How come no Nikon? Having had one early on, I couldn't imagine photo-life without some reasonable version.
Rob C
Having owned, in no particular order, Nikon F, F2, F3, Nikkormat, FMs, and FEs (some with motors, most without) for many years, I eventually got to the point where I pretty much abandoned photography in favour of print design and pre-press work, and the Nikon gear was either stolen, broke down, or sold. I had respected Canon as a *serious* camera maker, but never owned one. Ignored Minolta, Pentax etc.
A point about pro photography in South Australia is that we never had the high acceptance of 35mm (compared to larger formats) as had long existed in Europe and the US. Kodachrome in Australia took a week to get to Melbourne (next capital city to the east) and return processed, too slow for agencies and clients who wanted things done yesterday—has anything changed? And non-Kodachrome emulsions didn’t really hit the sharpness spot until Fuji came along with better films. So MF and LF was much used.
About 10 years ago, missing photography, or maybe it was a decent shooting job coming up, I bought a used Pentax ME Super body for $100 and grabbed a few lenses for very little money, much less than it would have been for Nikon or Canon. The ME Super and its manual sibling the MX were very small but very solid cameras (I chose the battery-dependent ME-S for its 1/125 flash synch speed). Worked fine until I put some light oil on the stiff rewind crank and the meter suddenly crapped out (how does that work?).
When I went *seriously* digital in 2007 (had bought out some RAW-featured point-and-shoots to teach myself digital conversions) I elected for a K10D, a decent camera with weather-sealing at a good-for-the-time price, and more solid than equivalent Canikons. Still had some lenses that fit it.
About to upgrade to a K5 (will keep the K20D and try getting it converted to infrared) but do the bulk of my present work with the Mamiya—ouch, my back!