Most expensive camera ever?

I've come across this story a few different places now and thought I'd share it. A daguerreotype camera created a positive image rather than a negative like the most common type of photography through the 20th century. The positive image is once again commonplace now with digital photography, which records in that fashion.

This talk of buying expensive cameras got me thinking about my all-time favorite cameras that I've owned. A couple years back I could say that I had owned at one time or another just about every SLR body that Nikon ever made (including all the F series until the F6). That statement is no longer true as it seems that Nikon puts out a new DSLR every other day now...

Anyways, it is a mixed lot, but here it is, in no particular order, except number 1:

1. Nikon F5 AF SLR — By far my most favorite camera of all time. What's not to love, it did everything. Nuff said.
2. Voightlander Bessa R rangefinder — I caught the rangefinder bug in 2001, right around the time the paper I was at got into digital. I wasn't big on the whole digital thing, as I really didn't like the image quality. I guess this was kind of like my moment of revolt. Film Forever! Yeah, yeah. This was a fairly inexpensive way into the RF world. I later had a Leica M4-P, which I liked (but it was used and had a funny smell to it...) I still have this one though, and actually took it off my book shelf and was using it the other day. I still love the compact size and near silent operation. I really miss being able to use it for stories (no more film here...), as it was very easy to fall off into the background with such a small camera.
3. Nikon D2X digital SLR — This is what I use now and I love it. It's fairly close in size and shape as my beloved F5, but a little bulkier, heavier. The image quality is great though, and that is the important thing. The best digital I've ever used. I know lots of you are Canon users and are snickering perhaps, but that's cool.
4. Nikon FM manual SLR — This was the first camera I ever owned. My parents bought it for my 18th birthday in 1995 at the old Camera World store in downtown Portland while on a business trip. It wasn't exactly what I wanted (I was hoping for an N8008s, which at the time was pretty cool — I later owned two of them) but it was cool just the same. It was all manual and made me think a lot when shooting. I later got the MD-12 motordrive for it which shot at a blazing 3.5 frames per second (the F5 and D2X in HP mode shoot at 8 FPS).
5. Holga medium format "toy" camera — I got this from my friend Sol randomly in the mail one day in 2000. I have to admit that I haven't used this as much as I would like (getting 120 film developed around here can be a pain) but everytime I do I enjoy it. You have basically no control over anything and you never know how the pix are going to turn out. I think it's that mystery that makes it fun.

-DKM