Field. Arrange a hands-onHands-on
A close view into a camera lens, the glass dark and the aperture ring catching light
f/1.4
aperture · wide open

The tool should disappear.

Three controls. Shutter, aperture, focus.No menus, no modes, no screen you have to look away from the world to read. A camera you learn in a week and stop noticing in a month.

Arrange a hands-on
01 · Black paint over brass

It wears where your hands go.

Paint, not powder coat. It comes off at the corners, the wind lever, the place your right thumb lives. After twenty years the camera is a map of how you shoot. We think that's the point of the paint.

0
years · out of the box, all black
Right thumb · year 10 Wind lever · year 14
02 · What we took off

Everything that isn't a photograph.

0
things removed · of nineteen
Mode dial
Menu button
Rear screen
Touchscreen
Video mode
Face detection
Scene modes
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
An app
Firmware updates
Custom buttons
Picture styles
Beep
Eye sensor
Zoom
Pop-up flash
A strap with the name on it
Autofocus
Shutter
Aperture
Focus
An empty photographic studio, softboxes and stands against a white cyclorama

You'll stop looking at it in about a month.

The first week, you'll fumble the aperture. The second, you'll miss a frame while focusing. By the fourth, your hands know where everything is and you're looking at the thing you're photographing. That was the whole design brief.

Two bodies

Rangefinder or ground glass. Same three controls.

The F1 is for the street and the F2 is for everything you'd put on a tripod. Both take the same three lenses. Both are black paint over brass, machined here, serial numbers under 5,000.

F1 · RangefinderThe one you carry

35 mm full-frame sensor, an optical rangefinder with framelines, a mechanical shutter to 1/4000. Batteries last a week, because there's nothing to power but the meter.

  • Sensor24 × 36 mm, 24 MP, no low-pass filter
  • ShutterCloth, mechanical, 1 s – 1/4000
  • FinderOptical, 0.72×, 35/50/90 framelines
  • Weight540 g, body
£3,400
F2 · Ground glassThe one you stand behind

Same sensor, a waist-level finder with a plain ground glass and a loupe. You see the picture upside down and reversed, which is how you learn to see composition rather than subject.

  • Sensor24 × 36 mm, 24 MP
  • ShutterLeaf, in the lens, 1 s – 1/500, flash at all speeds
  • FinderGround glass, 6× loupe
  • Weight620 g, body
£2,900
Three lenses

Wide, normal, long. Then stop.

Manual focus, aperture rings with click stops, brass helicoids. Each one is the only lens most people would ever need, and three is the number you can carry in a coat.

35 mm f/2The street. Close enough to be in it, wide enough to keep the context. Focuses to 0.7 m.
£1,600
50 mm f/1.4The one on the camera when you don't know what's coming. Fast enough for rooms at night.
£1,400
90 mm f/2.8Portraits and distance. Small, because it doesn't have to be fast. Focuses to 1 m.
£1,500
All three, in a rollWaxed cotton, three pockets, no name on it.
£4,200
Hold one

Arrange a hands-on.

An hour in the shop with an F1 and an F2, all three lenses, and a card to take away. Or a week, on loan, with a deposit. Most people know by day three which body is theirs.

Arrange a hands-on