I just devoted two successive blog entries to the Pentax KP in the last two months. It’s my go-to camera at the moment, and I was wondering why I was neglecting my more modern mirrorless camera for an older dSLR.
I have a small set of very good Fujinon XF lenses and a mirrorless camera – a Fujifilm X-T4, that when properly set up, will deliver great pictures. The X-T4 is the camera I have with me on “important” occasions, when I know the result matters and I won’t have a second chance. And when traveling with the family because they won’t let me spend 20 minutes on a single picture, and I know the X-T4 will capture very good images, quickly.
But when there is no particular pressure to deliver, when I have the time to carefully compose the image and finesse the settings, I tend to use a single lens reflex camera. And I was wondering why.
Casa Milo – Barcelona – Fujifilm X-T4 – Fujinon 10-24mm f/4 XF lens (electronic viewfinder)
I guess that when I’m watching the scene through an optical viewfinder, it is easier for me to mentally project the final photograph. Through an optical viewfinder, I’m looking at the scene itself, unmediated by processing, and my brain actively completes the image, interpreting light, contrast, depth, and intent. Because I am looking directly at the scene, my brain remains responsible for transforming reality into an image.
The focusing screen does not dictate the outcome; it leaves space for intention, anticipation, and interpretation. I imagine the photograph before it exists, and I will work with the settings of the camera and shoot again and again until I’m pretty confident that I have captured the image I originally had in mind.
An electronic viewfinder, on the other hand, replaces mental projection with visual confirmation. The LCD shows me what the camera thinks the picture should look like, already interpreted — shaped by the camera’s exposure simulation, tone curves, and color rendering. It shifts my role from author to reviewer. Instead of projecting the image mentally, I am reacting to the camera’s preview. The act of imagining gives way to the act of evaluating.
It’s probably a question of habit. Because I had been shooting with single lens reflex cameras for so long, I simply kept on following the same routine when I started using a mirrorless camera – bringing the viewfinder to my eye, and looking at the scene through the lens of the camera until I had a clear idea of the image I wanted to create.
Composing an image through an electronic viewfinder required another approach – I needed to learn how to abstract from the relative information overflow of the EVF, and let my brain define the image I wanted to capture without being limited by what the camera had decided to show me. I’ve had ten years to adjust (and I assume I did), but shooting through an optical viewfinder is still more natural to me.
There are still enough photographers who want to compose their images through an optical viewfinder to keep Leica in business, and for Fujifilm to make a killing with the X-100 and its hybrid viewfinder. And there may even be enough OVFs fans over the world for a trickle of Canon, Nikon and Pentax new dSLRs to keep on coming from the production lines. For the time being.
Corsica – view from MonteMaggiore – Fujifilm X-T4 – Fujifilm lens XC 15-45mm – I like contrasty images, and I often compose facing the sun, using its rays to shape the atmosphere and character of the image. It’s much easier to do through an optical viewfinder.
Out of curiosity, among the readers of this blog, am I the only one with a preference for the clear, unmediated view of the scene offered by optical viewfinders?
Providence Canyon State Park, Georgia – Nikon D750. (optical viewfinder)
Cochran Shoals, Atlanta – Pentax KP – Pentax DA 21mm Limited.
Vickery Creek – Roswell, GA. Pentax KP, Pentax DA 21mm Limited
Ball Ground – GA – inside the “Burger Bus” Pentax KP – Pentax lens 35mm f/2.8 Limited (optical viewfinder)
Driving around Montepulciano, in Tuscany – Fujifilm X-T4- Fujinon lens XF 10-24 F/4 ((electronic viewfinder)
The first generations of dSLRs from Konica-Minolta-Sony, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax were all built around CCD image sensors. Then, around 2006, the camera makers started integrating CMOS sensors, and within a few years CCD sensors were history.
Today, some photographers compare the images they get from their modern cameras (all equipped with CMOS sensors offering a very broad dynamic range and reaching very high ISO sensitivities without much noise), with the images they were taking with the best cameras of the CCD era, and they like the photos taken with the old cameras better. What is so special about CCD sensors, and why have they disappeared if they were so good?
A cenote near Cozumel – Pentax *ist DS – July 2007 (6 Megapixels CCD sensor)
Why CMOS won
For all the hype surrounding CCD sensors, they had reached their peak in the 2006-2009 years – the last CCD sensors from Kodak and Sony were either unreliable or performing poorly above 800 ISO – and the technology of CMOS sensors had much more potential.
In 2006, camera makers started switching to CMOS sensors because they saw three main advantages in them:
a much lower power consumption – we now tend to forget that the CCD’s high power consumption and the related heat dissipation were major engineering issues at that time,
a much faster data acquisition,
a potential for higher ISO performance and wider dynamic range.
Live-view (composing the photo on the rear LCD of dSLRs), video capture in available light and mirrorless cameras were only made possible by the generalization of CMOS sensors, and would have been next to impossible with the CCD sensor technology.
Why this love for CCD sensors ?
In a few words, photographers tend to believe that images captured with a CCD sensor equipped camera are more “film like”.
The film look? – Venice – Gondoliers in the sun set. Nikon FE2. Fujicolor 400 film
I suffered for you and watched half a dozen Youtube videos where the authors are comparing the pictures taken with some of the best CCD equipped dSLRs with images taken with the CMOS equipped cameras that immediately followed. The conclusion is that if you make a serious apples to apples comparison on RAW files (same brand of camera, same lens, same resolution), there may be a difference, but really minimal. Images taken with a CCD may have a bit more punch, a bit more contrast, and the transition between colors may be more abrupt than on images captured with a CMOS. But again, the differences are marginal, only visible to pixel peepers.
So, if the RAW files are to a large extend similar, where is the perception coming from, that CCD sensors deliver more natural images than CMOS sensors? Could it be that the supporters of CCD sensors are only shooting JPEGs?
CCD and CMOS are different technologies, and their noise characteristics are not the same. They also behave differently in presence of strong highlights (the tone curve of images captured with a CMOS sensor is linear, as opposed to film and, to a lesser extent, CCD, which have a more S shaped tone curve). At the beginning of the transition from CCDs to CMOS sensors, camera vendors had more experience dealing with the noise patterns and tone curve characteristics of the images coming from CCDs than from CMOS sensors, and as a consequence their JPEG rendering algorithms were giving more “natural” (understand crowd pleasing) results when starting from the raw data of CCDs.
The CCD bias of the JPEG Rendering engines did not last. Camera manufacturers learned how to take advantage of the larger dynamic range and the lower level of noise of CMOS sensors to deliver images that mimic film behavior more closely than CCD sensors ever did.
The generalization of CMOS also allowed a raise in the pixel density of the sensors, and with it the end of the need for an “anti-aliasing” filter (the Nikon d800e launched in 2012 was the first dSLR deprived of an AA filter). By 2014, the “new normal” was a camera with a 16 to 24 Megapixel sensor and no anti-liaising filter, capable of a much higher real-life resolution than a 6 or 10 Mpix CCD operating behind an anti-liaising filter. No wonder a photographer upgrading from an early dSLR was a bit surprised by the “surgical” nature of the JPEGs.
