Johnny Martyr’s Five Favorite Cameras

by Johnny Martyr

All the coolest film photography and camera bloggers are posting their “Five Dead Hand Cameras” – five cameras we’d have to pry from their cold dead hands, as the saying goes. One camera for each finger (that’s a hell of a grip!).

I don’t mind riding these guys coattails and talking a little bit about my five favorite film cameras. For those of you who’ve been following my posts for some time, you probably know most of my list. But maybe it’s worth explaining why you keep hearing about these same cameras over and over again. For new readers, thanks for joining, here’s a great starting point!

And even if you get tired of my rambling, I’ll list links to everyone else’s dead hand camera blogs at the end!

Leica M6 TTL 0.85 – I’ll get the most obvious one out of the way. I’ve been using a 1999 black chrome Leica M6 TTL with 0.85x and upgraded flare free viewfinder for over a decade. And a couple years back, I added a second camera of the same spec to my arsenal which belonged to a good buddy and colleague.

Of what presence I’ve ever had on social media, part of the reason that I got it is because of a satirical blog that I wrote about my love for these cameras. It was picked up by Petapixel and caused some controversy as Leica often does. Social media shit storms aside, many of the most important gigs I’ve covered over my photographic career were committed to emulsion with an M6.

I use Leica M6 TTL .85 cameras because I believe they are the fastest, most accurate and intuitive Leica M bodies ever produced. And that is NOT hyperbole.

My Leicas are not shelf queens or mid-life crisis tokens. I don’t care about their resale value and they are not adorned with stupid accessories. The only brassing and wear they exhibit was put there with exhausting work, not sandpaper. These cameras carry the storied scars of my photographic history – memories with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dave Burnett, Louise Post, Ted Cruz, Nikki Glaser, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and of course, my friends and family.

The 1930 – Affectionately nicknamed The 1930, my 1930 Leica I/III has been special to me since the day that my favorite camera repair technician put it in my hands and said “I think I have something you’ll like.”

Though I’d owned other Barnack Leicas before The 1930, something about it’s history, it’s classic photojournalist patina and smoothness of operation just made me fall for it like no other camera I’ve handled.

It’s not nearly as fast as my M6’s of course, but it’s no grandpa either! Because of it’s diminutive size and being pleasure to use, The 1930 quickly became my daily driver, a stream of consciousness camera.

Surprising to some, I’ve also shot a few weddings with it that I’m really proud of doing so. It’s also helped me create unexpected fireworks art, has traveled to Paris and is always documenting the lives of my children.

Nikon FM2n – Everyone seems to shine a light on my use of Leica cameras but when I appeared as a guest on Embrace The Grain and Camerosity, the hosts wanted to talk about how Nikon fits into my ecosystem.

I’ve been shooting the Nikon FM series almost since I got into paid photography in the early 2000s and have whittled my way down to two black FM2n bodies that have also seen their share of important shoots with Sonia Shah, Ralph Nader, Matt & Kim, and innumerable weddings.

As Mike Eckman says, the Nikon FM2n is pretty much the perfect 35mm SLR. It’s very compact and has all the basic features of every treasured manual camera, and then some. Like the Leica M6 TTL, the FM2n is a low light machine, thanks to its super bright viewscreen and easily read three LED meter display. I really can’t think of a decisively better all around 35mm SLR!

Nikon F2sb – As much as I love my Nikon FM2ns, I’m also a Nikkormat fan. And the FM series just don’t have that old world, hewn from a single chunk of metal feel. The FM2n also has a number of common weak points, due in part to Nikon’s use of plastic where once there was steel, brass or aluminum.

To quench my urge for an apocalypse surviving F series body, I picked up a nicely brassed but recently serviced F2sb from B&H over ten years ago. Needless to say, this camera ended my search for any other SLR cameras.

