I am, by now, very accustomed to using both my D200 and D700 cameras. I have a mix of manual and af lenses, and the af ones are by far the more easy to use with those two bodies.
A few minutes ago, purely through the curiosity of wondering how my eyes might react today, post cataract ops on both, to operating a film camera again, I pulled out my pristine Nikon F3 and putting the 2.8/24mm manual Nikkor on it, went out onto the terrace to find out. It was a revelation: at once, all my old confidence was back at my finger tips, and I could focus exactly as I had been doing for years and years of film usage. And boy, did it feel great! By good fortune, whatever diopter lens lives on the pentaprism, which was perfect for me almost forty years ago, is now the same way again.
There is not a question in my mind that, for me, using a proper screen designed for manual lenses, complete with a beautiful, split-image finder, is the way for me to fly. If only digital backs had turned out to be Nikon's answer to digital photography instead of digital bodies. One unexpected observation was this: the F3 was not the lightweight camera of my memory. In use, it feels no lighter than the digital ones I have, though readings on a set of scales may suggest a difference that vanishes in the fact.
All that aside, the spiritual feeling, holding that F3, was so much better than digital has ever given me. I believe that matters quite a lot, and probably underlines why others love the Leica M varieties. I am also willing to accept that for younger folks who never used film cameras, this emotional buzz may seem rather odd, and in their case, certainly not necessarily felt should they pick up one of these old cameras.
Goddammit, I could even imagine the smell of a just-opened film cassette!
All in all, a nice postprandial surprise!
