just got tons of 35mm, need a better SLR

[sevo]

Bosco -

If you'll be shooting a lot of skating/BMX I would recommend you consider an AF body. I used to shoot pool/ramp skating and velodrome bike racing, and AF can make a big difference in the number of "keeper" shots you get.

If you pick a camera with a focus trap function, yes. I've never had (or have seen) a camera able to AF track skaters at the distances common for the usual (rather close-up) shots. The F100 may be the lowest end Nikon that can trap focus - perhaps the only outside the pro series (F5/6, plus F4 with accessory computer back).

But focus trap is essentially all manual except for relieving you of having to release the camera exactly when the skater is at the pre-determined spot - once you have figured out the pre-delays of your brain and camera, you can be just as successful releasing by hand, so any reasonably fast and snappy all-manual camera will do as well.

 

[Keith]

The mention of the N90s earlier is interesting ... they go for very little these days and are very capable in all areas. I have a rather clean one lurking in the cupboard that cost me around sixty dollars several years ago and I used it right up until I came across a good F6 at a fair price.

 

[jamais]

Get a Nikon FE. Small like a Leica, 250 flash synch (I think) Top speed is 1/4000. I have the FM and love it, but you'll need fast AE, so it's the FE for you. KEH has lots of manual focus lenses. 50mm f2 will cost you about $50. My FM cost me $54 at KEH.

The FE is a great camera but it offers only 1/90s flash sync speed. FE2: 1/250s.

 

[sc_rufctr]

Get a clean Nikon F5 and you'll have one of the best SLRs ever made.

I bet you won't look back if you do.

 

[leicapixie]

i simply don't understand the dislike of Canon bodies..
i have recv'd or paid so little for many SLR cameras.
There really is no difference in handling. Some features are different.
A camera must fit one physically and also easy to focus..

The Nikon system are all good and the F,F2,F3 series are all pro. It means stronger, better made and heavy.The FM and Fe while very nice to use are not as strongly built. These are all mostly old cameras.. may need attention.

i have the Canon AE-1P which is nicer to use than the ord. Ae-1.I have a shutter picking, Canon AV-1 which is really is a nicer camera. I prefer the auto! The Canon 50mm f1.8 is a great lens, in many ways better than my Collapsible Summicron.No flare.

The Pentax Spotmatic and later models KM and K1000 are great simple cameras. Clean, clear: a joy to use. The cameras of choice when i traveled long distances. Film days.. There are K-mounts that accept hordes of lenses.
The truth though i really need only a few, the 28mm, 50mm and a short tele, the 105mm or 135mm.I did street photography, weddings and celebrations. Some advertising and publicity.I also use a Chinon K mount and a Fujica screw mount. The Chinon with 50mm Ricoh lens $10.Fuji a gift.

Minolta is now in the stable, 2 cameras, X -series.with a 50mm and 45mm.
Really nice to use, the lenses are very good. The cost of both $40.
i do prefer the SLR view most of time! i love my Leica though.

Practika. Yup. i have one, the view very dim like the country of origin, East Germany. Very hard to focus, needs a searchlight to assist focus. A German shepherd and AK-47 probably standard equipment!
so saying, seen a photo recently of the late Art Kane using one in the early part of his illustrious career..

I would add a lens or two to your Ae-1 and get shooting!
i have fun using this all.

 

[L Collins]

Get a clean Nikon F5 and you'll have one of the best SLRs ever made.

I bet you won't look back if you do.

Seconded. They're cheap as dirt these days. Nikon's last 'spare no expense' pro film camera.

You will soon learn than 20 rolls of film is most definitely not a "ton" of film. An F5 set to CS can run through that in about an hour.😎

 

[Robert Lai]

I had an AE-1 in my distant youth. It works fine. The only thing I didn't like about it was that shutter speeds not visible in the finder. Even then I preferred an aperture priority approach, so I'd have to take the camera down to see what shutter speed was giving me the preferred f/stop.

