My
Nikon FM-2, bought it in 1986 (when my Minolta XD5 started to show problems in really cold weather) and retired in 2007 (when I switched to digital). It was the cam I used longest in my life so far. It never failed me and worked reliably at temperatures of -20 degree Celsius or below with strong wind (ski mountaineering). Once it was so cold that the film got ripped during transport. AFAIK the FM2 was the only camera on the market which could be taken into arctic conditions without removing the lubricating grease (the shutter is self-lubricating).
My FM-2 even survived a bucket of sea water, caused by a jumping orca whale in the Vancouver aquarium (both me and the cam were totally drenched); it had to go to the Nikon service about a year later because the ISO could no longer be adjusted and I feared that this would be the end of it, but I payed something like 50 € and it was perfect again.
In 1989 there were rumours that Nikon would stop production so I quickly bought a second body. As it turned out it was produced much much longer until 2001. Both bodies are no longer used but still in working order.
Here is a photograph taken with the FM2. Our guide did not trust the snow, and while checking with his ski stick how deep the snow is he triggered an avalanche
. Nothing happened to us
but we decided to turn around for this day.
When the Nikon was too heavy I used a
Rollei 35 SE and later a
Ricoh GR1s. Both are retired but still in working order.
My first digital cam was a
Nikon Coolpix 2500. I quickly realized that 2 MP is far from sufficient when I used it on a ski mountaineering trip. I shot a nice photograph but could print it only at a max size of 20 x 30 cm, which was disappointing:
I sold the Coolpix and later got a
Fuji Finepix F10, the first P&S with good high ISO quality (for its time, of course). It made really good photographs and today lives in the glovebox of my car:
My current DSLR is a
Nikon D800 which I got in 2012, and I have no reason yet to replace it, neither by a D850 (no builtin flash) nor a Z6 or Z7. It was a major step in image quality. I don't think that I'll be able to use it longer than the FM2 but I try to. Here is one photograph made in 2013: