My life in cameras
Photographer Craig Roberts looks back at the cameras that have shaped his life and photographic career
1988 Canon T90
Having cut my teeth two years earlier with a Pentax P30, my heart ruled my head and I blew some inheritance money on the best SLR on the market at the time. This camera was a thing of beauty. It was the camera that took me from being an amateur photographer to turning professional. It eventually died about three years ago!
1995 Mamiya RZ67
Back in the 1990s, shooting landscapes professionally meant shooting big. Most magazines wanted medium format, so I bought this Mamiya secondhand. Most landscape photographers were shooting with the Pentax 67, but I loved the waist-level viewfinder and rotating back on this camera.
2003 Fuji GX617
I was finding I liked the panoramic format, but cropping my 6x7cm transparencies was limiting, so I bought this beast. It was the best camera I ever owned, but it was just so expensive to run. It shot only four images per roll of film. The results were amazing.
2005 Holga 120GFN
I bought this camera on a whim, not expecting too much from it. Boy was I wrong! It’s very creative, evocative and full of charm. I think I have taken some of my best images with this piece of plastic junk and still shoot with it to this day. In fact, this is Instagram before there was Instagram!
2007 Canon EOS 5D
I sold the Mamiya and Fuji to pay for my crossover into digital, and bought this classic camera. It took me a while to get used to it, and to digital in general, but it did make me a rather more creative photographer than any of the film cameras (well, except the Holga). It also felt a bit odd going back to an SLR 21 years after my original Pentax!