If you are of the “the camera is just a box, the lens makes the image” school of thought, Pentax may be right for you.Ĭamera review: Side by side review of the Olympus MJU vs the Canon Prima Mini aka the 1€ & shipping challenge! – Andreas Zieroth Indeed, with the introduction of the M-line of compact cameras in 1976 Pentax largely obsoleted Olympus’ main competitive advantage. The attraction of Pentax is the ready availability of inexpensive K-mount lenses which, in addition to being optically unrivalled, are small and light.
#Best 35mm film professional#
Other than the professional system LX your high-end K-mount camera choices are a bit limited, though the KX is a worthy competitor to Nikon’s FM. If you can find an LX in good condition at a good price, buy it and begin collecting K-mount lenses. While Pentax made some of the best lenses in the business, Nikon offered more and better high-end cameras. Originally known as the Asahi Optical Company, their Takumar and SMC lenses are renowned for optical excellence. If there is one company which can boast lenses comparable or superior to Nikkors it is Pentax. The F-1, in any version, is an excellent camera but very difficult to find in good condition at a reasonable price. The AT-1, AV-1 and AL-1 are not worth the investment in my opinion. The A-1, AE-1 and AE-1 Program are fine cameras. The Canon A-series is possibly the most successful line of consumer-oriented SLRs in history. The Canon FTb is one of the finest all-metal, all-mechanical “built like a tank” 35mm SLRs ever made, though it takes mercury batteries, if that’s of concern to you. The New-FD lenses introduced in 1981 switched to a bayonet-style base like everyone else and were smaller and lighter without sacrificing optical quality. The old joke was that you needed three hands to change a Canon lens, one to grip the camera body, one to grip the lens and a third to rotate the breech locking ring. My primary criticism of the FL-series and FD-series lenses is that they are larger and heavier than their competitors and the breech-lock lens mount can be tricky in the field.
If you buy a prime Nikkor manual-focus lens you are purchasing a piece of optical artwork capable of superior image quality at a fraction of the cost of a comparable new lens. Second is the superb quality of Nikkor lenses. Since Nikon dominated the professional market for a solid two decades, there is a great deal of used manual-focus Nikon equipment floating around out there and it’s not hard to find. Nikon has a few advantages, the first being availability. If you’re looking to get into analog photography for the first time, there are a number of good systems available on the used market you could buy into. This is my humble contribution to that effort.īelow is a section from the book in which I make the case for Nikon while describing some of the more commonly available alternatives. If our collective knowledge is lost, then analog photography will not long survive. Those of us who spent most of our lives shooting with film have an obligation to share the benefit of our knowledge and experience with the younger generation.
#Best 35mm film plus#
The second edition presents detailed price analysis of the FM/FE series of cameras, the mechanical Nikkormats, and the F3, plus lenses including the 24/2.8, 35/2.8, 50/2, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 85/2, 105/2.5, 135/3.5 and 135/2.8, with unmodified pre-AI and AI-compatible versions analyzed separately. Choosing a 35mm film SLR? A quick look at six (vintage?) film camera manufacturers.