In January 2021, while walking along a river, I killed my main 35mm camera. I’m not sure how I did this exactly, but I was loading a roll of film and walking, and my thumb hit the blades of the shutter in such a way that the shutter mechanism was forever unusable.
The camera wasn’t anything special – not a Leica or something. It was a Nikon N90s which a few minutes on eBay reveals to be a dime a dozen — I just found somebody on eBay selling not one but 4 N90s bodies for $100! Anyway, what made the death of this camera worthy of a post is not the make, model or general condition of the camera. What made it special is our history together. I purchased this body new in the early 1990’s as an “upgrade” from the Minoltas I had been shooting, and I am certain that the amount of film I’ve run through this camera could possibly be described in the hundreds of miles. I shot several thousand frames a year in this camera for almost 30 years.
Confession: I never really stopped shooting my Minoltas, for the record. They’re wonderful little cameras.
Anyway, when it became clear to me that I should make no effort to repair the N90s (one repair person told me I’d spend more just sending the camera to him than it was worth) I decided to keep my eyes open and look for a replacement.
A few days later, white on Instagram, I noticed a rather nice photo of a very clean Nikon F body which had just been posted by the Vermont Center for Photography. I recently bought a bunch of 4×5 film holders from them, and was impressed with their stuff, so, I messaged and ended up buying it. It arrived yesterday.
Looking at the body, I am impressed at the condition. This thing is clean and tight..
I looked up the serial numbers and found this particular body was manufactured in Japan between October and December 1970, making it just slightly younger than I am ( I’m about to trip over another birthday this week, in case you were curious.)
I can’t help but find this poetic, that after years of shooting cameras like the N90 which are loaded with features I went out of my way to ignore, I should end up buying a camera that is as old as me and which is the first 35mm camera I’ve owned which has everything I want: nothing more, nothing less.
That’s not to say I won’t find things to criticize, or praise. It just means I have for the first time in over 40 years of shooting 35mm cameras not fallen into the trap of buying a bunch of bells and whistles that I don’t want or need.
Perhaps what I have just realized is with age comes a certain wisdom. Perhaps.
NOTE: This post originally appeared on a Patreon site and has been republished here for archival reasons.