Film vs Digital - My SLR Camera

You'll probably remember the last post where myself and Ryan Conners – with a hard R, apparently – were talking about a film vs digital photo challenge.

She already had her weapon of choice, a Canon T70 but I would be getting one over her already with my single lens reflex photographic equipment choice.


I had spent most of the weekend looking over a well known electronic auction website and have absolutely fallen in love with the original series of first ever SLR cameras from Nikon. The brilliant Nikon F range was released from 1969 and paved the way for one of the most successful camera companies in the world. The first professional camera they released was the Nikon F but following closely behind were various sister cameras with differing functions. For instance the Nikkormat FTn had centre weighted metering, whereas the Nikkormat EL which came along in 19 was the first SLR to come with an electronic shutter; so if you were doing a long exposure and the battery ran out... the shutter would close.


Back to the auctions and I was watching a fair few Nikkormat F series cameras and on Friday morning I was lucky enough to win one at a very fair price. Excitedly for the next couple of days I would hope for a parcel from the postman and on Monday...

I had to resist the urge to rip open the package and grabbed my D90 to take some snaps.


The camera I'd bought is a 1967 Nikkormat FTn SLR, widely recognised now as one of the finest and reliable cameras of its era, a title I quickly realised was likely to be very accurate when I picked the camera up out of the box; so heavy and weighty.

The camera feels very purposeful and weighty in your hand and has such a fantastic mechanical feel to all it's settings. For instance the shutter speed dial that you can just see around the brilliant Nikon F lens mount, has a very deliberate and reassured click to each shutter speed.


And that brings us to the Nikkormat's Pièce de résistance; it's lens mount.


The Nikon F series were named (probably anyway) after their lens mount. The F mount lens has been used by Nikon from the first Nikon SLR in 1969 until...


... the new Nikon D4 that was released a few weeks ago. Which means that all lenses that Nikon have ever made will fit every SLR they have ever made, the only downside being that some lenses won't be able to use the auto focus function on some of the later models or the use of the aperture to change the metering on the earlier cameras.


This is my secret weapon with which I will beat Ryan in our coming challenge. I will be able to use either my Nikon 50mm 1.8... or my Sigma 70-300mm super zoom... or even my little 35-70mm Macro. Oh the choice ;)

Coming up... a little walk around video (which is now up and you can see it here) and also I do a little cleaning and refurbishing of the camera to make it look as best I can.


Thanks for reading guys, and I shall see you anon ready for the next instalment.


Chris