Venice, on Dec 25th 2010 – Shot with a Nikon D80 and a Sigma 18-125 lens. (10 Megapixel CCD Sensor)
So…
The “CCD look” was a JPEG thing.
the “film like” look of images captured with CCDs was the result of lower resolution sensors, thick anti-liaising filters, and above all a product of the JPEG image processing algorithms used at that time.
With modern cameras, “film like” behavior can be emulated to a much higher degree than what the JPEG engines of the cameras of 2005 could do. Film emulation (or Picture Styles or whatever the camera manufacturer calls its brand of JPEG rendering recipe) is not only good at mimicking the tonal response and the colors of film, but also its grain.
Now that every camera maker is proposing some form of “Picture Control” or film simulation to customize the output of their JPEG rendering engine, it’s remarkable that nobody is proposing “CCD emulation”. Maybe it was not so much of an issue after all?
CCD equipped cameras are still available on the second hand market, are generally very cheap, and will give your images the full CCD look if it’s what you’re after.
CCD equipped compact cameras
The compact (point and shoot) cameras of the early days of the digital migration are the ones delivering images closer to the film look, probably because of the low resolution of their image sensor and the very consumer oriented tuning of their JPEG rendering engine. I’m still impressed by the “Barbie at the beach” look of the JPEGs of my old Canon S400 Powershot (Digital Elph or Ixus).
Compact cameras switched from CCD to CMOS sensors later than dSLRs – the last models being launched around 2011.
With the exception of sensors manufactured by Kodak for the Leica M9 (which had very significant long term reliability issues), there is no Full Frame CCD sensor, and only one APS-C sensor with a resolution higher than 10 Megapixel (a 14 Mpix APS-C sensor only used by Sony on the Alpha 280/380 series, which had a reputation of being no good above 800 ISO).
Because of the technical characteristics of CCDs, there never was a CCD equipped mirrorless camera, or a CCD equipped dSLR offering real Live-View capabilities (the Sony Alpha 350/380/390 used a second, dedicated sensor in its viewfinder to offer Live-View). The last dSLRs equipped with CCD sensors were launched around 2010 (Nikon D3000, Sony Alpha 290 and 390).
Let’s focus on the 10 megapixel cameras from Nikon, Olympus, Pentax and Sony:
Nikon D200, D80, D40X, D60, D3000 – they all share a 10 Megapixel CCD sensor of the same family. The D200 is often considered the best CCD equipped dSLR ever, but it’s a big and heavy camera designed for pros. There is little difference between the D40X, the D60 and the D3000 – all three are entry level dSLRs designed for beginners and amateurs. The D80 sits in-between. A Nikon D80 was my main camera for years, and I’m still impressed by the quality of the pictures I took with it (I love the D80’s JPEGs).
Olympus was the first camera maker to take advantage of CMOS sensors to offer Live View in a limited fashion (on the E330 in 2006). The e400 of the same year is their last dSLR with a CCD sensor (a 10 Megapixel sourced from Kodak). Like the Nikon D200, the e400 has a legion of enthusiastic fans and is comparatively expensive second hand.
Pentax K10D, K200D, K-M, K-2000 – the K10D is the big semi-pro camera, the other models are smaller and more amateur oriented. The 10 Megapixel Pentax dSLRs are generally appreciated for their beautiful RAW files, but reviewers complain about their comparatively poor JPEGs, which may not be great if you’re after the CCD look.
Sony a100, a200 and a300 series – all are the successors of Konica-Minolta 5D. The 100 and 200 series are very conventional amateur oriented models, the models of the 300 series offer Live-View capabilities thanks to a second dedicated image sensor.
Canon is absent from that list. For their line of dSLRs, they made a very early bet on CMOS – I believe that the EOS-1d of 2001 is their only CCD-equipped dSLR. Note that they kept on integrating CCD sensors in their line of digital point and shoot cameras until 2011.
Venice – Nikon FE2 – Fujicolor 400 – Dec. 2010
The value of cameras on the second hand market tends to be driven primarily by the sensor resolution – and 10 megapixels is considered so low that all the cameras of this list can be bought for less than $150 (the Nikon D200 is the most expensive, the oldest “amateur” models being the cheapest at $50.00 to $70.00). Interestingly, 10 Mpix CCD compact cameras like the Canon G12 or the Nikon P7100 currently sell for more than the best 10 Megapixels dSLRs. Nikon D200 included.
My big 2025 photography project was to move all my pictures out of my hardware dependent local storage, and migrate them to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. I knew I would not convert my Lightroom 6 catalogs (theoretically possible, but too cumbersome), but the folders on the Network Attached Storage device (NAS) where the originals were stored had always been carefully organized. I thought I would not lose much by not converting the catalogs. I subscribed to Adobe’s Lightroom Creative Cloud (first through the Apple Store, later directly on the Adobe Store), and uploaded all the original images, folder by folder, to Lightroom. The process was described in detail is a series of blog entries dedicated to Lightroom.
Which means I’m now trusting Adobe for preserving 28 years of scanned negatives and digital images in their cloud. What can possibly go wrong?
A recent post by Jim Grey (about “the lost photos era”) and interactions I’ve had with cloud service providers in a professional context brought back to my attention that storing my images in a cloud was a good first step but not enough.
Rome – Fontana de Nettuno – Piazza Navona. Nikon D80 – Jan 2010
The “shared responsibility model”
All cloud service providers (CSPs) operate under a shared responsibility model. It’s the CSP’s job to ensure that their technical platform remains available and secure, and that the data entrusted to them can be recovered in case of a disaster in their data centers. As the client, it’s your responsibility to “govern your content”: manage the uploads, the regular cleanups, and configure how the data is accessed and shared.
The grey area is of course backup – CSPs generally commit to recovering your data at Day Minus One if something really bad happens to their infrastructure, but they won’t be obligated to do anything if you deleted a folder by mistake, or if you wanted to recover a group of files as they were at a specific point in time. CSPs generally consider that backups and restores are the responsibility of the client.
Although Adobe is a reliable company, I know I have to protect my images from a catastrophic error on their part, and from a major mistake (fat finger?) on mine.
Rome, Jan 2010 – Nikon D80
A reminder – the differences between Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic
Adobe Lightroom Classic is the current iteration of Adobe’s original image edit and management software, launched in 2007 as Lightroom 1.0.
It’s a “fat client” application designed to work on Windows or MacOS workstations (desktop or laptop), which stores your images locally (on the hard drive of your workstation or on some form of higher capacity local storage, DAS or NAS). Lightroom maintains at least one local catalog of your images, which contains all the ratings, flags, titles, captions you have entered, as well as a log of all the edits and setting changes (crops, exposure, color balance, sharpening,…) performed on the images.
The system is totally self contained – but as everything (catalog, images and edits) is kept locally, it’s your responsibility to manage the storage, the backup and the disaster recovery of your images.
Under the same Lightroom brand, Adobe is selling a totally different range of cloud based products simply named Lightroom or Lightroom CC, whose lightweight clients run on a smartphone (iOS or Android), a tablet (iPadOS or Android) and on a desktop or laptop (Windows or MacOS). All those products share the same on-line library (hosted on Adobe’s Creative Cloud).
Contrarily to Lightroom Classic, the Creative Cloud versions of Lightroom (smartphone, tablet, PC or Mac) don’t keep any image or catalog on your device – just a cache to reduce the response time. The whole system works very well: I can upload images from my camera through a smartphone while traveling, perform light edits on a tablet at the hotel the same day, and spend more time perfecting the images on a laptop when I’m back home – it’s seamless. As long as I keep paying for the subscription, of course. And bar a catastrophic event in Creative Cloud.
Rome – Fontana de Nettuno – Piazza Navona. Nikon D80 – Jan 2010
Backup workflows don’t live forever
Even if the image formats themselves (jPEG and DNG) have been remarkably stable over the last 20 years, the hardware, the software and the cloud services offerings have not stopped evolving – and what used to work reliably ten years ago does not work any more. Which means that every now and then, we need to take a hard look at our workflow and re-engineer it.
When I put it in place in 2018, my image preservation workflow made sense – I was using Adobe Lightroom 6 running on a Mac to edit my photos and manage my libraries. Lightroom 6 was keeping the catalog on the local hard drive of my Macbook and was pointing to a volume on the Netgear NAS to store the images themselves. I was also running a backup application named Arq on the Macbook, and using it to keep a backup of the NAS in Amazon’s long term storage, AWS Glacier.
Along the years, this finely tuned workflow crumbled.
First, the OS of my old MacBook stopped being supported, and I saw its capabilities decline progressively as it could not access the services that Apple (and others) kept on making more secure with more refined security protocols and longer encryption keys.
To make the matter worse, Netgear decided to get out of the network storage business – my RN214 NAS still works, but is not supported and (of course) its OS and its built-in backup apps are not updated anymore.
Last but not least, AWS has now sunset Glacier as I was using it – it’s not a stand alone product anymore, just a storage class in the S3 product portfolio, using different APIs.
Rome, Jan 2010 – Nikon D80
My storage and backup strategy was crumbling and I had to act. That’s why I migrated the libraries themselves to Adobe’s Creative Cloud last year, and why I’m now implementing a new backup and restore workflow now.
My new workflow– saving the “digital negatives“
As often nowadays, I called ChatGPT for help. The workflow it recommended, and that I implemented, is still based on Adobe Creative Cloud being my primary image store, the “source of truth”. Lightroom (the PC/Mac edition of Lightroom) on my MacBook will act as a sort of gateway to the NAS, and the NAS volume will store my local replica of the originals stored in Creative Cloud.
It’s important to remember that for Lightroom, a local storage volume is nothing more than the place where it stores a local cache. What is being replicated to the local volume is the source image – the original JPEG or raw files exactly as they were originally uploaded from the camera – before any transformation, optimization or edit was performed. The images are grouped on the SAN by date (one folder per year, one subfolder per day) and the album structure you defined in Lightroom is not respected. Again, it’s a cache that we use as a way to backup our source images, not a backup of the final images after Lightroom has processed them.
The local cache on the SAN shows the original files grouped by date of capture – the Lightroom Album structure and the edits are not preserved, only the original image itself (compare with the structure of April 2016 in Lightroom, as shown below).
Lightroom CC – the folder/album structure (here, April 2016). In Lightroom the images are grouped in user defined folders and albums.
How to setup Adobe Lightroom
Once the Mac is logged in the Network Attached Storage volume, simply click on the “Adobe Lightroom” option at the top left of the screen, select “Cache”, and under Performance, check the “Store a copy of all originals option”, and point to the folder of the NAS where the original images will be dropped.
The sync process is managed automatically by Lightroom. Every time you add new pictures to Lightroom, it will start replicating them to the SAN.
If you’re working with Lightroom away from your home network, no problem. Adobe will consider that the cache is not available, and will download the images from the cloud.
In Lightroom CC – check the “Store a copy of all originals” option and point to the NAS as a the local storage
Creating an off-site backup of the Network Attached Storage volume
The primary storage location of my images is Adobe Creative Cloud. I keep a replica of the originals on a network attached storage device (NAS) at home. It’s a pretty solid data protection system, but it’s only keeping one replica of Creative Cloud’s originals – and a replica is not a backup (because it only keeps the most recent version of a file). It is not very complicated or expensive to make it even more robust, and create an off site backup of the original images.
Duplicati – the backup job (it took it 12 hours to backup 110 Gbytes of pictures – not bad at all).
That’s what I used to do with Amazon Glacier – and having an off site backup of my photo library was a saving grace when my first Netgear NAS device gave up the ghost. Restoring the images from Glacier took a week, but it’s better than losing everything.
The target Google Drive after the backup – the data is grouped in blocks of 50 Mbytes.
This time, I tried different options (Arq, Backblaze) which for various reasons (performance, cost, no support of network attached devices) did not work for me. My current setup is based on an open source software named Duplicati, which is pushing the Lightroom replica on the NAS to a Google Drive. It works, backups are reasonably fast (around 2.5 Mbytes/sec), and it’s flexible enough: I can recover a specific image in a few minutes if I need to.
Validating that the setup works
Backup and restore workflows are fragile, and they can fail for all sorts of reasons (expired passwords or keys, OS or software upgrade, hardware or network related issues, human error). And it’s not because the backup is successful that the restore will be.
Restoring the data – selecting the document to restore is easy and the restore takes no more than a few minutes.
I had to validate that, with the Mac and Lightroom CC up and running, and the NAS volume mounted, that:
any new image added to the Lightroom CC library was replicated to the SAN, in its original state,
the backup software would catch the new image and back it up to the Google drive,
and that I could restore any image or any group of images as needed.
The tests were successful.
Saving the final images
You may also want to preserve a copy of the final state of your images, after Lightroom has applied all of its edits.
The challenge of course is that in Lightroom, the images don’t really have a final state. Adobe keeps your original photo and a sort of log of the transformations you performed, and dynamically creates a file containing the image you want after you have requested an export. You pick the quality, the dimensions, and the file format (small JPEG, large JPEG, PNG, TIFF, DNG, …) with or without sharpening – depending on what you intend to do with the image (email attachment, social media, photo gallery, photo album, print, …). And the image you need is created on the fly.
Lightroom – so many ways to export a photo
I understand that a professional photographer delivering images to many clients may want to keep a trace of what was delivered, and have an archival system specifically tuned to preserve them. (And pros may prefer working Adobe Lightroom Classic, anyway).
I’m not in this situation and I’ve never really given much thought about it. I simply export the images I need to the same shared folder in Apple’s iCloud, that all my Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook) can access.
Final words
In the days of film, it was not easy (or cheap) for amateur photographers to create duplicates of their color slides or their negatives, and store them in a second location as a backup. Photographers were at the mercy of fire, floods and burglaries, and could lose the images of a lifetime in a few minutes.
Digital images can be easily duplicated, and the duplicates stored in totally different locations, on totally different media. The setup described here is very easy to implement: a NAS is not even needed (the local SSD of a PC or a Mac would work as well), and many of our subscriptions (Microsoft Office Family for instance) already include 1 TB of storage and could be used as backup target.
More about Lightroom and fifty five camera reviews:
All the images of this series were shot in Rome, in April 2009 and in January 2010, with a Nikon D80. They were saved as originals on multiple generations of storage, recovered from a catastrophic NAS failure, and imported in Adobe’s Creative Cloud last year. I just adjusted a few sliders before exporting them to WordPress.
I’ve bought a few old Pentax cameras recently, film and digital, and out of curiosity I’ve started following what’s happening in the world of Pentax aficionados.
