Topic: Ugly ducklings

[Francois]

Lets have a bit of fun.
What are the ugliest cameras you've ever seen?
What are the ugliest ones you have?
I'm not talking about dropped on the floor 20 times ugly, I'm talking designers were really drunk ugly.
You know, the camera that was designed on a Friday at 4:00 just before a long weekend?

So, who's up for a first go at this?

[John Robison]

That is a very subjective topic. Personally I’d say that the Contarex Bullseye is a butt ugly camera. Others however might consider it beautiful.
A Nikon F with the plain prism is beautiful and any of the metered prisms ruin that beauty.
The Exakta is the same. Quirky but beautiful with a plain eye level prism, ungainly and ugly with a metered prism.

[Bryan]

I know the Kodak 35 has been called ugly but I like the crazy odd look.
Kodak 35 RF by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

Despite how much fun I have shooting it, the Polaroid Big Shot is quite an ugly hunk of low grade plastic. 
Polaroid Big Shot by Bryan Chernick, on Flickr

[Francois]

I must admit that these are pretty clunky.
Here's the worst offender I have in my collection:
A Bell & Howell 985D Point & shoot.
It's got autofocus (as in fixed focus), it's fully automatic. At least you can control the flash and it's got a date back.
It looks like it's missing something in the front...
Worst thing is that champagne color of the millenium...

What do ya think?

[LEAFotography]

These are great!

Was the Polaroid Big Shot a macro or portrait camera?

I know what you mean about missing something up front...even a 1cm protruding black lens shape, holding that fixed lens would have edged it along in that direction...

I've thought of some of my cameras as cute, quirky, slightly ridiculous, or ostentatious (one that I've named "The Beast") but I'll take another look and see whether there's some that are ugly...

[Bryan]

Was the Polaroid Big Shot a macro or portrait camera?

It's a portrait camera, it's the one Andy Warhol used.  It's very simple, one aperture, one shutter speed, one focus distance plus you have to use a flash cube with it.

https://casualphotophile.com/2019/04/29/the-big-shot-polaroid-andy-warhols-pen-pencil/

[LEAFotography]

Ah, that's great, thank you Bryan!

[Kai-san]

I don't know what the definition of ugly would be, but I know we would never agree on it. I would rather talk about bad design, and that is mainly due to cost cutting. There was a lot of that in the eighties, not only the dirt cheap plastic compact crap but also SLRs like the Canon T-series. Nowadays it's the likes of Fuji Instaxes with puke inducing colours and digital SLRs that looks like contorted blobs of plastic with a lens sticking out of them. The two examples from Bryan has a functional beauty that will never go out of fashion.

[Pete_R]

As Brian beat me to what I think is the most ugly camera, here's another. Actually, ANY white camera I think looks ugly.

[astrobeck]

I agree about white cameras...there's just something that bugs me about them.
I don't know if it's because we're used to seeing black or silver bodies...or that they just stand out like a sore thumb..
anyway, I'm with you on this one.

[AJShepherd]

White cameras always have that Star Wars Stormtrooper thing going on, I remember some years back Pentax even did white DSLRs as well as other colours.

The other thing about white cameras is that they're all going to look grubby in next to no time!

Maybe more quirky than full-on ugly, but the panel next to the viewfinder on the Bencini Koroll-II which seems to have been put there to con people into believing it has a selenium meter is horrid.

[Francois]

Just looking at this hurts for some reason...

[Bryan]

It could be a fake flash instead of a fake light meter.  Does it take 127 film?

[AJShepherd]

It's the 'knobbliness' of the panel that suggests meter to me. I've got another camera which has a fake selenium meter panel with the knobbly glass.

This is a half-frame 120 camera, gets 24 shots a roll.

In truth, it's not even half frame, as it doesn't expose the whole height of the frame, so not much larger image size than 127.

Think I only used it the once, maybe once I can start going places again (money is as much of a problem right now!) I'll give it another go.

Messing about on the river by Antony Shepherd, on Flickr

[zapsnaps]

The ugliest one I'll admit to owning is the Koni Omega Rapid, complete with grab handle. I thought it was a monster when I bought it. Now I consider it an ugly monster. But it's good for frightening children who may be getting in the way of street photography shot. Oh - and the film advance mechanism, borrowed for a pump-action shotgun, is nice when I'm in street stealth mode, too. It's so wide that it has 3 cold shoes on the top of it. Is this a record? Was there ever a camera with 4? My usual street carry is the 'Rapid' with a drone launch pad thingy in the left shoe, the Blad 500CM in the middle shoe as a back-up film camera and a Blad X1Dii in the right shoes as a digital back-up back-up camera.

[Adam Doe]

I had one! It was my second non-holga medium format camera. I agree. Ugly, ugly, ugly. But oh that ratcheting sound when you advanced the film  Supposedly it was a popular wedding photographer camera in its day, so I think the first cold shoe is for a meter, the second for a flash and the third for a champagne flute for the toast to the happy couple.

The ugliest one I'll admit to owning is the Koni Omega Rapid, complete with grab handle. I thought it was a monster when I bought it. Now I consider it an ugly monster. But it's good for frightening children who may be getting in the way of street photography shot. Oh - and the film advance mechanism, borrowed for a pump-action shotgun, is nice when I'm in street stealth mode, too. It's so wide that it has 3 cold shoes on the top of it. Is this a record? Was there ever a camera with 4? My usual street carry is the 'Rapid' with a drone launch pad thingy in the left shoe, the Blad 500CM in the middle shoe as a back-up film camera and a Blad X1Dii in the right shoes as a digital back-up back-up camera.

[Francois]

Those were definitely pretty bad design. But they were functional. Too bad they used soft brass gears for the film advance. While it was smooth and fast it didn't stand to any kind of abuse.

[AJShepherd]

Not particularly ugly as such, but as I mentioned this in a previous post on this thread here's the "Kowa Kid", a 127 camera which was handed down to me in my dim and distant youth and rescued from the back of a cupboard in my Dad's house before that went up for sale a few years back. Not only does it have the fake meter window with its knobbly glass, but beside the viewfinder another completely useless window is an attempt to make it look like it has a rangefinder, which is also fake.


Kowa Kid by Antony Shepherd, on Flickr

I would actually like to give this a run but the red panes on the back are ripped. Originally this would have shot 4x4 or 4x6 on 127 film, though the backing plate for 4x4 was lost long ago! The bit with the selector and film seems to be riveted on so more faff than it's worth to fix, but maybe if I can open the selector to the 4x6 hole and stick something on the inside that'd work.