My passion as an image maker is just that, a passion for images, not cameras. Having said that, the following cameras have been a part of the journey.
I don't care about images, there are too many of them anyway......
But cameras, this is why I am in this business:
My best camera to date: leica m6 with a 35 cron 4th
closely followed by leica m9 with a 35cron asph
nowadays I am not touching film anymore, so the M9 will move to the top after a few more months of use.
best film SLR: pentax MX. tiny, undestructable, a viewfinder which gives any modern fullframe DSLR a beating.
best film nearly compact: black Hexar AF. image quality like m6/cron, easy to use
best film really compact: olympus XA, great lens, manual focus, tinissimo
best MF camera: Mamiya RZ. a pain to work handheld for a long day, but beautiful results, very reliable
best digi compact: Ricoh GR-D 3, like it a lot, perfect handling
best DSLR: canon 1dsmk3. It is unsexy, but that thing just works, maybe there are better files out there, but mine just keeps on filling my bank account. It earned its cost within a week and hasn't given me one single hitch in two years of use.
Cameras I really hated:
Leaf AFI: bad ergonomics, bad metering, bad AF, bad everything, a 20.000€ bad joke
canon G9: had it for a few months, I don't think I got one decent pictures out of thousands I took with it
nearly all Canon EOS film cameras before digital other than the 1 series, Nikon ruled film.
So currently I am a very happy bunny with my M9, it next contender will have to work hard