There was a passionate discussion recently on Pentaxforums.com, started by a photographer who was disappointed by his recent mirrorless camera system, and was considering selling everything to go back to a Pentax dSLR (he was balancing between a K-1 Mark II and a K-3 Mark III).
I am not going to pronounce him right or wrong – what he likes to shoot with or how he spends his money is his business, not mine. But not that many photographers are still interested in new dSLRs.
The fact is that digital single lens reflex cameras (dSLRs) form a rapidly receding niche, and that in the battle for the dollars of photographers (enthusiast amateurs, influencers, vloggers and pros alike), mirrorless cameras have won. A few data points to illustrate it.
Panasonic G2 and Nikon D700 – mirrorless cameras can be made small
When were the last dSLRs launched?
Olympus stopped selling dSLRs in 2013, and Sony officially discontinued their SLR and dSLR “A” Mount in 2021 (their last dSLR was launched in 2016). Canon’s most recent dSLR is the Rebel 8 from 2020, Nikon’s latest is the d780 from 2020, and Pentax’s is the K-3 Mark III, introduced in 2021. A variant of the K-3 with a monochrome image sensor was introduced in 2023, so that would make the K-3 III Monochrome the most recent of them all.
Canon and Nikon have not shared any plan to launch a new dSLR in the future (it’s likely they won’t), but since the launch of the Rebel 8 and d780, they have launched 14 and 11 mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, respectively.
A very compact APS-C setup – Egypt – Abu Simbel – Fujifilm X-T1 – Fujifilm 15-45mm lens.
Who is still manufacturing dSLRs?
It’s difficult to know for sure what is still being manufactured – what we see on the shelves of the retailers may be New Old Stock or the output of small, infrequent production batches. Some models (like the Nikon D6 or the Pentax K-3 Mark III) have been withdrawn from some markets already, and other models – while not officially discontinued – may not be manufactured “at the moment”.
I checked the Web site of B&H, and here’s what’s still available new in the United States (with the official warranty of the manufacturer).
Canon still have six dSlRs on their US catalog, ranging from the Rebel to the 1Dx (three APS-C cameras, three full frame)
Nikon are proposing four models: the APS-C d7500, and three full frame models: the d780, d850, and D6,
As for Pentax, they are still proposing three cameras with an APS-C sensor, the KF, the K-3 Mark III and the K-3 Mark III Monochrome, and a full frame camera, the K-1 Mark II.
Shooting with a old APS-C dSLR last week – Atlanta – Bobby Jones Golf Course. Pentax K-5 Mk II – Pentax lens 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 AL WR
Why did mirrorless win in the first place?
The Nikon D90 from 2008 was the first SLR capable of recording videos. But the architecture of a single lens reflex camera (with a flipping reflex mirror and an autofocus module located under the mirror) forced Nikon to design a camera that operated differently when shooting stills and videos.
For stills, the D90 worked like any other dSLR ( with a through the lens optical viewfinder and phase detection AF). When shooting videos, the reflex mirror was up, and the viewfinder could not be used. The operator had to compose the scene on the rear LCD of the camera. The phase detection autofocus system was also inoperant. A second system, based on contrast detection, had to be implemented, and could only be used before the videographer started filming.
The obvious next step was to replace the flipping mirror and the optical viewfinder with an electronic viewfinder fed directly by the image sensor of the camera, and to improve the contrast detection autofocus to make it as reactive as a phase detection system, and available during the video shoot. Panasonic was the first to do it with the Lumix G2 in 2010. Almost everybody else would soon follow.
The obvious advantage of a mirrorless ILC is that it can shoot indifferently photos and videos – the camera works exactly the same way. It’s a big plus for all the pros and content creators who have to deliver a full set of images (stills and videos) when they film weddings or corporate events.
Mirrorless cameras, being deprived of the mirror box and of the optical viewfinder of a SLR can be made smaller, lighter, and probably cheaper because they are simpler mechanically.
The absence of a mirror box also reduces the lens flange distance, and lenses can be made shorter. Because there is no need for aperture pre-selection and full aperture transmission mechanisms, lens mount adapters are extremely simple to design and manufacture. Practically, almost any lens designed for an SLR or a dSLR can be physically mounted on a mirrorless camera.
Leica Summicron C (40mm f/2) mounted on Sony NEX 3 with Metabones adapter. Mirrorless cameras are more flexible.
Early mirrorless were handicapped by relatively poor electronic viewfinders (lacking definition, reactivity and dynamic range) and a limited battery life. Over time, mirrorless ILCs have made a lot of progress in those two areas – recent prosumer and pro ILCs have really impressive electronic viewfinders.
Electronic viewfinders show the image exactly as the image sensor is “seeing” it. If the viewfinder is good enough, it’s even possible to evaluate in real time the exposure of a scene – and play with the exposure compensation dial to adjust it: what you see is really what you’re going to get.
Pentax K-5 Mk II – very few APS-C mirrorless cameras have a top plate LCD and that many dedicated keys.
Advantages of recent dSLRs
The most recent dSLRs were launched between 2020 and 2021, and their capabilities are at best in line with what was the state of the art four to five years ago.
Those dSLRs offer bluetooth and Wifi, and are as easy to connect to a mobile device as modern ILCs.
They keep the traditional advantages of dSLRs: an optical viewfinder, and longer battery life, but as a consequence remain larger and heavier than ILCs.
The native support of lenses designed for the brand’s SLRs and DSLRs over the past decades looks like an advantage, but older lenses may only be partially compatible, and they may lack the resolution required to take advantage of recent image sensors.
As for newer lenses – they’re increasingly difficult to find now that the industry leaders have redirected their R&D and manufacturing efforts towards ILCs.
Bringing a Nikon D700 to a race – because the only tele lens I had was an old Tamron in F Mount. US Formula One Grand Prix – Austin TX
Switching back to a dSLR?
I wrote earlier I would not be judgmental, but I’m still struggling to understand why somebody would take a significant financial hit to move from a very recent, top of the line mirrorless camera system to a dSLR released eight years ago.
Even though I like shooting with dSLRs and older film cameras (they can be more pleasant to use than some mirrorless ILCs) I believe that using a recent mirrorless camera will increase my odds of capturing a technically good image (the artistic value is a totally different story).
Mirrorless cameras are more flexible and will be within their performance envelope in more situations. If the shooting opportunity is unique and I need to deliver – if only for my pride as an amateur photographer – I’ll bring my mirrorless kit with me.
The Nikon D700 remains a fantastic camera. If only it was not so heavy and so big.
As a lover of old gear – even digital – I’d like to offer a suggestion: very nice “prosumer” 16 or 20 Megapixel APS-C reflex cameras from the early 2010s can be found for $150; a “classic” like the Nikon d700 from 2008 (12 Megapixel, full frame) is more expensive, but not by that much if you pick a camera that has been used by professional photographers and has shot hundreds of thousands of pictures.
So, if you feel the dSLR hitch from time to time, my recommendation would be to keep your mirrorless system, and simply augment it with an old dSLR for the days when the call of nostalgia is too strong to resist.
More in CamerAgx about mirrorless and reflex digital cameras
What camera to pick when you’re new to film photography and want to shoot with something a bit better than a point and shoot camera? The question is still bugging would-be film photographers in 2025. In the late nineteen seventies, Japanese camera manufacturers were trying to attract new categories of users to their single lens reflex systems, and started launching small, light and cute SLRs, easier to use and less intimidating than the big, heavy, complex and expensive best sellers of the time.
