Nikon to focus :) on Digital Cameras

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4605418.stm

I wonder if this is a good time to sell my trusty FM and FM2. A dealer has offered me almost exactly what I paid for them years ago.

 

Dev, I guess all the time they can be repaired and assuming film is available and not price-prohibitive then it's worth sticking with. You might argue that it's worth picking up more bodies cheaply if spares become an issue. Your FM for example has had repair limitations and not been supported by folks such as Gray's for some years now IIRC.

I love my FM2N also, didn't stop me finally picking up an F3HP last year to scratch that itch but I still love the former. I can't imagine ever parting with that and the 105mm2.5Ai (gauss but scalloped metal focus ring). The F90X is all I ever need for capturing my daughter on the move three or four times each year in the park etc.

I guess I'll have to get with the digital programme one day just as I'll have to switch the cdp on more than the seeming bi-annual outings.

 

Don't forget theere are things you can do on film that digital still has problems with - like taking photos at night of buildings and the stars etc. The reciprocity failure and low noise of film is very helpful for these.

Admittedly the digital camera is very handy day to day, but get rid of my old X700? Never.

 

Paul,

As far as I can tell, some of the mechanical cameras are appreciating in value thanks to a significant number of collectors. I recently looked and could not buy a Nikon F2AS in mint condition for a reasonable price. At the moment the FM and FM2 selling for nearly twice what I paid for them, but obviously the dealer has only offered me half of that. He can apparently sell them without any problems but will that continue? I didn't think the FM/FM2s were classic. Now F2 range, that certainly was.

I (or rather my family as a birthday present to me) recently bought a D70S and now I doubt if I'll ever use the FMs again.

My original post was more to highlight the rather sad and predictable demise of Nikon film cameras and lenses. I wonder how long they'll keep the F6 running for. I thought at the moment there was still a (shrinking) market for the film cameras, at least for the professionals.

 

wish I'd kept my FE2 from years back rather than upgrading at the time to an F801s, as the former has held its price while the latter, while still a great camera, now goes for peanuts,so it just sits in the cupboard. Have to admit since getting a D70, I've not touched the film camera...

 

F801 was a great camera. I had one before I got burgled

 

I can't argue Dev. Perhaps I'm foolish to keep my film kit, I just enjoy the slides and the B&W so much though. Maybe one day either I or my successors will both enjoy them and hav esomething wonderful and rare in the hands, maybe they will be resigned to mere nostalgia and unusable.

I think I struggle with two things. Firstly, ever since I bought an F90X in 2001 after a Canon EOS300 nearly made me forget photography altogether, the set-up I grew along the way and the SQAi alongside have but one purpose, a handful of sets of slide or B&W a year of my daughter growing up, just capturing those years. Secondly, the tactile hand and eye quality, these shiny, plastic fu**ing computers just don't feel like cameras. I use an Olympus mju digital frequently but I derive no pleasure out of it whatsoever. The solid build, porthole viewfinders, classic minimalist functionality and robustness are a hard habit to give up.

 

I know exactly what you mean Paul. I like Nikons because of the handling and general feel of the controls.

I don't think there's any reason to throw away your film kit at all, but try playing with a D70 or D200. They feel good, although I do miss hearing the reassuring shutter click. I just love the way you can take a picture (without the delay that you get with most compact digital cameras), view it straight away and decide whether to keep it or not. With a decent sized CF card, you can store literally hundreds of images at maximum resolution. Try it, you may be pleasantly surprised, what have you got to lose? A few minutes/hours at a dealer. BTW, pick a good dealer who knows the cameras well.

You get all the features, like full manual override for focus, shutter speed and aperture, depth of field preview, God knows how many metering modes and remote control if you want. The flash is very sophisticated as well.

 

Now Konica Minolta quitting camera market atogether.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4627002.stm

I think it's very sad considering how highly the Minolta cameras were regarded a few years ago (OK a couple of decades ago). They introduced the world's first multimode camera with the XD7 AFAIK.

