I won’t be able to make the Puget Sound camera show in Kent, Washington next month due to other obligations, so when I woke up feeling under the weather this morning there was no way I was going to miss the much smaller yearly Portland, Oregon camera show. Somehow I pushed my body and made it down to the armory, where it’s held, and spent the next hour in absolute heaven checking out cameras both known and unknown to me. Unlike last year, when I only had a handful of cameras to my name, this time around I spotted quite a few that I already own and use. I went in with a limited budget, hoping to find an old box camera I saw last year in Kent, but instead stumbled upon these beautiful specimens. I don’t know if the little Yashica spy camera works (much less if there’s anyone that makes film for them anymore), but at $20 it was a steal and worth adding to my now respectable collection. The Exa, a little 35mm camera made in Dresden, Germany just after World War II, was immediately put to use after purchase. And finally there’s the Nikon F4, one of the only Nikon F series cameras I didn’t own. I wasn’t planning on purchasing one. They’re not exactly cheap and frankly, compared to the F3 and F5 cameras they’re sort of a “missing link” clumsy monkey that fits squarely between Nikon’s manual line and their auto focus cameras, and given my love for both the F3 and F5 I wasn’t exactly in the market. Three things swayed me. First, the camera was literally in mint condition and hadn’t appeared to ever have been used, much less taken out of the box, since it was made in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Second, the man I purchased it from had originally gotten it from Paul RyBolt (who I later learned was there today) of The Camerosity Podcast fame–and I didn’t want to pass up owning a camera that had been in the hands of one of my favourite podcasters! Last but not least, there was a notable gap between the F3 and F5 on the display shelf. My gods she is a beautiful piece of Nikon history!
Someday the F6 will be mine, oh she will be mine!
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