In order to make those cameras easy to use, they embraced the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and deprived those entry level cameras from features and controls that seasoned photographers were taking for granted – they only operated in automatic mode, and generally did not even have a shutter speed dial.
Nikon EM and Pentax ME – very similar specs
Pentax opened the way with the ME in 1976, followed (in no specific order) by Olympus (with the OM-10), Canon (with the AV-1), Fujica with the AX-1, and least but not least, Nikon. Until that point, Nikon had always tried to convey the image of a manufacturer of high quality products, sold at a premium over the models of its competitors. The Nikon EM from 1979 was a big shift – the privilege of shooting with a Nikon SLR was being made available in a simple camera, at a price point in line with the competition.
Almost 50 years later, cameras like the Nikon EM or the Pentax ME are among the cheapest SLRs manufactured by a first tier brand. Good copies typically sell between $50 and $100, when cameras generally recommended for beginners, like the Pentax K1000 or the Canon AE-1, can command prices above $100, and really nice cameras of the same vintage like the Nikon FE2 routinely reach prices in excess of $300.
Pentax ME – the viewfinder Nikon EM – the viewfinder
The Nikon EM
Like the Pentax ME, the EM is an ultra-compact camera, operating only in aperture priority mode, and deprived from a shutter speed dial and from a depth of field preview lever. Besides the logo on the front of the prism and the bayonet mount, the biggest difference betwen the two is that the shutter speed selected automatically by the camera is indicated by a needle moving on a scale at the left of the viewfinder on the EM, while the ME relies on red LEDs.
Following the example of Pentax with their M series lenses, Nikon developed a line of more compact and lighter lenses for this model (the E series lenses). The 50mm is almost a pancake lens – with an excellent image quality in spite of its really small size (the E series 35mm f/2.5 is also one of my favorites).
Pentax had launched the ME Super and the Super-Program for the photographers who expected more controls on a SLR. Similarly Nikon derived the FG from the EM, with a shutter speed dial and a program auto exposure mode.
The lineage of the ME stopped with the Super-Program and Program-A , the EM’s with the FG20.
The Nikon FG offers a semi-automatic exposure control mode, and a switch to disable the “beep”
Comparing the EM with the ME
The ME and the EM have 4 things going for them today:
they’re incredibly small, in particular with an “almost” pancake lens like the Nikon Series E 50mm or the Pentax M 28mm lens.
they’re nicely finished, – the EM was only available with a black finish, and although the external shell is made of polycarbonate, it still looks cool today, while the ME – still built entirely in metal, has a few clever details (such as the film advance indicator) and a nice detailing.
Almost any lens made by Nikon or Pentax between (roughly) 1975 and the first years of this century can be mounted, including autofocus lenses.
Above all, they’re simple – you set the aperture, place the subject in the frame, adjust the focus, and shoot. Even simplified, they’re still real cameras – with a good viewfinder with precise focusing aids, a direct control of the aperture and an indirect control of the shutter speed.
Nikon EM with 50mm E series lens, Pentax ME with a 50mm f/2 A series lens.
They have a few things going against them as well:
Because they’re somehow over simplified, they are more difficult to bring to do exactly what you want than a semi-auto camera or a camera with multi-mode automatism. An experienced photographer will be able to work around it, but beginners will be limited in their progression:
the control of shutter speed is indirect only (you have to adjust the aperture so that the automatism reacts by adjusting the shutter speed – there is no shutter speed dial and therefore no semi auto mode).
there is no exposure memorization either, only primitive exposure compensation systems. The exposure compensation for backlit subjects is either too simple (-2 EV at the push of a button is the only option on the EM) or too complex for beginners (expo compensation dial on the film sensitivity dial for the ME).
there are some irritating quirks – the EM beeps all the time (every time it believes the exposure is going to be under 1/30sec or reach 1/1000 sec). On the ME (and all the ME derivatives up to the Super Program), the control knob around the shutter release button is difficult to use unless you have the fingers of a garden fairy.
The real issue with those two cameras is that in the same price range you can buy the follow up models (Nikon FG, Pentax Program-A and Super Program) that keep most of the good points (small size, beautiful finish, choice of lenses) but are even simpler to use (there is a program mode) and simpler to over-ride (there is also a semi-auto mode).
Pentax Super Program – in some exposure control modes, the shutter speed is selected with the two push buttons and shown in the viewfinder and in the small LCD at the right of the prism
In summary
The EM does not cut it for me. It may be marginally more capable than the Pentax ME (the exposure compensation button is convenient), but the beeps are too irritating. On the FG there is a switch to silence the beeper, but not on the EM. The EM and the FG also seem more fragile than their bigger brothers in the Nikon range. The real problem with the EM (and the FG to a lesser extent) is that they were stepping stones in a range of cameras which included real gems. In the Nikon line-up of the late seventies/early eighties, the FM and the FE offer more flexibility, and a more robust built. Admittedly these two are a tad more expensive and a bit heavier than the EM, but not much larger and nicer to use. As for the FM2 and the FE2, they’re in another league altogether.
On the other hand, the Pentax ME and its descendants were not a low cost point of entry in the Pentax family, they were all that Pentax had to propose if you wanted to use Pentax SMC lenses. I like the Pentax ME – it’s nicely built and refreshingly simple – I even prefer it to the Super-Program, which is more capable but also more complicated to use, and requires even smaller fingers to change the settings. In the Pentax family, I still have to put my hands on the Program-A – it’s a slightly decontented Super-Program (no shutter speed priority mode) and it may be marginally simpler and easier to operate than its “Super” brother.
Nikon EM and Pentax ME – Both deprived of a shutter speed selector
As a conclusion – which one is the best for a beginner?
For a beginner, what makes the difference between two cameras should be the availability of good lenses, and any Nikon and Pentax SLR of that vintage will accept an extremely broad selection of very good prime and zoom lenses, manual focus as well as autofocus.
As cute, easy to use and cheap as they are, the EM and the ME will not be as flexible as a Nikon FG or a Super Program, and the cost difference between those cameras and a Nikon FE amounts to the cost a few lattes at Starbucks.
If you choose Camp Nikon, my recommendation will be to brew your coffee at home for a few days and use the cash you save for the FE. And if you still want your coffee at the drive-thru window, buy a FG rather than an EM. It will let you grow higher as a photographer than the EM.
For Pentaxists, it’s not as clear cut. There is no visible difference in build quality between a ME and a Super Program, and some features present in a Nikon FE and important for an enthusiast photographer (exposure memorization) are still absent from the Super Program. Simply avoid the models with a bad reliability record (ME Super?) and only buy cameras thoroughly tested by their seller.
As a final note, if you’re looking for the absolute bargain in the Nikon world, I suggest you also look at successor of the FG, the Nikon N2000 (F301 in the rest of the world). It’s the twin brother of the better known autofocus N2020 (aka F501), but without the autofocus mechanism, and with a ground glass designed for manual focus operations. With the N2020, it shares the motorized film advance, the semi-auto, program and aperture priority modes, an AE lock button and a great viewfinder. It’s a bit larger than cameras like the EM or the ME (and not as cute for sure), but it runs on AAA batteries that you can find anywhere, and it’s so cheap….one of my preferred $20.00 cameras.
