Canon T90

$5 at a thrift store…….

The Canon T90 arrived in 1986, and it looks like what would happen if someone asked a Bavarian industrial designer to imagine a camera after a long lunch. That is roughly what did happen. Luigi Colani shaped it, and the result is all swoops and curves, as though its prototype had been left too close to a radiator. Japanese photographers nicknamed it "the Tank," which I first took as an insult until I picked one up and realised it was simply a description. It takes four AA batteries, has as many buttons as a 1980s stereo, and offers a multi-spot metering system that lets you take readings from up to eight points and average them. This is wonderfully clever and also something I have never once done, because by the time I have worked out how, the light has changed, the subject has left, and I have aged visibly. Still, there is something deeply reassuring about a machine built with the cheerful assumption that it might one day be dropped down a mineshaft.

Fit the FD 50mm f/1.4 and the whole thing becomes lovely, in the way a large, slightly bossy uncle becomes lovely once he has had a sherry. The lens is small, bright and sharp, with a soft, creamy falloff that makes almost anything look as if it has wandered out of a better decade, including me. Focusing is manual, and the action is so smooth and satisfying that you start doing it for no reason at all, like popping bubble wrap. The camera does have a flaw. In older copies, its shutter can seize and flash "EEE" on the little LCD, with the noise most of us make getting out of a deep chair on reaching a certain age. But when it works, which with a little care is most of the time, it is one of those rare objects that make you want to go out and photograph a perfectly ordinary street in Southwark simply to prove you can……….