Suffering builds character - and when you put these machines on your shoulders, character will be emitting out of you. Sweat too. Maybe even tears. Titans of a forgotten era towering with dignity over all the photo equipment of today, and colossi breaking tripods and the spines of those who wear them.

The Sinar brand is synonymous with Swiss precision and, along with Arca Swiss and Alpa, belongs to the photographic triquetry and holy trinity of large-format cameras from the land of cogged railways and melted cheese. The word is an acronym for "Still, Industrial, Nature, Architectural and Reproduction photography."

M.P.P., or Micro Precision Products, was a British manufacturer of optical accessories that dabbled in several related industries.

You're a reporter in the US in the twentieth century and you're wondering what kind of camera you should get. Actually, you don't have to. Graflex. Done, solved.

USSR, the land of mud and wooden spoons, spent several decades churning out its one and only line of wooden cameras: the FKD (I could feel it in my bones that this acronym meant something, but I couldn't dig it up. "Fucking Klunky Device" maybe?).