Looking for Camera info...

[LokiZ]

A.) What is the absolute worst camera you have ever dealt with?

If you have no answer to that...

B.) What qualities would the worst camera you can imagine be lacking?

Thanks.

 

[Derrel]

The Russian-made Cosmorex SE I think might have been the worst "functional", sort-of working camera I ever had. I had old film cameras that were broken as a kid, or that were messed up, but for about two years my "best" camera was the old Russian thread-mount 35mm SLR. It had several problems. The biggest problem was that the single latch that held the back of the camera closed would often snag on the neckstrap, and would pop the camera open, ruining the film inside. It had a non-coupled built-in selenium light meter. The meter was somewhat accurate,except at the lower end of its range. The film rewind knob was a small, knurled knob about 1/4 x 1/4 inch, which popped up so one could grasp the knurled end to rewind the film, and after rewinding the knob's "grabber" was then stowed down inside of a surrounding raised dial...well, the doggone knob end popped off and got lost, and so I had no way to rewind film except to shoot a whole roll, and then open the camera's back in the dark and rewind the film manually, using my own two hands. It had the infamous 58mm f/2 Piece of Crap lens, and I also had a $19.99 two-element 135mm f/3.5 pre-set lens I bought mail-order from Adorama. Both were M42 thread mount. I bought the camera from Adorama for $79.95 as I recall, in the spring of 1976. It was an incredible piece of crap camera. Speeds of 1/30 to 1/500 second on a rubberized cloth focal plane shutter. Bad body,bad meter, bad optics, bad engineering. The shutter got jammed after about two years of light, kid-level usage. A fine example of the atrocious art of Russian camera making in the mid-1970's.

http://www.mattdentonphoto.com/cameras/cosmorex_se.html