In my midlife crisis, I'm somewhat reliving my youth, I'm surprised at how inexpensive great manual focus Canon lenses are selling for now.
I would say that you should stick with the AE-1, and maybe add another great Canon FD lens. Save the rest for film developing. I went back another generation to a Canon FX and FL lenses.

If you have to go with Nikon (as I did 25 years ago), the F, F2, F3 are almost indestructible. Since you already have a 50mm Canon lens, pick another focal length such as the 105 2.5 AI/AIS for your next lens. You should realize that everything in Nikon is backwards from your Canon. The focus to infinity is in the other direction, the aperture scales on the lenses also run in the other way. Even the shutter speed dials of the F, F2 and F3 are opposite to the direction of the scale of speeds on your AE-1. When I first switched from the AE-1 to the Nikon F3, these reversals certainly caused confusion and delay.

 

[Photo_Smith]

i am looking to upgrade to different 35mm slr but i'm not sure what to get. i am definitely going to get the nikon 50mm f/1.8 afd but should i get the nikon f3 or f100?

The F3 is manual focus, if you really want to use AF lenses the F100 is nice for the money. It does 4fps with 1/250 flash sync It's a bit 'plasticy' for me build quality wise and I prefer the manual focus Nikons F2 and NikkormatEL/FE2.
But given you already have Canon AE1 and the great 50mm lens not much can be gained by going Nikon MF given your subject even if you could afford the Nikon F3 beating Canon New F1 (ducks to avoid paper coffee cups)

Further excuse Canon camera porn

 

[sevo]

i simply don't understand the dislike of Canon bodies..

Well I own both a extensive F to F4 Nikon system and various Canon cameras (F-1, New F-1, A-1, T70).

The answer is easy: While Canon camera bodies have charming qualities, each of mine has some glaring flaw in its very design. Canon seem to have had a design process driven by marketing rather than engineers, and by crap marketing studying the products of the competition rather than making market research among its (potential) users. Which made it centre around topping the competition rather than creating a autonomously good product. Their researchers often did not quite grasp why a competitors camera was successful and went after the wrong feature - so they often ended with a camera that had the bragging rights for being the heaviest, ugliest, most electronic or least user controllable.

For example, in the sixties everybody who added AE used shutter priority, as it is more easy to use a galvanometer to control a mechanical aperture lever than a mechanical shutter. Canon did not drop that concept even when they made the jump to electronics (where it would have been far more accurate, power-saving and convenient to follow the example of the competition and control the electronic shutter). So they were stuck with one rather fragile module of 1960's electromechanics in their most modern bodies until the EOS age - as a result, the A-1/AE-1 generation Canons are now wheezing or have failed entirely.

Another example: The F2 had a ugly bulging accessory finder that added functionality - so the New F-1 got the same thing. Even though that functionality was limited to a extra display scale for a already in-body function (which lost the display illumination by being grafted on that way), even though they already had got it right a few years earlier in the F-1, and even though Nikon soon released the F3, without active finder.

 

[Photo_Smith]

Well
The answer is easy: While Canon camera bodies have charming qualities, each of mine has some glaring flaw in its very design. Canon seem to have had a design process driven by marketing rather than engineers, and by crap marketing studying the products of the competition rather than making market research among its (potential) users.

Actually when they designed the new F1 they did do quite a bit of market research among photographers. When I bought my New F1 in 1984 I went to the Canon Salon (where the F1 above photo was taken) and met some of the team.
Apparently as a little joke one of the polled Dutch photographers said his moustache kept getting caught in film rewind crank when he had a power winder attached–Canon put a slipping clutch in the crank that made it impossible to pull on hairy photographers.
I also had a copy of the book where some of the photographers questioned had photo's using the New F1 showcased.
I think it was called 'The New F1 world' and in the back they detailed the design and production techniques used in the New F1 including the use of Laser welding on the shutter components and Laser etching of focus screens.
So not everything was driven by copycat bean counters.

 

[sevo]

Actually when they designed the new F1 they did do quite a bit of market research among photographers.