Pentax Super Program and ME – the former benefits from an electronic self timer, a depth of field preview, and a removable grip.
More about cameras I recommend for beginners to film in CamerAgX:
In addition to some of the cameras mentioned above, there are a two other cameras I would recommend for beginners, and if you need more information, the full list of cameras reviewed in this blog since the beginning.
I’ve not had time to finish (and process) the rolls of films I loaded in the ME and the EM. So far, I tend to prefer the ME, because it does not beep like crazy, and also probably because it’s in a better shape than the EM, which is a bit scruffy. I find the LEDs indicating the shutter speed in the viewfinder of the ME easier to read than the needle of the EM, whose movements tend to be erratic – but again it may be a reflection of the better state of conservation of the ME.
Two pictures shot with cameras of the same family – the Super Program and the FG.
San Antonio – the Japanese Tea Garden. Shot with a Pentax Super Program and the Pentax SMC A 35-70 f/3.5-4.5. The zoom did not age well, or a previous owner had covered the front lens with vaseline, but it gives an eerie look to the picture.
from my archives – a photo taken with a Nikon FG on the trails of Kennesaw Mtn.
If you ask a lab to develop your film (I’m using https://oldschoolphotolab.com/), they will scan it for a modest extra fee ($6.00 per film). And if you send them already developed film strips, they will charge you anything between $1.00 and $4.50 per frame, depending on the quantity and on the desired output quality. The scans are made on Fuji or Noritsu machines, and the result is top notch – you just have to be prepared to wait – typically for two weeks – before you can access the files on Dropbox.
But there may be situations when you can’t wait, or you don’t want or are not permitted to send the negatives through the postal service at the other end of the country. There are also cases when the sheer volume of images to scan (and the expected low keep rate of the scanned images) makes using a specialized lab financially impractical.
JJC Kit in its box, Nikon D700 ready for action
You can invest in your own scanner – or – taking advantage of the high resolution sensors of modern digital interchangeable lens cameras (dSLRs or mirrorless), shoot the negative frames (or the positive slides) with your camera, and simply upload the resulting files to Lightroom for a final edit.
JJC have developed a clone of the ES-2, and have opened it to more lenses (they have added support for Canon, Sony, Laowa and Olympus lenses). Regular visitors of CamerAgX may know that when I’m shooting digital, it’s primarily with Fujifilm X cameras (X-T4 and X-A5) but I also have an old Nikon D700 and a much older 55mm Micro-Nikkor AI lens on a shelf, and that’s the gear I used to test the JJC “Film Digitizing Adapter Set”, Ref: FDA-S1.
The kit is composed of 8 adapter rings, a slide mount holder, a negative film strip holder and (the unique selling proposition as far as I’m concerned), a USB powered light box. The whole set is well packaged, seems to be made of good quality materials (metal and plastic), and everything works as expected.
First attempt: Scanning with the Nikon D700 and the Nikon Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 AI
The Micro Nikkor 55mm AI is only offering a 1/2 repro ratio when shooting macro. As a result, the image of the negative is only using the central area of the frame of the D700. Not good. It’s made worse by the small resolution of the D700’s sensor – 12 Mpix – over here, we’re only using 3 Million pixels. The scans look blurred and lack detail.
As shot with the D700 – the Micro Nikkor 55mm lens is not a good fit for the JJC adapter
Second attempt: Scanning with an APS-C camera (the Fujifilm X-T4) and Nikon Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 AI
One of the benefits of “mirrorless” cameras is that they can accept all sort of lens adapters. I happen to have a Fotasy adapter which will attach the Nikon AI lens to my Fujifilm X-T4. And the articulated display fo the mirrorless camera is much more comfortable to use than the optical viewfinder of the Nikon D700 for this type of work.
The “scan” fills the frame and is much more detailed.
Much better with the Fujifilm X-T4 – the “cropped sensor” is a good fit for the 1/2 repro ratio of the 55mm Micro-Nikkor AI.
Inverting the scanned image
If you were starting from a negative, you have to convert it to a positive image. I tried this free online service (invert.imageonline.co). Better equipped pros will use Photoshop or Lightroom Plug-Ins.
Inverting the image with imageonline.co
Final touch in Lightroom Mobile
Depending on the pictures, it’s more or less labor intensive. It involves playing with the white balance, the different exposure sliders, and the color channels.
As imported in Lightroom from imageonline.co
Playing with the sliders in Lightroom – with this picture I could not approach the colors of the lab’s scan.
Let’s compare a JJC scan with a pro medium resolution scan
The default resolution of scans performed by the Old School Photo Lab is 2048×3072, delivered as JPEG files. Higher resolution scans can be ordered at an extra cost (resolution: 4492×6774) and they can be delivered as TIFF files.
I’m generally happy with their standard resolution scans (I’ll call them medium res as some labs offer lower res scans as an option) and would only request High Resolution for exceptional pictures I’d like to print in a large format.
Shot with Kodak Ultramax on a Canon Photura, processed and scanned by the Old School Photo Lab
I just received the negatives of a film roll I shot with the Canon Photura a few weeks ago (the scans are made available online as soon as the film is processed, and the negatives returned to you one week later). Let’s compare a scan from a professional lab with an image captured on an APS-C camera with the JJC kit.
Scanned on a Fujifilm X-T4, inverted by imageonline.co and adjusted in Lightroom Mobile.
With the JJC kit and my amateur workflow, getting “good enough” results is easy and fairly quick. The DIY scans are very detailed but the colors still a bit off. Getting something as good as a scan on a Noritsu machine requires precision – the focus on the camera has to be perfect, the color balance has to be exact – but with practice and dedication I’m sure it’s possible to get “pretty close”. At the moment, I’m “pretty close” on some pictures, and totally off on others. Practice makes the master, and I lack practice, for sure.
Conclusion
I did not invest a lot in this test (the FDA-S1 kit cost me less than $100.00), I used an undocumented and unsupported setup, I relied on a free online service to invert the scanned negatives, and I edited the pictures with Lightroom Mobile. Enough to give me a feel for the practicality of the solution, but not enough to get the best possible results. I don’t think using an APS-C camera is an issue (the 26 Mpix of the X-T4’s sensor are more than enough to render a 35mm negative), but photographers who digitize their negatives “seriously” use the personal computer version of Lightroom (Lightroom Classic), with a plug in provided by Negative Lab Pro.
Scans from the lab (top row) vs DIY scans(lower row – the image on the bottom left has not been processed yet).
As a conclusion
The great thing about the JJC Digitizing kit is that it’s an all inclusive hardware solution, which is flexible enough to be used on cameras and lenses not explicitly supported. The USB powered lightbox is a significant plus, which is missing from the Nikon ES-2 kit.
The two main benefits of a scanning workflow starting with the JJC kit are speed – you can scan hundreds of pictures in an hour – and resolution. The biggest limitation is what comes after – inverting the negative and playing with the contrast slider, the color channels and the S curve to make the image usable. In order to get the best possible results at scale, using Lightroom Classic on a PC or a Mac, with a dedicated plug-in is probably the way to go, but it’s a spend I can’t justify – I’m just an amateur photographer, not a pro.
I’ll use the JJC Digitizing adapter as a quick way to reference hundreds or thousands of negatives, and, to share the ones that matter to them with family and friends, on the messaging apps of their smartphones. If I need a high quality scan of one of those pictures, I will still rely on a pro lab.
