krishnamu@nbs-amrf.UUCP (Prabahkar Murthy) (03/29/85)
This is an appeal to all you experts on the net.
I am a beginning photographer, relatively inexperienced with photo
equipment. I am considering purchasing a camera. I have been
perusing the camera ads of late and am interested by the Nikon FG.
Canon T70 sounds good too (it appears to have more features than the FG).
I would appreciate recommendations on the best buy (Price and features
comparable to the FG or the T70).
Please send mail to me.
-Prabhakar Krishnamurthy
UUCP : {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!nbs-amrf!krishnamu hkr4627@acf4.UUCP (Hedley K. J. Rainnie) (04/01/85)
I'd go (and did) for the FG. I think that Photography tends to suck you into it, and after a while you might get sick of gizmos, bells and whistles. These things eventually become obsolete, a working knowledge of photography never will. Besides, the T70 doesn't look like a real camera. I now use my FG on manual only, in fact I use it mostly on M90, the mechanical speed with flash. Less than one year after I got the FG, I wish that I had bought an FM2, a far less technoid camera, with its aperture visible in viewfinder, depth-of-field preview, etc. -r-
2141smh@rduxb.UUCP (henning) (04/03/85)
> I'd go (and did) for the FG. I think that Photography tends to suck ... > > Besides, the T70 doesn't look like a real camera. > > I now use my FG on manual only, in fact I use it mostly on M90, ... **** **** From the keys of Steve Henning, AT&T Bell Labs, Reading, PA rduxb!2141smh What really ammuses me since it is not my money is people that read the camera adds and get all excited about a camera, go out and buy it and find that they don't want to buy the lenses that go with it and buy some questionable lens. Believe it or not, the lens is the most important part of the camera. Next to the film, the lens is what takes the picture. A 35mm SLR is just a film holder, focusing aid, exposure meter and shutter. The lens and film are what take the picture. The following is a quote from a person that bought a great camera but now is looking for a lens: > I'm pretty much staying away from Nikkor because of their limited > zoom ranges and gawd-awful prices. My advice is to find the lenses that you eventually want at the prices you want to pay and then find a body that they will fit on that fits your needs. That is why I laugh at 9 out of 10 people that buy these very good but inexpensive Nikon cameras and then find that they don't want to pay "gawd-awful prices" for the good Nikkor lenses. There are a lot of other good lenses, but most of them are made by Pentax, Canon, Minolta, and Olympus; and not by these discount house brand names.
clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) (04/03/85)
In article <2720016@acf4.UUCP> hkr4627@acf4.UUCP (Hedley K. J. Rainnie) writes: [ discussions on Nikon FG and T70 ] >Besides, the T70 doesn't look like a real camera. So what? I got a T70 body from my SO as a wedding present. We both love it. It has a number of things going for it (I don't know much about the FG, so it may have some of these things too). It's light - seemingly as light as my SO's Fujica ST705 and 801 (which were chosen by her because they were small and light enough for her to hold comfortably). Much lighter than my elderly (non-programmable) AE1. The camera is very solid and nice to hold. It is very easy to use - automatic or not. On our honeymoon to Britain it took terrific pictures under all sorts of adverse conditions: 1) Continous rain - the pictures were so good that nobody believed that it was raining. No problems whatsover. We once went shooting with a newspaper photographer nearby - both his A1's shorted out - we had no problems even though we were shooting more than he was. It was sometimes so bad that you had to wipe the lense off before every picture. 2) Hand-held existing light photography under very dim conditions (interior cathedral ceilings and walls at night, the Roman Baths' underground museum etc.). Some of the exposures were as long as 1 sec. (Some, but not most, of these were by resting the camera on a convenient shoulder or chair back) We rarely used the flash. In spite of the rain, dim light and miscelaneous banging and crashing around, the T70 resulted in virtually *zero* dud pictures. We're used to 3-5 bad pictures per roll, but we did considerably better than that. Less than 10 out of 900 were thrown out due to exposure quality (many of them from the AE1 we were also lugging around). It was painful trying to reduce the pictures down to 500 (we're still not quite there!). Picture quality is generally better than my AE1. We usually use the T70 in AE lock mode which allows us to point the camera at what we want exposed "correctly", then locking the exposure, and then framing the picture as we want. The programmable modes (wide, normal, telephoto) allow you to optimize the camera w.r.t. camera shake and depth of field. I do use manual modes, but the automatic modes do such a good job that it often just isn't worth the bother. It also uses various intermediate exposure settings (eg: 1/10, 1/90, f6 etc.) giving more precise exposure control. My only complaints about the T70 are minor: - it doesn't display the shutter speed in the view finder - it doesn't support thru-the-lens-flash-metering (then again, neither do my flashes) - there is no way to do multiple exposure - the auto-load doesn't allow me to take pictures before the "1" frame. I usually get one or two pictures before the "1" with my AE1. By the way, I really recommend Fuji ASA 100 slide film (aka Black's prepaid slide film here in Canada). We used it almost exclusively on our trip. Wow. Beat the heck out of Ektrachrome 100 and 200. The colours are very bright and clear. I don't think that we will ever use anything else (except for special purposes). -- Chris Lewis, Motorola New Enterprises UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!utcs!mnetor!clewis BELL: (416)-475-1300 ext. 321
jmleask@wateng.UUCP (Jim Leask) (04/06/85)
>> I'm pretty much staying away from Nikkor because of their limited >> zoom ranges and gawd-awful prices. > >...... >find that they don't want to pay "gawd-awful prices" for the >good Nikkor lenses. There are a lot of other good lenses, but >most of them are made by Pentax, Canon, Minolta, and Olympus; >and not by these discount house brand names. There seems to be a bit of NIKKOR bashing here, that for the most part is warrented :-). But... I have a NIKKOR 35-105 zoom which doesn't fall into the category described above. The lens it small, 52mm opening so all your filters fit, and seems to have great optics. I never take the lens off my camera. This lens is relatively cheap however. I think it is going for about $270 US which is right in line with the other 'discount' lenses. This lens is a bit hard to find since most stores like to deal in cheaper stuff, but I recommend anyone with a Nikon camera to not indiscriminately rule out NIKKOR as a possible lens. Ask around and don't let the sales person just show you anything because this lens is sold out. As far as lights, bells etc on the camera.. who needs it. Photography is to much fun to let the camera do it all. --------------------------------------- Jim Leask ..!watmath!wateng!jmleask University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada