h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My favourite camera of all time will always be the all-manual Canon F1. That thing was bullet proof. It only needed a battery to power the light meter... A bonus when shooting in very cold conditions. It had a simple needle matching light meter that made adjusting aperture and exposure times easy while looking through the lens. (The later model AE-1 Program only displayed a recommended aperture in the viewfinder requiring the photographer to pull the camera away from hir eye to adjust the lens... pure crap!)

My F-1 was stolen and so was my enthusiasm for shooting along with it.

That said, even I will agree that the Nikon F series was spectacular. When the autofocus cameras first came out Nikon and Canon took opposing tactics concerning their lenses. Canon decided they could produce superior lenses if they made dedicated autofocus cameras and lenses and discontinued their manual line of lenses. Nikon made their lenses and bodies compatible with existing equipment. Nikon owners could buy a new camera body and use their old lenses. Canon owners would have to replace everything if they wanted to try autofocus. The Canon autofocus lenses WERE superior, (they came out with the fastest, quietest autofocus lens at the time, an f1.0! 50mm lens that used nearly silent piezo-electric motors) but they lost many of their loyal customers in the process.

I still use my Canon AE-1 (not Program), described here:

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/SLRs/ae1/

As strictly an amateur, I normally leave it in automatic, so with the exposure time set, the aperture is automatically set. I'm not sure I understand your point about having to take my eye away from the lens to adjust ... must be when in manual mode.

In any case, Paul Simon made me feel inferior with his song "Kodachrome": "I gotta a Nikon Camera ..." I couldn't afford another camera, so I bought a Nikon camera bag. Sorta like a $10 Rolex.

Your AE-1 had a metering needle so it might have worked differently. In Automatic mode the AE-1 Program was fine, but trying to use it in manual mode was pointless. Through the lens you had no feedback as you changed apertures so unless you looked at the lens itself you didn't know if you had it set correctly. I was shooting a lot of sports at the time and didn't trust the auto mode.

Umm well I have never really used any of Cannon's pro cameras. I mostly use cameras my father uses, and well he is an ardent fan of Nikon, though he did buy me a Pentax LX and an MX. Wonder if anyone here has used the LX, it is very good with the metering, though quite a few people report problems with its mirror, and I hate the fact that it wasn't moulded with a grip unlike the F3.

Aurojit

"I was shooting a lot of sports at the time and didn't trust the auto mode."

I recall most of the pros and serious amateurs in classes I've taken never use automatic, they seem to think it is, at best, off by half a stop. I forget which way. I think some of them always set the film speed different from actual, maybe to offset this?

At my lowly level in auto, I end up trying to find the shortest time I can set without getting the blinking red light, telling me I need to set the exposure time longer yet - and this can be at 1/4 second! Actually, its telling me my cheap zoom lens isn't fast enough. So I brace myself as well as I can and try 1/2 second, and shoot three or four shots. (I know, tripod - but then you have to carry the damn thing ...)

Believe it or not (speaking of sports), I tried to shoot a cricket match in the Houston, Texas, Astrodome. It was called "double wicket", I think, with a couple of world class players from a number of countries (India, Sri Lanka, etc.), the rest of each team made up of locals. Amazing how dim the light can be in a place like that (in the daytime), especially with a 70 - 210 zoom from the Thatcher era. In the end, I got a handful of pretty good shots from a roll or two.

The latest top of the line cameras from Nikon and Canon are actually pretty good in their auto exposure modes now. The old cameras were just center weighted but the new ones can differentiate between all kinds of shots and adjust the exposures very well. There's about as much computing power in them now as there used to be in my first computer... maybe more!

It's my job to scan in the film shot on the shuttles and space station... I just wish someone would convince the astronauts to trust their Nikon F5s. The stuff they shoot usually looks great, but every once in a while it is plainly obvious they switched off the auto mode.

I see you work at the Johnson Space Center - a good friend of mine is also in the photography section there, you may know him. I guess I shouldn't post his name here without permission, but "Tom S." should be OK. I remember him griping about the astronauts photos, also.

If 'Tom' is skinny little fellow with a very bushy mustache, yep, I know him...SMALL World!

That's him. Tell him my wife, Paula, and her friend Ann saw an Aplomado Falcon in the Rio Grande Vally in late Jan. He'll understand.