Jason Schneider

The landmark Kine Exakta camera of 1936 was world’s first successful 35mm SLR. Although the Russians announced their Sport 35mm SLR a year earlier, this ingenious but ungainly clunker was made in limited quantities from about 1937-1941 and distributed only in the Soviet Union. The Kine Exakta, on the other hand, was an instant international success and its maker, Ihagee of Dresden, Germany, produced it and its successors in huge quantities, enjoying robust worldwide sales.

Perhaps you’ve just read our story on the 10 best vintage lenses you can buy right now, but are wondering how to use all this classic glass on your modern digital camera. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Practically any analog camera can be pressed into service as a street camera—the late great Weegee used a 4x5 Speed Graphic to expose the seamy and sentimental sides of New York City, and the incomparable Vivian Maier stalked the streets of Chicago with a twin-lens Rolleiflex. But when it comes to discreet shooting on the fly, nothing can quite match a 35mm rangefinder camera as proven by the timeless work of countless photojournalists over the past 90 years.

As I confidently predicted last time, you can’t possibly please everybody when it comes to picking the best, the greatest, or the most influential cameras ever made. After we posted our list of The Top 20 Greatest Cameras of All Time, it came as no surprise that we received a ton of emails, varying in tone from pugnacious condemnation, to anguish, to polite suggestion, all begging to differ with our first top ten choices.