Maybe. But they still got several things painfully wrong - "AE" finder, screens (where they wanted to beat Minolta in brightness, which they could, in the face of Minolta patents, only do by making the matte area essentially useless for focusing or DOF determination), and in general, the camera generation (a camera designed to top the F2, feature by feature, was out of place and time in the F3 age).

 

[Photo_Smith]

Maybe. But they still got several things painfully wrong - "AE" finder, screens (where they wanted to beat Minolta in brightness, which they could, in the face of Minolta patents, only do by making the matte area essentially useless for focusing or DOF determination), and in general, the camera generation (a camera designed to top the F2, feature by feature, was out of place and time in the F3 age).

I actually like the screen brightness, never noticed the matte area being 'useless' I did note the accuracy of the split image decreased below ƒ11 although never blacking out.
I had both the F3 (used professionally) and New F1 (personal) side by side and much preferred the Canon, the hybrid shutter brighter screen and better seals meant it would mist up less, Nikon had better flash systems (Olympus better still)
The AE screen was a good design which moved the information from the side (shutter) to the bottom (aperture) so it made it apparent which mode you had it in.
I also like the interchangeable screens (the big seller for me) where changing the screen (a few seconds) could enable spot, selective or average metering.

I suppose what this proves is one mans meat is another's poison I certainly didn't find the New F1 radically lacking compared to the F3

 

[Steve Bellayr]

If you are shooting sports and want the auto focus 50mm lens then your best choice is a comparable camera. The F4 & F5 are plentiful and not expensive. The F4 will suffice and probably will be less expensive. There wasn't much upgrade to the F5 & some pros preferred the F4 to F5.

 

[Mackinaw]

I'll never understand this Canon vs. Nikon thing. Like any camera system, each has its good points and bad points. I own a Nikon F and Canon F-1 and use them both.

Jim B.

 

[cosmonaut]

so i just got 20 rolls of 35mm off my friend for a super good price, i have a couple 35mm cameras (canonet ql17, olympus stylus epic, canon ae-1) but i only really use the canon ae-1 a lot.

i am looking to upgrade to different 35mm slr but i'm not sure what to get. i am definitely going to get the nikon 50mm f/1.8 afd but should i get the nikon f3 or f100?

probably going to be shooting lots of skating/bmx on it so a faster flash sync would help but autofocus doesn't really matter.

should i get one of those camera or a different one?

I got an F4s I love it.

 

[sevo]

I'll never understand this Canon vs. Nikon thing. Like any camera system, each has its good points and bad points. I own a Nikon F and Canon F-1 and use them both.

So do I. Still, Canon often was the more baroque and ornamental of the two - with quirks like changing the old on/off pair into a on/off/self timer trinity.
Under "form follows function" aspects I'd consider the EF and all variants of the F-1 their only reasonably pure and original cameras.

 

[Rob-F]

I had an F100 and got rid of it because I was never comfortable with the 22 custom settings. I worried that if one of them were to be set wrong, and I didn't know about it, my shots might be ruined. So I sold it to someone who later told me that while he was shooting it, the front panel of the camera fell off and was lost. Also, my dealer told me about the plastic rewind fork breaking; and problems with plastic parts in the back.

You asked about F100 vs. F3. I have an F3 and have found it very solid and reliable. But not being an AF camera, there would be no point in using it with the 50/1.4 AF lens. I see you are getting recommendations for the F5. Maybe that is the way to go, if you need autofocus. The F5 is a pro camera. The F100 is "pro-sumer."

 

[Thardy]

My daughter took a photography class in high school 4 years ago. I got her a Nikon N80 with a 50 mm lens which she used in manual mode.

The next year she was the sports editor for the yearbook and used a Nikon D90 where she took hundreds of photos. She's since switched to more compact digital cameras and I can't even pay her to shot and process film.

I suspect she shot and processed about 20 rolls of film during that class.

 

[Brad Bireley]

After reading all of the posts on what to get, I would go for a Canonnikonolympuskonicpentaxminoltamirandaleica ! 🙂

 

[Vics]

The FE only goes to 1/1000th I believe. The FE2 goes to 1/4000th. They cost more as well.

KEH has a black FE2 in BGN condition for $99.