My photography days go back to the 1960's, when all cameras were silver!
Much later, it became fashionable to have black cameras, because they were supposedly more "professional" looking. As a wildlife photographer I want my gear to be inconspicuous, so I prefer black (or olive), and it bugs me no end that I have to fit camo-covers to my big whites!
The early Canons were nearly all mainly black bodies and chrome tops and bottoms
https://global.canon/en/c-museum/camera.html?s=film as I recall were Leicas etc. The twin lens reflexes were also mainly black. The consumer models started to come in as silver. But, my memories go back to the 1950s when cameras were far more rare. German cameras ere the norm then.
My first "real" camera was a
Konica FS-1. They were made between 1979-83. It is an all black body with matte silver shutter button and edge of the Tv dial. There were no threads in the shutter button for a mechanical cable release. If you wanted to use a cable release, you had to buy the electronic cable that attached to the terminal on the right side of the camera. There was also a radio controlled electronic cable release available with a receiver that attached to the same terminal. It had a "dedicated" hot shoe for the Konica X-24 dedicated flash and a PC terminal on the left end of the body.
It was the first mass-marketed camera with a faster than 1 fps built-in motor-drive that could go 1.5 fps. (Motor-winders tended to be defined as those slower than 1 fps, motor-drives were 1 fps or faster.) Konica claimed it had the most powerful microprocessor of any camera available in 1979 when it debuted. It runs on four AA batteries in the grip. You could get 15-20 rolls of 36 frames out of a set of fresh alkaline batteries. I've still got it.
I of course had wanted a
Canon AE-1, which was all the rage in the mid-1980s, but that was a bit out of my price range at the time. The Konica was a pretty good counterpart, with shutter-priority and manual exposure modes. I got a pretty good deal on it used with a 40mm f/1.8 Hexanon lens for $145 at Camera World in Charlotte, NC where I spent the summer between college and grad school. They also had a used Kiron 28-210mm f/4-5.6 with a non-functioning zoom lock that I got on the cheap a week later when the Kiron 70-210mm f/4.5 Super Z I had ordered in Konica AR mount and prepaid for when I bought the camera had still not come in. For its time it was a remarkedly good "superzoom" lens. Sadly, balsam separation between two of the elements in the front group now covers pretty much the entire field of view.
It came with a 40mm f/1.8 Hexanon. About a decade later I thought the meter was malfunctioning badly. Some pictures were grossly overexposed, others more mildly overexposed, and some were exposed properly. So I bought an EOS Rebel S-II with the 35-80mm kit lens.
I later discovered the 50mm f/1.4 Hexanon was not stopping down at all when the aperture lever was moved. Well, that explained the varying amounts of overexposure! No matter what the camera or the lens aperture dial told it to stop down to, it was leaving the lens wide open!
Six months after buying the Rebel S-II I called the 1-800 number from an ad in the back of Popular Photography to order an EF 50mm f/1.8 II, Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO Macro, and Canon off-shoe cord. I asked them if they had any used Konica AR lenses in the 40-50mm range. They did and we added a used Konica AR 40mm f/1.8 Hexanon to my order. I still have the receipt. The Sigma 70-300 was $269.95, the off-shoe cord was $47.95, the EF 50mm f/1.8 II was $69.95, and the used Hexanon 50/1.8 was $54. Shipping from NYC to Alabama was an additional $40! (but no sales tax, which was around 8% here at that time, so almost a wash)
It was my very first purchase from a company in NYC named B&H.
If I only knew then how much of my hard-earned money I would send to B&H over the next 25+ years!
I used the Konica occasionally while my main cameras from the mid-90s to the late 2000s were EOS film bodies.