 

I've got an old F301 which still gets used once in a while - I need to get a couple of films developed, speaking of which.

HOWEVER, my experience with digital has its plus points - using CDRs and HDDs is certainly more reliable than losing my 1985-1999 photo negatives in a flood - yep, ALL of them.

 

Ouch! that must have hurt.

Yes obviously the future is digital, but to see Minolta name disappear altogether (not just film) is sad considering their rich history.

 

I loved my EOS 3, but got put off film completely because the huge rise of digital photography has meant that getting anything developed and printed to any modicum of quality has become impossible. I was getting back 90% of my negs and slides with serious scratches in that couldn't be corrected for in any way.

Also I recently sold my mother's EOS 1V (the canon equivalent to the F6). She paid over £1k for it in 2002, and only put 46 rolls through it. I struggled to get £450 for it.

When I spoke to a canon pro centre in 2003 they said that the digital pro bodies were outselling the EOS 1V by a factor of about 10. That will be higher still now, so I was astounded by Nikon's decision to release a new pro-level film body.

Film has its advantages of course. But so does digital... better high-iso performance, being able to burst shoot 50-60 images, ISO-on-the-fly, instant exposure confirmation (histogram chimping ), etc

 

Would have been nice if the manufactureres of cameras aimed at professionals and enthusiasts (which have interchangeable backs) had brought out a digital backs, as the medium format camera manufacturers such as Bronica (another name that's disappeared ) have done. I suppose the technical challenges were greater with thinner backs.

 

Dev - yeah, it wasn't particularly pleasant. Luckily almost all the photos weren't exactly amazing (I got my SLR in 1991), but there's some shots there that I'd LOVE to have the negs back for

I thought a company was developing a digital back for the Nikon F series? Guess that ended up being vapourware too

 

I think companies developing and concentrating on digital is a super thing. It means an already well developed technology will get better and better.

Camera bodies are just camera bodies, nothing to get worried about. But the lenses are a different matter, and as all the main players are devloping prosumer and pro SLR digitals I would imagine lenses will always be developed and maintained.

I purchased a NIkon D50 SLR this month, with a very basic lens but it is still light years ahead of my only few year old E10, taking shots is a pleasure and being able to delete 3 quarters of them because they didn't work at no cost is even better.

If you have some nice lenses, pick up this body, it will set you back around £400.

Seems like a win win to me.

 

The digital back idea was pretty problematic though... You couldn't fit power in, carrying extra weight of film transport, camera would continue to try to use off-film metering for flash exposures, etc...

However, one such product has been implemented. Leica offer a digital back that fits the R8 and R9 SLRs. The downside of it is that the back and powerpack alone weigh more than a Canon EOS 20D or Nikon D70. Still have to add the (considerable) weight of an R9 body to that...

It was certainly the case with film cameras that the camera was just a box to hold film and the lens was the really important bit. With digital cameras it's more complicated because the sensor has such a large bearing on image quality. In general DSLRs have very good sensors, although there has been the odd duffer (the Kodak DCS14n and its progeny, the slr/c and slr/n were plagued with noise problems and moire artefacts. Good at ISO 6 on scenes without detail below nyquist though...).

 

Kodak missed the boat on digital and they will always be on catch up.

 

Initially they were ahead of the game with products like the DCS520, DCS560, DCS760.

I guess it all fell apart when canon and nikon produced their own professional DSLRs and wouldn't supply pro-level bodies to kodak (so the DCS14 and slr/n were based on the F80, and the SLR/c was based on a sigma body with a canon lens mount (which the sigma mount is copied from anyway)). Then they were too ambitious about the sensor.

Interesting that fuji's forays into digital haven't been much better.

I think the konica-minolta thing will be interesting. It's been sold to sony and sony may well have decided to muscle in on the DSLR market which, with the prices that D50 and EOS 300D/350D now attract, is taking away from their "prosumer" models. The real question is whether they'll start to strong-arm nikon by taking away their supply of CCDs and LCDs.