© Jon Ashcroft

Speaking of the X Series, here’s some futuristic-looking vin­tage cam­eras col­lected by cre­ative direc­tor and illus­tra­tor, Jon Ashcroft:

Taking pic­tures with these mon­strosi­ties was a com­plex process that required the user to adjust a num­ber of func­tions in order to get the desired out­come. All those com­plex adjust­ments meant a great deal of infor­ma­tion had to be present on the cam­eras and thus we have a typo­graphic gold mine. Etched expo­sure knobs, aper­ture rings, film speed sug­ges­tions, can­is­ter load­ing instruc­tions and of course the man­u­fac­tur­ers logo mark.

It looks to me that we have gone back­wards, not for­ward in terms of cam­era aes­thet­ics today; none of them make ‘em like that any­more. (Via Theo Inglis)