My Camera Histoire: Thank You For Your Back Order

I was one of those kids whose mother would "teach them to save money". She would take a certain percentage of my allowance and any money I earned from working jobs (about most-of-it%) and put it away in the bank. My friends could never understand why I never had any money. After photography school and working at Best Products in King of Prussia for a while, I had about $4,000 saved thanks to mom. I had built up a nice collection of Minolta cameras but I always wanted a Nikon system. Minolta was making the move to plastic XG and X-700 series at the time which didn't really feel like pro gear to me. In fact, it looked like Minolta was moving away from pro cameras all together. I began to think about what other camera company would get all my hard-earned money for new gear.

I really thought hard about switching to Leica. That M3 rangefinder I got to handle in Monroeville, PA was really nice and now they had just come out with the R4—an SLR version. In some ways I wish I had gone with Leica but I would only have been able to afford a body and one lens, maybe two lenses. I needed something at least comparable to what I had invested in Minolta's. A Nikon system gave me a lot more for the money so I just had to put the Leica on hold.

Originally I had purchase my Nikon gear from New York Camera. I had purchased a lens for one of my Minolta's there before but I remember how pushy they were so I had  all my ducks in a row and new exactly what I wanted and wasn't going to be be intimidated this time. Yay me!

Amoungst all the lenses I had ordered, I had selected a 200mm ƒ2 ED IF Nikkor lens with a big-ass skylight filter for it. The filter arrived but not the lens. I was not used to this thing called "backorder". I thought it was a dirty trick to play on someone who just ordered $4,000 worth of camera gear so I returned everything I had received and looked for a local camera shop to buy from.

I found one, in Reading, Pennsylvania called Deluca's Camera. They had everything I wanted but talked me out of the 200mm. For the total price of about $4,000 I was able to get two Nikon F3 HP's with motor drives, a 500mm catadioptric, 24mm ƒ2.8, 180mm ED, 1.4 converter, 50mm flatfield Macro, 35mm ƒ1.4, 135mm ƒ2.0 and, what has become my favorite lens, a 15mm rectalinear ultrawide. My son calls it the eyeball lens. Life was good...very good.

I sold all my Minolta gear to a friend I used to work with at Best Products. He already had a Minolta XD-11 and I beleive an X-700. I think he purchased the lot from me so he was set with 6 bodies now! Then he drooled over all my new Nikon gear. There we were, sitting on either side of a table that had 8 camera bodies and about 15 - 20 lenses...just droolin'.