New To Film - Need Help On Which Camera To Buy

djacobox372 · Feb 28, 2012

Nikon f100 is the best camera you can buy for less then $200. This is a fact.

murlis · Feb 28, 2012

No, that's not a fact, it's an opinion. Any older SLR will do the job, the really old metal body ones are cheaper and have better lenses than the nikon. It will also teach you to shoot with skill instead of letting the camera do the work.

djacobox372 · Feb 28, 2012

murlis said:
No, that's not a fact, it's an opinion. Any older SLR will do the job, the really old metal body ones are cheaper and have better lenses than the nikon. It will also teach you to shoot with skill instead of letting the camera do the work.

Of course it's an opinion, I just call it a fact for emphasis (doing my best ken rockwell impression).

I don't really get your statement about older metal body SLR's having better lenses then the nikon. Since the oldest metal body SLRs are Nikons (the nikon F was the first successful SLR). And most of those lenses for those "old metal body slrs" from nikon will work on the F100 (which is a metal body SLR).

As for letting the camera do the work for you, the F100 works just fine in "M" mode and you don't need to look at the light meter if you don't want to.

Of course if you get an old canon, minolta or pentax, the lenses are a little cheaper (but NOT better). However, the selection is limited.

The older nikon pro cameras (F, F2, F3) are typically more expensive then the F100, but the consumer models like the FE, and FM are good choices--although I'd still recommend spending the extra $100 and getting the f100 so you aren't limited by the cameras features (max shutter speed for example is only 1/2000 on most of those cameras).

den9 · Mar 1, 2012

i have a ridiculous canon 1N, its a flagship camera, might be overkill but id like to get rid of it for 150 bucks with a grip. it was 5 grand new in 1994.

mdarnton · Mar 2, 2012

Since everyone's got a better idea, here's mine. I've been buying Nikon FGs lately. They always go cheap, and they are great cameras. It started when I wanted a film body to use with my Nikon lenses (about four years ago I dumped all my Leica stuff and bought a Nikon D300). Since I've bought mainly a lot of old manual prime lenses, I'm all set on that count. I didn't want one of the big pro models because they're just too big and heavy for me to enjoy. The FG is about the size of the old Olympus OM1 stuff I used to have, and it's so cheap that instead of getting them fixed if they break, I'll just throw them away and get another. I also have an FM (too big, and no handgrip makes it hard to hold) an F90 (MUCH too big, too heavy, plastic, and has a noisy motor that I certainly don't need) and an FA (nice camera, but, again, bigger and heavier than I need), but the FGs have become my faves. Basically, they do everything a camera really needs to do.

The 50mm series E lens they came with originally is Nikon's usual glass, but in a cheaper mount (before cheap meant all plastic, as it does now, so it's not that bad). It's actually a decent lens. FGs have an easy-to-use manual mode, aperture priority, and a simple program mode. Basically, that's plenty. An FG and lens is easy to find under $100 on Ebay. Unlike with Canon, virtually every lens that Nikon has made since around 1970 will work on both my D300 and all my film cameras. Not so Canon, and the reason I did NOT buy a Canon digital is their nasty habit of changing their lens mount to something incompatible every few years, rendering all old lenses useless. That was the single deciding reason why I went with Nikon.