.
I found that after entering the digital domain, nostalgia was not what it used to be. My MMM cameras just didn't give me that warm fuzzy feeling anymore.
Now when shooting film, I am happily using cameras from the "APE" era (a term I coined, by the way, meaning "automatic, polycarbonate, electronic" in that order). Not a single roll of film has ever complained about being called to duty in a less than classic camera and no one has said that my pictures would look better if the film had been vacuum sucked into submission.
I only wish that the menus and the manuals could be as simple as the MMM era.
Posted by: Grant | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 01:40 PM
After I got my photographer's feet wet on an AE-1, I acquired an F3HP. The F3 showed my preference for aperture priority if I had a choice. Unsurprisingly, my Fuji APS-C cameras haptics are the closest I have found to shooting a digital F3. Thanks for stirring up memories of my younger, hungry-for-learning photography days.
Posted by: darlene | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 02:22 PM
I can’t believe you’re the guy who coined the term MMM. I always thought it was Joe DiMaggio.
Posted by: Blind Paperboy | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 02:27 PM
Maybe some day we’ll have genius cameras that will know exactly what the photographer is looking for in a given image. The process of photography should be exclusively about the picture instead of fiddling with knobs and buttons.
Posted by: Jeff1000 | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 03:32 PM
...From a print ad in 1970: "The Minolta SRT-101 incorporates every single feature necessary to the success of the accomplished photographer", so something must have changed, perhaps the definition of "success" or "accomplished photographer" :-)
Posted by: Dan Boney | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 04:48 PM
At this point in my life, black and white film with an MMM is all I need. For the small amount I shoot (12-18 rolls a year) and some good 4X6 memories, it is the simplest and least expensive way to enjoy photography. I never found digital satisfying (from cameras to computers and software processing) no matter how hard I have tried. It is not for me. While I started my interest very late, it is fun to read about the MMM cameras I would have thoroughly enjoyed playing with if I had an inclination in those years long past.
Posted by: Paul | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 05:10 PM
Let’s say I want my camera to provide me the same shooting experience as the simple classics.
So I set my mirrorless camera to M mode and the focus to MF and the meter to CW Averaging, and leave them there.
I adjust the ISO away from 100 only when the lighting requires it.
I leave everything that way forever. I have a completely commandable, controllable, simple camera.
Posted by: Arg | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:07 PM
Reading about people having a preference for shutter priority and getting the needle to match, or aperture priority and doing the same - I'm reminded of the revelation of my (then) new Pentax K10D having TAv mode.
Which few if any other makes of cameras seem to have.
TAv mode is one where you can choose the SS and your Aperture and the camera automatically controls the ISO for correct exposure of the scene based on the metering mode you have chosen and the EV compensation you have dialled. Which is what I personally prefer in every situation.
Unless I'm behind the times? And this is no longer a "Pentax only" feature?
Posted by: Kye Wood | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:16 PM
PS:
Which is similar to going to Manual Mode and using Auto ISO on other makes of camera. But then you lose the ability to use exposure compensation.
Posted by: Kye Wood | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:19 PM
I've gone from being quite opposed to auto-exposure back in the 60s and 70s, to running my camera in 'P' mode a lot today.
But the difference isn't mostly in me, I don't think.
Today's sensors have more brightness range they'll handle than film did (especially, than slide film did), so in some situations precise exposure isn't vital any more. But an even bigger factor is that I'm seeing the image from the sensor in my viewfinder or rear screen (in addition to a histogram), so I can notice without paying a lot of attention if Program mode is doing something wonky, and either compensate, or just switch to manual.
With film, I never knew until it got out of the chemicals whether I had pictures or not; makes you more conservative!
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 06:53 PM
My view is that exposure automation is a complex solution to a non-problem; a problem that doesn't really exist. In turn, it de-skilled photographers into not knowing the basics of exposure.
Photographers became totally dependent on the through-lens meter, and, in particular, on the specific content of the viewfinder at that moment. Shift the camera slightly and the exposure given by the camera changes. How dumb is that?
Instead, pull out a tiny, lightweight incident meter (such as the Sekonic L-308S) and measure the incident light. From the spectrum of shutter speed and aperture alternatives it gives, select one that serves your intention and solves your 'situation problem' best, set it on the camera, and thereafter fire away on that single setting with abandon, knowing it's the best one, and without having to constantly monitor what the camera is doing lest the shutter speed drop below what you can hand-hold.
From the start, exposure automation was a way for camera manufacturers to claim some competitive advantage over other brands. I resent Nikon and Canon for convincing people that they needed the their latest camera, full of electronics, to take a decent photograph. Photographers became de-skilled and increasingly unfamiliar with the basics of exposure. Sunny 16, anyone? Photography became massively skewed around brands and novel features.
Posted by: Rod S. | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 08:59 PM
The results of exposure automation were often poorer than those you could get from an incident light meter.
How many times do we see photographs in which the faces of people are over-exposed? It's usually because they are wearing dark clothing and the in-built meter averaged the scene to mid-grey.
Or dark green forests turned into sickly olive-green?
Despite the claims from camera manufacturers, in-built camera meters are responsible for more poor exposures on film than you can poke a stick at.
The vast majority of photographers would be/have been better served by using a simple incident light meter, perhaps aided by a spotmeter for those times the light is out of reach. But the advertising from camera manufacturers assured everyone that their camera solved all the problems.
Posted by: Rod S. | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 09:24 PM
Re: Your three-part series about the Contax camera. Although I never used Contax cameras in my career I did have a colleague at the Kelowna Courier newspaper who had one and loved shooting with it, I don't recall the model but it looked similar to the RTS II that you posted pictures of. I always shot with Nikon from the very start of my career to the very end, even after going digital in 2002. I owned every top-of-the-line Nikon which include the F, F2, F3, F4, and finally the F5 and I owned some of the lesser ones, like the FM2 which was equally as good at getting the job done on assignment for this former photographer.
I started off at the weekly newspaper, The Goldstream Gazette in 1976 with a used Nikon F and two lenses, a 35mm and 105mm Nikkor, and a few months later with a 200mm Nikkor for shooting sports. By the time I left the paper after 2 1/2 years, I had two Nikon F2s (no motor drives) plus the same three lenses mentioned previously. You mentioned in one of your posts how few motor drives there were back in the day, and I never owned one until a few months after I arrived in Brampton, Ontario in the spring of 1979. I never even thought about a motor drive plus they were expensive. Also, I never owned anything wider than a 35mm lens, I added a 24mm Nikkor to my kit after arriving in Brampton. The only Nikon motor drive I could afford, a used one, was actually a motor winder with one or two frames per second, the real top-of-the-line Nikon motor drive (MD-1) could shoot up to 5 frames a second.
I used the Nikon F2s for a number of years and by the fall of 1983 I was working at Kelowna Courier. When the Nikon F3 came out I bought two of them, one with a motor drive. I actually preferred the F2 to the F3 as I liked the purely mechanical F2. The F3 on its own with no motor drive ran on a couple of button-cell batteries and they didn't last very long, otherwise with the motor drive attached the F3 camera used the batteries from the motor drive to power the camera. From there I used a succession of Nikon FM models including the FM2. I eventually went back to the Nikon F4 when that came out, I bought a used one, but it was heavy! way too heavy for my liking. Around 2001 I bought a Nikon F5, probably my favorite camera, I bought it brand new and it cost me over $3000 (CDN) It was a beautiful handling camera and a joy to use. Then in late 2002, the newspaper switched to digital and they bought the photo staff (all two of us) Nikon DH1 cameras with zoom lenses, the first time I used zoom lenses.
I did steer off track for a little bit with my devotion to Nikon cameras, while I was working in Brampton in the 1980s I used a Leica rangefinder system with two Leica M4p cameras, I had a 21mm, 35mm Summicron and a 90mm Summicron, It didn't work out that well as I still had to carry around one of my Nikon bodies for the telephoto lenses, a 200mm and 300mm for shooting sports so three camera bodies in total. After about six months I switched back to an all Nikon system, it worked far better and my work improved. One of the things back then was the rangefinder vs SLR system, but most photographers by the 1980s were using SLR-style cameras.
Posted by: Gary Nylander | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 11:56 PM
What was it, Mike, that special about the meter in the LX? I seem to remember it had a design that made it significantly more advanced than its contemporaries.
