Nikon FE first impressions

Seems odd that I should be writing my first impressions of a camera that was launched to the world thirty years ago. In fact my real first impressions as a 14 year old in 1978 were probably "Wow... that's expensive!" but as I bought my FE last month for £40, it's not exactly relevant any more. 30 years ago it was a top spec semipro camera. The EOS 5D or F700 of its day. So what's it like 30 years on?

Spec wise it ticks all the boxes. It's easier to list what it doesn't do. Obviously, it's not digital and there's no AF. There's no matrix metering, spot metering or 'Program' exposure mode. If you want TTL flash and speeds to 1/4000 you'll need to get the FE2. Oh and even if you add the MD12 motordrive, you still need to rewind the film manually. 

30 years on, it all still works. Mine does anyway. The first thing I noticed was how smoothly all the controls work. The shutter dial turns with one finger. In '78 they were making a big thing about the 'constant torque' wind on lever mechanism. Still feels smooth today. As does the film rewind crank. 

But I'm not so thrilled by the viewfinder. It's smaller and darker than a Pentax MX, but then, not many cameras have a finder as nice as the MX. On the other hand it's bigger and brighter than a £1500 EOS 5D, and easy enough to focus. Like any camera with meter needles in the viewfinder, in low light, or even if there's something dark on the edge of you subject, you can't see what the meter's telling you. The FE's not alone here. Such classics as the Pentax Spotmatic and K1000, and the Olympus OM1 / OM2 suffer the same problem. Leave it set to auto in low light and trust it'll get it right!

Image quality was never going to be an issue. The Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AIS is as sharp as they come and after 2 rolls I can confirm that the metering is good enough to be left on auto for black & white. 

Perfect camera? Probably not, but it you looking for manual focus SLR, it's pretty close!

 

How we laughed!

I grew up in 1970's England, and learned to take photographs with my low end Japanese SLR. Happy and fortunate to live in the 'free west', we had few worries or restrictions on where we could go and what we could photograph. How we used laugh at the more restrictive societies on the other side of the 'iron curtain' where you could be arrested for taking a photograph of the wrong building, bridge or industrial site... While we had the latest and best kit from Japan, photographers in the east had to save up for years for horrible out of date clunkers like Zenits and Zorkis. Things are different now.

Here we are in 2008 a poster issued by the Police warns the public to call the anti-terrorist hotline if they see a photographer who seems a bit odd. People in Britain are being stopped and questioned by Police for, guess what... taking photographs of buildings, bridges or industrial sites. As was pointed out in the Gurdian newspaper recently, the 9/11 terrorists, the London Transport bombers, the Madrid bombers, the attempted 'liquid bombers', the Oklahoma bomber, the Unabomba and Richard Reid the shoe bomber did not use photographs to plan their attacks. Nor did the IRA and nor do middle eastern suicide bombers. In short, terrorists aren't photographers.

Meanwhile, people are paying 3 times the price of my 'new' Nikon for Soviet era Lomos... Did we loose the plot somewhere??

In search of the 'Perfect Camera'

It doesn't exist of course, but I've been searching for it anyway. Let me explain. For a few years I've been using Pentax manual focus gear with 2 bodies, an ME and an MX, along with various Pentax-M prime lenses. The ME gives aperture priority auto with +/- 2 stops EV override. The MX is fully manual and mechanical. Both are very compact well made have excellent handling. The lenses are great too. But what I'd really like is a combination of the two. AE with full manual override and a proper shutter speed dial. The ME Super is the obvious choice, but I hate the push button shutter speed control. And like the ME there's no aperture display in the viewfinder. The Super A is nice, but still has those push buttons. At least there's an LCD shutter speed display on the top plate, and most of them are finished in black. But I'll pass for now on the Super A. I nearly bought a P30T. It has a real shutter speed dial but no +/- EV overide and no manual film speed setting. Can you see the pattern here? Pentax gets it almost perfect every time. There's also the K2 (rare as hen's teeth) and the LX (too expensive). I'm going to have to switch to another make...

So I put together a list of must haves and a list of nice to haves:

Must haves:

• From a top manufacturer. I.e. Olympus, Canon, Nikon or Minolta. Pentax are already out.
• A manual focus camera, not an autofocus camera in manual mode.
• Aperture priority AE
• Metered manual
• A real shutter speed dial
• Shutter and aperture info visible in viewfinder
• DoF preview
• +/- exposure correction
• manual film speed setting
• Wide range of available lenses

Nice to haves:

• Self timer
• Program exposure mode
• Exposure lock
• Black finish

I dropped Minolta as their entire range is unfathomable to me. I'm not sure about the availability of lenses either. Canon went the same way as the AE-1 is shutter priority and the AV-1 doesn't have full manual. Which narrows us down to Olympus and Nikon.

I like the OM-2. I like it alot. But you loose shutter info in the viewfinder in manual mode. The OM40 looks good has program mode, but I don't like the way the manual metering works. In the Nikon camp there's the FG, also with program mode. Nice, compact, available in black. But for the same money I can get an FE, a proper camera made of metal.

So I did. £40 bought me a lightly brassed FE in black. The perfect camera? Pretty close. Watch this space!

Scanner Reviews

Why are decent reviews of film scanners so hard to find? Cameras are easy. If I want to find opinions of a DSLR, say, a Canon EOS 450D there are pages and pages of debate about every intricate feature. Even old film cameras are well represented on the net. Want to know why a Nikon F2 is so great? No problem. With scanners though, it's a different matter. The few that are out there roughly divide into two distinct camps.

Firstly there's the 'isn't it great to put all the old family snaps on the computer' type. These make the assumption that we all shoot digital and preserving the 'old' pics on the computer is pretty cool. These reviews are useless to a photographer.

Secondly there's the 'I bought this and it's great/junk'. These are usually accompanied by examples showing how great/useless it is. These example almost always have basic scanning errors like incorrect black and white points or a colour balance that is just so so wrong it screams. The reviewer either doesn't notice these faults, or blames the scanner for their inability to use it properly. These reviews are also useless to a photographer.

Scanning isn't easy. It's fiddly, time consuming and frustrating. But it would really help to see reviews of equipment by people who know the basics. Anyone?