Even stranger considering that when I did eventually buy a camera back then it was a rangefinder, specifically a Zorki 4K, though I bought it, not so much because it was a rangefinder, but because it was cheap – around 30 quid I believe. Strangely, even though many of these little cameras were still in production at that time I was considering those classic SLR’s, I have no recollection of them. This is when I discovered the world of compact rangefinders. Tempted as I was to keep adding SLR’s (the OM-4 and XD-7 were particularly appealing) I decided that the next step was to add a smaller camera for those times when I wanted to carry something more discreet. Last year, though, I finally realised my teenage dream and acquired a very nice Nikon FM2n, rapidly followed by an equally nice F3 and a set of Nikkor primes. Time passed and my enthusiasm passed with it, only rekindled much later in the era of the plastic, auto- everything camera. This was the era of classic enthusiast film cameras – the Olympus OM system, the Pentax MX and ME, the Canon A series, the Minolta XD’s and my personal favourites, the Nikon FM and FE. I was a frustrated teenage photographer, unable to afford the cameras that I saw in the window of Jessops in Belfast and in the pages of Amateur Photographer that I browsed – and occasionally bought – in the newsagents.

Konica minolta camera review