The J1 was the first member of the Nikon 1 family of cameras, a very compact 10 Megapixel camera with a small 1 inch sensor, interchangeable lenses but no viewfinder, and very few of the physical controls that expert photographers expect. Its sibling the V1 had an electronic viewfinder, but for the rest was more or less identical to the J1.
The Nikon One project was largely managed as an independent initiative – there were little technical commonalities between the Nikon One cameras and the point and shoot Coolpix, on the one hand, and the conventional dSLRs, on the other hand. It was also an opportunity for Nikon to test the image sensors of a new manufacturer (Aptina, instead of Sony) and to validate some technologies that would be integrated in the Z6 and Z7 full frame mirrorless cameras at a later stage.
I had bought a V1 when it was launched, and had been deeply disappointed by the image quality – the V1 did not cut it for me.
The controls: an intermediate step between a point and shoot and a dSLR.
When the J1 was new, the reviews were rather positive – photographers loved that it was a very reactive camera with a quick autofocus and a better than average build quality. Only the high ISO/low light performance was a disappointment – and the subsequent iterations (J2, J3, J4, V2 and V3) never really addressed the problem. Until Nikon switched to a sensor provided by Sony (for the final model of the series, the J5 of 2015) – image quality (too aggressive noise cancellation, so-so colors, limited dynamic range) remained markedly inferior to what you could get with a micro 4/3rd or an APS-C camera – and partially explains why – as a whole – the Nikon 1 series was deemed a failure on the marketplace.
Compared to a modern APS-C mirrorless camera – playing in a different ball park entirely.
If image quality (in low light in particular) was already disappointing in 2010, it’s obviously very far from what a good smartphone can deliver today. Shooting in RAW and post-processing in Lightroom really improves the results, but even in RAW I was not convinced by the results – some images are good (well lit subjects at relatively close range), but most of them lack punch.
The J1 at its best – well lit subject, at relatively close range
A J1 still has two major advantages over a phone: the long tele range, and the ergonomics.
Conceptually, the J models were point and shoot compact cameras with interchangeable lenses. The standard zoom was a 10-30mm affair (equivalent to a 28-80 on a full frame camera), but longer range zooms (a 30-110 and an extra-long 70-300 – equivalent to 80-300 and 190-800 respectively) were available, and if it was not enough, an adapter was available to mount a Nikon F telephoto lens. Some wildlife photographers were big fans of the Nikon 1 series, because it gave them a very long range with a reactive autofocus in a very light and compact setup.
An old inn in Vinings, GA – they built small at that time – Nikon J1
As for ergonomics, I would say that anything is better than a smartphone. Smartphones need to be operated with two hands (one to hold the phone, one to play with the controls on the screen), and pinch to zoom is not as easy or direct as rotating a ring on a lens. Even if it’s shaped like a bar of soap, the J1 is still easier to hold than a phone, and has more physical controls.
What about the colors? The J series cameras were available in a wide variety of colors, with coordinated lenses. White, Black and Silver were always available, but each iteration also benefited from not so common colors (Dark Red and Light Pink for the J1, Orange and Dark Pink for the J2, Beige and Wine Red for the J3, Tangerine for the J4). Only the final model (which is also technically the best, by far) bowed to convention, and was only available in an “all black” pro attire, or with a “retro-look” silver with black leatherette.
Processed in Lightroom – the RAW files of the J1 respond well to post processing
The J1s are apparently reliable, but the lenses are not. The lenses (all models except for the 6.7-13mm and the 70-300 zooms) rely on very small plastic cogs to open the diaphragm to the requested aperture, and those little cogs may become brittle over time, then break and make the lens unusable. If you buy a lens, ensure that it has been tested by the vendor – you can be sure that “untested” just means “not working or for parts”.
A Nikon J1 is still a pleasant camera to shoot with, provided it’s outdoors and under a nice weather. It’s very reactive and much more usable than micro 3/4rds or APC-C cameras of the same vintage, which were still relying exclusively on contrast detection for autofocus. It’s just a tad too big to fit in a pocket, but with its small size and its funky colors, it does not scare people like more serious looking cameras tend to do nowadays.
The dollar tree – RAW file processed in Lightroom – Nikon J1 – 10-30 lensThe same dollar tree – shot a few months earlier with an iPhone 15 Pro. The contrast and the resolution are much better.A Nikon 1 next to the smallest mirrorless ILC from Fujifilm (here the X-A5). The X-A5 is larger but produces much nicer pictures, out of the camera.
The J series are fun and cute cameras, let down but insufficient image quality – the J5 apart – and by unreliable lenses. A J1 in working order can be had for far less than $100 with a standard zoom, and a body only J5 can not be found at less than $200. Non standard lenses (tested, and in good working order) are more expensive ($100 to $400 depending on the model).
Well lit, close up – another good picture – at least technically.
Photos taken in Vinings and in the Coalmont OHV Park (TN) where dollars grow on trees.
Have you noticed? Everybody’s shooting with a smartphone, anytime, anywhere, and nobody seems to be objecting or even paying attention. But pull a conventional, dedicated camera from a photo equipment bag, and people start freaking out.
And suspicious neighbors or passersby are not the only ones panicking at the sight of a camera.
US Formula One Grand Prix – Austin – Nikon D700
Two weeks ago I was stopped for a good 20 minutes at a TSA checkpoint at the Atlanta airport, because the agents were intrigued by the camera I was carrying (a Nikon D700 with a 28-70 f/2.8 zoom lens). Admittedly, it was a relatively bulky camera + lens combo, but I’ve also been stopped when I was carrying a much smaller Nikon FM with a 35mm fixed focal lens. It’s just that photography as we knew it – with dedicated cameras – has to a large extent left the mainstream. Shooting with film cameras was already an oddity, but it increasingly looks as if shooting with DSLRs is following the same route.
You can see from time to time, typically in touristy areas, a young person carrying a film camera strapped to his or her neck (a Canon AE1 in most of the cases), but I don’t see them actually taking pictures (they wear a camera like you would wear jewelry) and I don’t see film making a come back. Not with those prices, for sure. Film is getting expensive, and the cost of processing and scanning has gone to the roof during the COVID years. My favorite color film is Kodak’s Ektar 100, and it’s now costing $15.00 a roll. Fujifilm are raising their prices massively as well. Processing and scanning are now around $20.00 per roll – which brings the total cost of a scanned image to more than $1.00.
Of course, users of digital cameras don’t have to pay the Kodak or Fujifilm « tax », but cheap cameras have almost totally disappeared from the new equipment market. And even the best dedicated digital cameras are still miles away from the convenience of smartphones: what the software engineers manage to do with « computational photography » on modern smartphones never ceases to impress me, and the simplicity of the integration of the iOS or Android native photo apps with all forms of image sharing services is something a dedicated camera user can only dream of: if you’re happy with the resolution of a 12 Mega Pixels image, and with a focal range equivalent to a 13 to 75mm lens on a full frame camera, the smartphone is hard to beat.