The F2sb features the least common of all F2 heads, the DP-3. It was sold concurrently with the F2as and its DP-12 head. Both models contain a three LED display just like my FM2n and Leica M6 TTL, which is perfect for fast, intuitive, low light work. What’s unique about the DP-3 head is that it allows use of legacy pre-AI lenses with metering. The F2as and my FM2n’s cannot do this.

I enjoy having a vastly capable and customizable body on which to mount my favorite vintage lenses without having to get them AI’d. And frankly, the Nikon Shuffle is a cool dance move that every photographer ought to know!

Nikon F2 bodies were the last hand-crafted cameras that Nikon produced, as well as the last fully manual/mechanical professional ones. While the metered heads have a bit of clunk to them, both in terms of how they look and how they handle (the side of my DP-3 is worn into the brass because I slam my finger into the giant head while rewinding), there’s no denying the precision of their fit and finish.

Unlike the FM2n and M6 TTL that have required service with heavy use, my F2sb seems to be utterly bombproof.

A fun story to illustrate this: The top plate of my F2sb is a little misshapen under the advance lever from the abuse of a previous owner. The bump in the plate began interfering with the advance lever while I was on a shoot one night. I don’t usually field-repair my cameras but it was still under warranty and I didn’t want to move to my FM2n. To flatten the bump, I laid a car key across it and gave it a good, solid whack with the butt of a multi-tool. I haven’t had a single problem with the F2sb since!

Zeiss Super Ikonta B (532/16) – This is my new favourite camera. All these others, I’ve owned, used and abused for years but I only just started using the Zeiss a couple weeks ago and the honeymoon has been brilliant!

*still need to take a good photo of the Ikonta! This is from the original manual I found at https://www.cameramanuals.org/pdf_files/super_ikonta_b.pdf

As you can see, I’m primarily a 35mm guy. I’ve always enjoyed 120 film but have struggled to find the right camera. I wanted something small and fast that would get out of the way like my other favorite cameras.

The Zeiss Super Ikonta B is one of the few medium format cameras with an 80mm 2.8 lens (as opposed to an 80/3.5) and perhaps as rare, it’s a folding 6×6 camera with a coupled rangefinder. All this means that it’s a compact but more capable camera than more popular/newer models like the Mamiya 6 or even newer Zeiss.

The Ikonta has a few shortcomings due to the age of its design though. The viewfinder, though the largest offered in the series is not nearly as bright or contrasty as any of my other favorite cameras. Charging the shutter is a separate necessary move from advancing the film which slows me down and can be forgotten. And also due to the antiquated advance mechanism, the Ikonta can only expose 11, rather than 12 frames per roll which rails against part of my reason for seeking a 6×6 camera as opposed to a 6×7, for example.

In general though, I’m finding that I can shoot faster and more accurately with the Zeiss than any TLR I’ve used while image quality is up there with much more bulky and expensive MF SLR’s. And even well-regarded fairly modern medium format rangefinders like the Makina Plaubel or Voigtlander Bessa III 667 don’t quite fit my requirements, either due to that lens speed or aspect ratio that results in a bigger camera and fewer shots per roll.

Finding a late model Ikonta B with the rarer coated Opton Tessar lens that has been fully serviced and calibrated was tricky though. And significantly more expensive than what most Ikonta models sell for. I’ll need a second one in the same condition to feel safe using a vintage camera on paid shoots and also to facilitate taking more photos without stopping to reload. My ultimate goal is to be able to shoot Ilford Delta 3200 in 120 so as to get more tonality and less grain in my candid portraits. I’m feeling like this could work with this camera. But even if it doesn’t, I’m loving it!

Okay, so those were my five dead hand cameras. I’d love to hear what yours are in the comments and please, if you have some time, check out what everyone else’s were in the blogs below!

• Kosmo Foto
• Alex Luyckx
• Aperture Preview
• Austerity Photo
• Camera Go Camera
• Down The Road
• Mike Eckman
• Photo Thinking
• Steve Mitchell
• Flaneur’s Substack

As always, thanks for reading and happy shooting!

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Johnny Martyr