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AE-1...whadya think?


DrumonRon

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DRon,

What the kids are trying to portray is this not the 'other place,' were you can just hop in and ask an arbitrary question about product x, without anyone knowing who the hell you are. Out-of-the-blue questions about equipment and the follow-on 50 pages of uninformed opinions is why other places are so full of garbage. Picking an out-of-date amp makes it even worse.

Take a step back and read for a while, see if you fit in. Data here is shared amongst a community; passerbys are roasted and toasted and served with a shovel. Survivors of the test are treated to even more abuse, which is where the fun really starts.

For the record, Headamp is one of the most trusted products you can buy; there are no substitutes (Justin now owes me fife dolahs).

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My first camera was an AE-1, which was formerly owned by my mother. I used it primarily because it was affordable (free) and accessible (sitting in a closet for eons unused). I think when I found it the bag had the camera, a 50mm lens, and an 105mm lens. A nice starter rig. I later saved up and bought a 35mm lens to round out the set. Zoom lenses are for pussies (I could not afford one at the time) so I said fuck that noise! (damn I wanted one bad!)

I must say that the little beast did its thing well despite being built by the wrong company. I have some strong reservations about the functionality of the light meter when trying to operate in manual mode: it really sucks! The light meter shows what aperature it thinks you should use, but not what aperature you have selected... no match point metering of any type. In its primarily intended shutter-priority function the body was esy to use and pretty intuitive although shutter speed priority is kind of a weird system for learning: the AE-1P with aperature priority and a better light meter display is a far better camera to learn to shoot.

The FD lenses are of course out of production, but the fact that nobody respectable uses them any more has driven the prices down. Not a bad deal if your trying to put an affordable camera system together.

I must caution you that the AE-1 (and all of its electronic brethren) are known for getting ferocious shutter bounce which starts to rear its ugly head at fast (1/1000sec is fast according to this camera, :D ) shutter speeds and then slowly creeps down into the longer and longer ranges until the camera is totally useless with an obvious overexposure on the right half of every frame. When this happens you should just buy a Nikon F3HP or F4s like you should have in the first place considering how much nicer both are and the current used prices.

Overall, for what it was, the AE-1 is a decent starter camera but you can probably do better.

Ooh, shouldent this thread be in the miscellaneous gear forum or something if we are talking about cameras?

Edited by nikongod
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HAHA, the first camera I remember playing around with when I was young was my grandfather's AE-1 Program... indeed that's the first thing I thought of when I read this thread title. Really sweet little camera, despite the whole Wrong Company thing... (f-mount 4 lyfe...) can't complain about being let loose on it at ~6 years of age...

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I used to work at a used camera dealer (let me tell you about the stack of Nikon S1's we had ...) and AE-1's were everywhere. I always found the frame advance felt like it was grinding the film to shreds, and the FD lens mount was awkward. Consequently, we couldn't sell them. We didn't see all that many Nikons, but the old OM stuff was some of my favorite.

Personally, I like to use either Olympus Pen stuff now, or else my Contax G which was really cool when it came out, but not so cool now that Contax is once again extinct :(

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My first camera was an AE-1, which was formerly owned by my mother. I used it primarily because it was affordable (free) and accessible (sitting in a closet for eons unused). I think when I found it the bag had the camera, a 50mm lens, and an 105mm lens. A nice starter rig. I later saved up and bought a 35mm lens to round out the set. Zoom lenses are for pussies (I could not afford one at the time) so I said fuck that noise! (damn I wanted one bad!)

I must say that the little beast did its thing well despite being built by the wrong company. I have some strong reservations about the functionality of the light meter when trying to operate in manual mode: it really sucks! The light meter shows what aperature it thinks you should use, but not what aperature you have selected... no match point metering of any type. In its primarily intended shutter-priority function the body was esy to use and pretty intuitive although shutter speed priority is kind of a weird system for learning: the AE-1P with aperature priority and a better light meter display is a far better camera to learn to shoot.

The FD lenses are of course out of production, but the fact that nobody respectable uses them any more has driven the prices down. Not a bad deal if your trying to put an affordable camera system together.

I must caution you that the AE-1 (and all of its electronic brethren) are known for getting ferocious shutter bounce which starts to rear its ugly head at fast (1/1000sec is fast according to this camera, :D ) shutter speeds and then slowly creeps down into the longer and longer ranges until the camera is totally useless with an obvious overexposure on the right half of every frame. When this happens you should just buy a Nikon F3HP or F4s like you should have in the first place considering how much nicer both are and the current used prices.

Overall, for what it was, the AE-1 is a decent starter camera but you can probably do better.

Ooh, shouldent this thread be in the miscellaneous gear forum or something if we are talking about cameras?

Win.
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