The Man Who Was Looking At A Nikon

Hey kids! It is time for another spooky tale of random conversations with strangers I’ve had while out doing photography!

Back Story

About a week and a half ago I purchased a medium format Fuji GW690III rangefinder camera. Unlike most of the cameras I use which are thirty or more years old, the GW690III was manufactured after the release of Vanilla Ice’s 1991 earth-shattering humiliation Cool as Ice. Given the manufacture date, the GW690III is current enough to have design aestetics which are still present in modern cameras.

Once I added a Metz 32CT3 flash to the Fuji GW690III, it took on an appearance that can easily be mistaken for a dSLR to the untrained eye.

The other bit of back story for this tale is just that there was another film photographer in the area who was shooting with a tripod mounted 35mm Pentax SLR.

The Random Conversation

I was standing still waiting for something interesting to happen when I was approached by this friendly couple. I’d put their age in the late fifties.

Man: (Looking at my GW690III) “So how much are one of those?”
Me: “Less than a thousand.”
Man: “Is that all!”
Woman: “He’s been talking about cameras lately.”
Man: “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about getting one of those.”
My Internal Dialog “Either this guy is an old film buff, or has my camera mistakingly pegged as a digital. I’ll put my bet on the later, but lets hope for the former.”
Me: “Oh? You’ve been looking at these Fuji rangefinders?”
Man: “I’ve been looking at a Nikon actually. I’ve seen one for $900.”
Me: “Ah. This is a old film camera actually.”
Man: “Really?! There can’t be very many of those left.”

I then motioned at the aforementioned man with the Pentax SLR who was about fifteen feet away from us.

Me: “That guy has one too!” (Grin)

We then had a chuckle and parted ways.