First, let me thank all once again for the valuable input. It's all been a bit of a new experience to me. Though I already know the Leica M family well and what I like and don't like - SLRs are a whole other ball game. I needed to fulfill a few criteria - mainly pertaining to reliability and quality within potentially professional applications. All this stemming from my interest in shooting film again.
Initially I had expected to purchase a compact 35mm camera, but the options have quite frankly dwindled to the point of becoming quasi luxury commodities. Over a grand for a Contax? 800 dollars for a Fuji Klasse? I mean, these are great cameras and all - but if they break (and they do tend to - I've had my share - especially the older ones), it's an expensive paperweight exercise. Age was a special consideration, and corroded wires or old batteries were not something I was willing to put up with.
So I considered going back to the metered M family - but that too seems to be in a state of demand where you are competing with 25 bidders for a good modern M body - and won't go into lenses, but prices slowly creeping up. I'd be looking at 1.5-2.5 US for anything decent within my specs.
SLR wise I dabbled with Olympus but had a hard time getting used to the shutter speed ring and was not impressed by the mid-range lenses I tried. I also had a short stint with the Minolta Leica R6.2 - that though had a lovely viewfinder, I had a few minor issues of semantics, film advance lever was not to my liking, the camera was overall bulky, and the 35 2.8 I had was soft around the frame. I was not interested in spending near M money in Leica R glass, especially when the good ones are also comparatively larger.
Coming from Nikon pro DSLRs and having been very much impressed by the shooting capabilities of Nikon Coolpix A as well as the quality of Nikon scanners, it felt sensible to consider a Nikon film kit as an alternative. This is where the FM3a came in, modern facilities and implied reliability in a compact and high quality package. The FM2n and FE s are so similar aesthetically that one could be forgiven for confusing them as near equals, but after reading the very well written - and sometimes romantic - report on Nikon's website, along with a generous offer by a fellow RFFer, it was obvious that the FM3a was most likely to fit the bill. Being a fan of the tessar look and the availability of 45mmP s sealed the deal.
Ultimately, when you get down to it - the FM3a with its hybrid electromechanical shutter (from what I understand the only one in the business) appears to be the superlative full manual SLR of the 21st century - I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this new kit! 🙂
