World’s greatest cameras?
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ultimate camera is well-known. The photographer referred to the Leica M3 with a 50mm lens as an extension of his eye. Richard Avedon was famous for his preference for large-format cameras and for his favourite, the Deardorff 8X10. Annie Leibowitz spreads her love across a range of cameras, and even camera brands, but according to Leibowitz when she shot her seminal photo on a Polaroid – the picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that she took a few hours before Lennon was murdered, and which was used as the cover image of Rolling Stone in January 1981, she knew she had captured something profound.
Camera technology has changed dramatically since the 1930s when Cartier-Bresson rose to fame, and even since 1992, when Avedon became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker. But the truth is it’s changed most during the last decade and a half. The demands that a top photographer would expect to be met in his or her fantasy camera are far greater that anything these two photographers would have dared to dream. Here are the fantasy cameras of five top photographers, plus a sneak peek at the fantasy camera elements that may become real camera elements in the near future.
The advertising specialist
Sean Izzard is one of Australia’s top advertising photographers with an impressive collection of awards from the most prestigious international advertising competitions, including AWARD, Cannes Lions, D&AD, One Show, New York Festivals awards, and ADC awards. He has also been a Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize finalist three times and been named in the Lürzer’s Archive Top 200 Photographers Worldwide four times.
His style is shaped both by former influences and present day demands. “I am still very much a lover of