Posted by: Peter, in Boulder | Monday, 15 May 2023 at 11:57 PM
I was a Canon man for my whole film-shooting career. My father gave me an AE-1P when I was 12. My favorite to use was the New F-1 with plain, match-needle metering — that was a solid camera! And I still have an A-1 with 50mm f/1.2 L lens on my desk for nostalgic fondling.
Posted by: Ari | Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 01:37 AM
There is a fascinating tension between metering (and thinking about the exposure) for every shot, and working fast enough to keep up with fast-moving events. (If you only photograph slow things, obviously you don't have much of this problem!)
If you're standing in a room with a hundred people, and have just finished taking 3 shots of a couple dancing interestingly, what do you see? You see whatever was behind you, which is a whole new set of photographic possibilities. Also the lighting is completely different. And you're behind the curve, since you were just concentrating on what was on the other side of you. Now you have to catch up with what was behind you, and getting that first shot as fast as possible can be critical. (Or not; often what was behind you isn't interesting. But every now and then it is. Heck, lots of times what was in front of you wasn't interesting either.)
Come to think of it, this exposure approach issue is centered in the transition from the "typical" photographer people admire being a photojournalist (ideally one working for LIFE of course) to paying more attention to art and commercial photographers. A studio photographer controls the light, and sometimes thinks in terms of tenths of f-stops while doing so. A landscape photographer probably doesn't control the light, and may have to wait hours for the light to come to him, but most of their subjects will sit still and wait for them to do so. A fashion photographer works with professional models who can "do it again" with great accuracy. The photojounalist, while of course they strive for technical excellence, must prioritize "getting the shot".
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 01:53 PM
I'm finding these articles very interesting. These cameras are a wee bit before my time, but I find the history and your personal experiences fascinating.
Posted by: Dillan | Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 05:27 PM
The RTS II is the pick of the RTS series and also the most reliable in. my experience.
The first gen RTS lacked a proper metering preview switch - I've always preferred the Slightly stripped down Yashica version - the FR-I over the original RTS for that reason.
The RTS III is a very different, modern style camera, huge and with some odd omissions. Arguably the only reason to use one today is if you want to balance up something like the Zeiss 35-135 or a big telephoto like the 180/2.8 or above.
Personally I prefer using the smaller 159MM which has more functionality than an RTSII in a smaller package. Albeit no user interchangeable screens, something that I for one, have always found important. As an architect I often make use of a gridded screen to check horizontal and vertical alignment. There was an option to have a grid screen fitted to the 159 and I'm still looking for a used one that has this...
Posted by: barry reid | Wednesday, 17 May 2023 at 06:36 AM
This story and the comments aren’t even marginally about AI advances, but they’re also completely about AI advances.
Posted by: Yoshi Carroll | Wednesday, 17 May 2023 at 02:03 PM
Instead of just fondling that RTS II why don't you actually put some film in it and take some pictures. You could write about the process, how it felt using the RTS to create images and then show us some images. Could be interesting.
Posted by: Eric Rose | Thursday, 18 May 2023 at 12:03 AM
I don't get it. You have the RTSII (and a bunch of other film cameras). You have the historical expertise. You often write about the history of photography. But then you say you'll never use film again. ???? I bet plenty of your readers would love to see the results of your using one of these high-end cameras from the 1980s and 1990s. And you might attract younger photographers.
[I meant I’ll never use it consistently again. As in, commit to it. I have no objection to shooting a little from time to time! —Mike]
Posted by: Kodachromeguy | Thursday, 18 May 2023 at 07:10 PM
A little late on the reply, but as I sit here, on the table next to me is my Nikon N90S with an older AI'd Nikkor SC Auto 50/1.4 mounted and a roll of Cinestill Double X loaded (a roll of Kodak Ektar and a roll of Ilford XP2 Super are in the loops of the hippy strap). I recently moved back to Eau Claire and found there was a reasonably priced lab here for processing/scanning both C-41 & conventional B&W film so I've begun shooing it again. It's a slower, more careful, process than digital these days rather akin to large format LOL!
I'm hardly going to give up my Nikon D7100 much less my Leica M 240 (may well add a D700 yet this summer ;) (my emoticon for this post)) but it's nice to have the tactile feel of the occasional roll of film. I think that we agree on that "from time to time" idea.
Posted by: William Lewis | Friday, 19 May 2023 at 10:34 PM