The price of a camera is a good guide to its desirability among the masses. Develop a fondness for undesirable cameras and your wallet will thank you. You may not get admiring glances from your peers, but the photos won't be any worse.
The price of a camera is a good guide to its desirability among the masses. Develop a fondness for undesirable cameras and your wallet will thank you. You may not get admiring glances from your peers, but the photos won't be any worse.I hate to say it but there is at least a 10% chance after all I this I end up with 10 35mm SLRs and after evaluating them all I decide that my film use will just be medium format and I sell them all
Sounds like eye relief. The MX may have much less eye relief than some cameras with less magnification. Have you ever used a Nikkormat FT series?I had an MX, the finder was useless to me - felt like my eyes were going to roll out of my head trying to check the corners. The EOS 3 may by .72X on paper but it's still super bright and clear and just "feels roomy." My EOS Rebels are all ~.72X as well but definitely feel dim and confined by comparison.
It should be true of most of the F2 meters. F2SB has both as transparent numbers on opaque disks lit by windows on the top of the prism, but it can backlight them fairly brightly on a full battery, if needed... I know some of the other F2's have a Judas window (periscope) for the aperture, which is not as good since the camera can't add light to it.Just a point of trivia given that you want to have a functioning meter, but the aperture and shutter speed readouts in the Pentax MX and Nikon FM are purely mechanical (shutter speed disc visible in finder) or optical (lens aperture ring visualized in the finder through a periscope). They don't depend on anything electronic and remain functional even if the batteries are dead.
EDIT: If I'm remembering right, that's true of the Nikon F2 with Photomic meter prism as well.
Sounds like eye relief. The MX may have much less eye relief than some cameras with less magnification. Have you ever used a Nikkormat FT series?
I had an MX, the finder was useless to me - felt like my eyes were going to roll out of my head trying to check the corners. The EOS 3 may by .72X on paper but it's still super bright and clear and just "feels roomy." My EOS Rebels are all ~.72X as well but definitely feel dim and confined by comparison.
I had an MX, the finder was useless to me - felt like my eyes were going to roll out of my head trying to check the corners..
It should be true of most of the F2 meters. F2SB has both as transparent numbers on opaque disks lit by windows on the top of the prism, but it can backlight them fairly brightly on a full battery, if needed...
Pentax was the only "Major Brand" SLR i never owned.Yep, same experience with my MX. Having that 'huge' vf is way overrated if you can't see the corners easily/quickly. And that is w/o wearing glasses! But people like to go on about it.
I bought the DK17 magnifier for my F6 as so many said it made a huge difference, but quickly took it off as with it you cannot easily see the whole image, nor the exposure info on the bottom.
I think the pentaprism optics can give both high magnification and decent eye relief. Consider the Nikon F2SB (and probably the other F2 pentaprisms.) I would say the magnification is slightly less than the OM-2 and slightly more than the K1000 and the coverage is probably the highest of any SLR, and yet it has great eye relief.Correct, more magnification means less eye relief and less magnification means more eye relief. Fortunately with AF, you won't depend on the viewfinder to achieve critical focus whereas on a manual camera you do.
Pentax was the only "Major Brand" SLR i never owned.
I always wanted to, but it just never happened.
Anyway......didn't Pentax also make a Model-KX that was a very good camera, or am i mistaken.?
Thank You
BTW, unlike other aperture priority interchangeable VF cameras, you can actually use the LX without a viewfinder - cheap waist level option, because the full info are visible and the meter is not influenced by external light.
You can use the Nikon F3 without the finder too. In fact I used to be able to focus without any viewfinder. Well can't do that any more.
You are not mistaken . . .
Yes, I used to have a Minolta X series--the very last one, made in China at Seagull in the 90's or maybe even the 2000's. X-370S? Does that sound right?I wanted to thank everyone for your comments. I've now had a chance to play with some cameras that do or do not have full info viewfinders particularly in manual mode.
Some thoughts from my journey:
My complaint about a lot of older-school cameras that have an Auto and a Manual mode is the Manual mode is just the Auto mode disconnected from the shutter or aperture, eg with the Minolta XG-M the Auto is Aperture priority that shows you what shutter speed it is going to choose, Manual mode is the exact same mode as Av except it just tells you what shutter speed it would have picked without picking it. They also don't show in the viewfinder what you have actually picked so you have to remove your eye from the viewfinder to see what you need to adjust.
So my thought was that the solution to all of my complaints would be a similar camera that also shows what value you have picked. But I've realized what I also dislike is for AP cameras the way it tells you how much your exposure is off is it tells you what you need to change the shutter speed to. For SP cameras it tells you what you need to change your aperture to. I've realized in M I prefer to be told how many EVs I'm away from good exposure rather than always telling me to adjust my Aperture or always telling me to adjust my Shutter Speed depending on if it's an Av or Tv priority camera at heart. That doesn't really feel like 'manual'.
That all said I do find that if the calculated and chosen value is on the same scale that does give you a visual EV gap. Examples are the dual needle in the Nikon FE or the solid and flashing LEDs on the Minolta X-570. Both show you visually how many stops you are away from a good EV value which I quite like. I already have the FE and might check out that Minolta.
Thank you for reading my blog lol
The shutter speed is shown in ultra tiny lcd so your eyes could be much better then mine if you can see it.
And of course you have to cover it as external light will influence the meter.
Nothing compares to the Leica R8 or R9
Here, in manual mode, it shows exposure compensation (!) if set, meter pattern, meter mode, aperture to the 1/4 stop (!), distance from correct exposure to the 1/3 stop, shutter speed to the 1/2 stop(!) - here 1/12 sec is displayed, and of course how many exposures taken. If you use a flash, it will include info for that.
Yes, I used to have a Minolta X series--the very last one, made in China at Seagull in the 90's or maybe even the 2000's. X-370S? Does that sound right?
I chafed at two things, though it had some nice features. Of course no DOF preview... and the LED display showing me how far off I was from the metered shutter speed. It's perfectly adequate, you understand, and in fact it almost replicates the functionality of an srT 101's match needle display (with a key difference too boring to explain here)... but somehow it always reminds me that I could be in aperture priority mode. The camera *wants* me to shut up and use aperture priority!
I sold it for 16 bucks, same as I bought it for, and sold the MD 50/1.7 that it came with for 30 bucks. Now of course I've just bought another one of that lens on another trashy AP minolta for 7 bucks, just to have it for my 101.
Correct, more magnification means less eye relief and less magnification means more eye relief. Fortunately with AF, you won't depend on the viewfinder to achieve critical focus whereas on a manual camera you do.
Of course with tiny viewfinders, you can use magnifiers to attain huge magnifications of the center area for much better manual focusing.
The shutter speed is shown in ultra tiny lcd so your eyes could be much better then mine if you can see it.
And of course you have to cover it as external light will influence the meter.
Nothing compares to the Leica R8 or R9
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