Soap Creek Park – Marietta, GA – iPhone 15 Pro – Straight out of the camera
Beyond the obvious (launching cameras with higher resolution sensors and long range zoom lenses that don’t have an equivalent in the smartphone world), the historical camera manufacturers are working at slowly transposing in the dedicated camera world advances we’ve enjoyed on smartphones for years (“global” electronic shutters and the near real time upload of the pictures to the cloud is the most recent example). They’re also working at making the conventional digital workflow of the pros and enthusiasts (shoot in RAW, post-process in Adobe Lightroom, and export to JPEG for social media consumption) less of a given – with film simulations and picture control modes, images can be shared “straight out of the camera”.
Marietta (GA) – the square – JPEG “straight out of the camera”
Lastly, there seems to be a renewed interest for compact digital cameras. Since nobody manufactures them anymore, the second hand market is the only option. And (for no reason I can think of), the Nikon Coolpix seems to be the hottest item – in particular if it’s painted in a striking “velours red”. Maybe it’s the color? Modern dedicated cameras are high end products built out of magnesium, and they would not convey the same image of competent seriousness if they were pink or yellow.
Nikon Coolpix S6900 – pretty in pink
After a long pause, I’m returning to this blog. With a pink compact camera (not a Nikon), a full frame DSLR (a Nikon), and a best of breed mirrorless camera. Stay tuned.
Dia de los muertos 2023 – Atlanta – Shot with a Nikon D750 in RAW and post processed in Adobe Lightroom
(originally published in Sept 2009 – I did not change a word – just added a comment at the bottom of this post)
Nikon’s F3 was the “pro” camera of the early eighties, but it kept on selling until 2001. A dwarf compared to current mid-level digital SLRs, not to mention monsters like an EOS 1DS or a D3. Incredibly simple to use compared to anything digital sold these days. Aperture Priority Automatic or Semi-Auto exposure. Center weighted metering. That’s all. It worked. And it still works today.
Consider all the changes that took place in the SLR design between 1980 and 2001. Multi mode exposure, spot and matrix metering, integrated motors, autofocus, DX coding, the F3 had none of that, but it outlived two or three generations of newer-better-faster pro bodies from Nikon or Canon. The F3 had the elegance to hide its real technical advances under a classical skin, and to let the photographer communicate his instructions through smooth and oversized controls. Of all the pre-autofocus SLRs of Nikon, the F3 is the most pleasant to use, and probably the one which will yield the best results.
Olympus OM-1 / Nikon F3 – larger than the OM-1, but not by much – it’s significantly heavier, though.
The F3 is an exception in the Nikon F lineup. It’s compact, smaller than its predecessors, and way smaller than its successors, the F4 and F5. In fact, its size is very comparable to that of the FM, itself hardly bigger than the yard stick of compact SLRs, the Olympus OM-1. The F3 is also easy to use, without the idiosyncrasies of the F and F2s with their Photomic finders and manual aperture indexing, and without the myriads of commands of an F4 or the menus and submenus of an F5.
Nikon F3: a very simple interface
The F3 is much more modern and usable in everyday life than a semi auto camera like the FM: its commands are larger and smoother, and the automatic exposure system is faster to operate; thanks to the center-weighted metering and a memory lock button, it does not deprive the photograph of his control on the exposure . When a flash is needed, the FM still requires the user to concern himself with Guide Numbers. The F3’s flash system is modern: following the path opened by the Olympus OM2, the SPD (silicon) cell is housed under the main mirror, and provides On The Film flash metering. But the Nikon engineers avoided loading the F3 with complications like multi-mode auto-exposure or multiple metering patterns. The F3 has few commands, and they’re so easy to understand that no manual is needed.
Nikon F3 – the standard viewfinder can be replaced with the “High Point”.
All the commands are generously sized, and very smooth to operate (the film advance mechanism is mounted on ball bearings). The view finder is wide, bright and clear, making focusing easy. After a few years of production, Nikon replaced the viewfinder with a high eyepoint (HP) model, which could be used more easily by glass wearers. The viewfinder is the only part of the camera which is really larger than what you would find on contemporary advanced-amateur SLRs.
Nikon F3 in the CF-22 bag (Red)
Of course, the F3 is not perfect. It may be compact, but it’s heavy (approx. 750g). Its OTF flash system may have been advanced for its time, but the shutter only syncs at 1/60sec, and none of the viewfinders of the F3 system has a standard flash hot shoe: the F3 requires a specific flash adapter, to be inserted at the top of the rewind lever. But if I had to own and use only one film camera, that would be the F3, without any hesitation.
Cameras like this Nikon F3 have a removable prism. With the prism removed, one can see the image as formed on the ground glass (the focusing screen). At this stage, it is still inverted right/left you have to keep the camera at waist level to see the image of the subject.
My 2021 take on the Nikon F3 – over the last twelve years, I’ve had the opportunity to shoot with almost every Nikon SLR manufactured between 1970 and 1995, and I still hold the F3 in very high esteem. There are a few other Nikon bodies that would compete in the “desert island camera” category – I can only see the FE2. The FE2 is much lighter, it’s easier to read what shutter speed the auto-exposure system has selected, but its viewfinder is very narrow compared to what the F3 (even in its non-HP version) offers, and it’s probably not as solid as its “pro” sibling.
Nikon F3 – Nikkor 24mm AF – lunch break along the Seine – at that time Notre Dame cathedral still had its original roof.Paris, Place de l’Hotel de Ville (City Hall) – Nikon F3 – 24mm Nikkor AFTriel s/Seine – Dec 25th, 2010 – Nikon F3 – Nikkor 135mm F:3.5 – Kodak CN 400
The “DP” in dpreview stands for “Digital Photography” of course, and the site was launched in 1998, at the beginning of the digital camera craze. And they’ve never reviewed a film camera. As far as I know. But over the years, they compiled two lists of recommended, “excellent and affordable” film cameras, the first one in 2017, with a follow up in June 2019.
A few of the cameras listed as “analog gems” by DPreview have been presented in this site over the years (the Nikons FE2, N90, the Olympus OM-1 and the Canon T90). Very often, my preference goes to other models of the same family (I prefer the Olympus OM-2 to the OM-1 because its battery is much easier to find, the Canon AT-1 to the AE-1 because I’m not a fan of shutter speed priority automatism, and the EOS-620 to the EOS-5 for its simplicity).
Nikon FM
I’ve never been a fan of compact cameras in the days of film (poor viewfinder, not enough controls for the photographer). Their only advantages were their small size and their ease of use, but a film SLR with a pancake lens was not much larger and delivered much better images. And today, why would you spend money on film and processing to use a compact camera which will give you less control over your images than a good smartphone?
My absolute favorite? The ones I would bring on the proverbial desert island (assuming the desert island has no electricity, no Internet access but a huge stack of film cartridges waiting for me)?
Canon T90 – the ergonomics of an EOS camera with an FD lens mount
a compact, mechanical, semi-auto SLR – not the Olympus OM-1, not the Pentax MX, but the rugged and supremely reliable Nikon FM. The FM2 is probably an even better camera, but it’s also more expensive.
the most elaborate pre-autofocus SLR, the Canon T90, for the looks, the ergonomics, the crazy exposure system, with no concern for its questionable reliability or its mass, because I would always have the Nikon FM as a backup.
And of course, when I would be back from the desert island, I would reconnect with my cherished Nikon FE2…
“La Maison aux Bambous” – Bed and Breakfast – Vinay (France). Canon T90 – Canon FD 24mm – Fujicolor 400.
CamerAgX - a new life for old gear 