The only camera I’m allowed to own

…ok, so the title is a bit misleading – I’m a grown man, I can own as many cameras as my wife says I can. What I’m taking about here is the hypothetical ‘if’; if I absolutely had to, gun to my head sort of scenario, get rid of all but one of my modest collection of cameras – which one would I save? In the spirit of internet clickbait, the answer may surprise you….

But first – some context

I’ve been fortunate enough to own quite a few cameras over my roughly 40 years (yikes!) of taking photos. This was helped a lot in my younger days by having a job straight out of school working in a camera shop, which gave me access to a vast network of used cameras that could be purchased with a generous discount (particularly if Steve The Assistant Manager was working out the price, as he was notoriously bad at it and almost always under-priced the gear). I variously owned Olympus OM1/2/3/4, Pentax MX & K1000, Minolta 7000 & 9000, various Canon EOS models etc., but while the salary for a humble camera salesman didn’t stretch to anything too premium or exotic, I could still enjoy the temporary use of almost anything else by virtue of being able to borrow whatever I wanted to over the weekends.
However, after a decade and a half of talking about cameras all day every day I got rather sick of the sight of them, so I left that job and sold almost all my gear (the K1000 – which I’d paid £5 for in the late 90s – survived the cull but found itself abandoned in a drawer). Happily it wasn’t very many years before I started feeling the itch to take photos again, so for my 40th birthday I treated myself to a Canon EOS 450D and began a decade in the digital wilderness. Like a lot of folks, I eventually found that unfulfilling (despite trading up to better models) and I didn’t like the images I was getting – nothing technically wrong with them, they were just uninspiring. I didn’t realise it at the time but of course it wasn’t the camera, it was me – I’d delegated all responsibility to the microprocessors and subconsciously removed myself from the process.

Hang in there, I’m getting to the point…

Honestly I don’t remember what specifically made me decide to try film again. I had hauled the old battleaxe K1000 out of its drawer in about 2015 and quite enjoyed using it, but then put it back for another 6 or 7 years. But somewhere around 2022, after everybody’s worlds had been turned upside down but were starting to regain some semblance of normality, I decided to revisit film photography and this time, now being a middle-aged man with lots more disposable income than I’d had in my twenties, I thought I might try some of the cameras I would’ve liked back then but couldn’t afford. Cue turbocharged GAS and an unhealthy eBay habit for the next couple of years. I gradually acquired a pair of Minolta XD7s (very underrated camera), an XDs (same thing), and X500, and a fleet of period correct Rokkors to go with them. I bought a Yashica Mat TLR. I tried a Fed-2 rangefinder. All great cameras – but not quite right.

Cue the second wave of GAS. The Minoltas gave way to Nikons – first, an FM2n, then a dirt cheap FM (£40) with a broken meter, an FE, another FM2 (not-n) and an F3. The Yashica was replaced by a Mamiya C220. The Fed was joined by a Canon P, then a Canon VI-L then a Leica M3, and an M2. Then I sold the Leicas, regretted it, bought both back, sold them again…. stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

Eventually, I’ve ended up here: M6 Classic & M4-P, the 2 Canons, all the Nikons bar the F3, the Mamiya and another Yashica Mat because the Mamiya is just too damned HEAVY sometimes!! The K1000 also persists, but it’s back in its drawer and has been joined by the equally unused Fed. From that list, it’s probably pretty obvious which camera I’d keep, right?

Except you’re wrong.

The M6 is, of course, the darling of YouTube and Instagram, and to be fair it’s… ok. But honestly it can’t hold a candle to the M4-P. That’s probably a topic for another post but the TL;DR here is it feels comparatively cheap and nasty. It’s neither of those things, of course, but it’s just nowhere near as lovely as the M4-P. So I’d keep that one then?

Actually, still no.

I love my M4-P. I really do. I love rangefinder focusing, I love the soft ‘snick’ of releasing the shutter, I love just sitting there with it unloaded sometimes and repeatedly winding it on and firing it, and I love the tiny Voigtlander Color-Skopar lenses I have for it… but it’s too limiting for (some of) the things I like to photograph. Sometimes I just need the precision framing, closer focus, and depth-of-field visibility of an SLR (not to mention ease of use of polarising filters). FM2n then? Nope. James Tocchio at Casual Photophile wrote a great article about his search for the Leica M of SLRs, and he came tantalisingly close to finding it (in my opinion) but nevertheless hadn’t by the end of his piece. He dismissed the FM3a – which I’ve never used but I imagine it feels much the same as an FM2 – because, in his words, it ‘feels a little hollow’. I actually agree with that, based on my experience with my 2 FM2s. If only James had gone slightly further back in time, because my choice of forever camera would be (drum roll)… the original FM. Yes, even specifically my one with the broken meter. What?? Let me explain.

I’m not fussed about using a meter most of the time. I can Sunny-16 my way though most situations and have a plethora of hand held or shoe-mountable meters for when I can’t. And in my view, the lack of a meter isn’t the only thing (my) FM has in common with the best Leicas. It has practically the same spec, certainly the same shutter speed range, but with better flash sync. Not that I use flash (shut up). It’s smooth – smoother than the FM2s, for sure, even if not *quite* Leica smooth (but close enough for me). It’s easier to load too, at least for someone who is historically more accustomed to SLRs anyway (not that I’ve ever struggled with the M4-P). The build quality feels quite Leica-ish to me, and it certainly feels better made than its successors. To address James’ point, it doesn’t feel ‘hollow’. I don’t know if Nikon used thinner brass for the later models but there’s a solidity to the FM which the FM2s just don’t seem to have to the same degree; a particular irritation is the back door release collar around the rewind crank, which is rattly plastic on the FM2s – it’s solid and metal on the original FM.

Plus of course, even without a functioning meter I can still enjoy the incredibly useful ability to see what the current shutter speed and aperture are from within the viewfinder. And for that matter, while I’m peering in there I can easily adjust the shutter speed dial with a fingertip, which I cannot do with the M4-P’s tiny dial (I kinda can with the plastic dial of the M6 but it’s not as easy as with the Nikon). It’s even better looking than the FM2s, lacking as it does the model name splashed across the front, and the shutter / mirror mechanism sounds and feels better damped, quieter and less ‘clacky’. In fact it’s really rather pleasant sounding, a trait it shares with the FE.

And it’s compact. Truthfully it’s really not much bigger than an M with a fast-ish lens on the front – I did own a Nokton 50mm f1.5 (LTM) until recently, and when mounted that makes for a package that’s really not significantly smaller than the FM with its Nikkor equivalent on the front.

In this imaginary scenario where I can only keep one camera, I would certainly miss some of the features of the other cameras, probably the rangefinder focussing system most of all, but on a pros and cons tickbox basis and allowing for a little bit of impractical, emotional irrationality around how nice a camera looks and feels, the FM is a clear winner for me (and it doesn’t hurt that it cost me 1/35th the price of the M4-P). Luckily my wife says I’ve been a good boy so I don’t have to get rid of anything (yet)…

Thanks for reading!

https://the.fotoapp.co/keith_not_kevin
@keithnotkevin.bsky.social

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