My dad bought it for me because I was taking a photography class in my junior year of high school and was getting really into it. I was using my mother's old Olympus Trip - it was a rangefinder from the late sixties, early seventies, and is a great camera, but it is made for convenience and quality and not control.
I was reading a post about the FE2 online, and it sums up all my feelings about it. I know at the time Nikon made it, they intended it as a semi-professional camera, but professionals used it because they saw the combination of control and ruggedness. It had features not available on cameras at the time, no matter what the price-point - like a flash sync speed of 1/250, affordable lenses at 1.8 aperture, and TTL flash metering.
My dad bought it from a professional photographer in Jamaica in 1993. He photographed car races, so he included an amazing telephoto lens, a 50mm lens and all manner of bells and whistles. I think my dad paid $250.
This camera was a total surprise for me. It wasn't a birthday or Christmas present - it was just something my dad came back from Jamaica with because he knew I needed one. I remember him telling me that it had been loved and used by a professional for years, and that when the guy bought it in 1983, it was top of the range. It wasn't until I started researching it later, and showing it to photography professors and people generally interested in photography and getting "ooohs" and "aahhhhs" that I realized what a gem I had.
Truly, this camera, in 2010, is still top of its game. I still love it above all others. I don't know if it's because I have used it forever, or because it is just an inherently pleasurable camera to use, that I feel so at home and "in the zone" taking pictures with it. The pictures it takes are better than my F100 ever took and I don't know if it's because I am (I'm getting cheesy here) at one with this camera, or it's just a better camera. What I read online backs up my thought that it's just a damn good timeless output from Nikon - Nikon at its best. I feel so much joy taking pictures with it. I know its quirks, and it has some. The light meter is perfectly calibrated, but I know if I underexpose the ISO by a third of a stop, I get pictures more consistent with my aesthetic. I've been doing that with it for at least ten years.
Tonight, I went out around the lake and took pictures. The light was gorgeous. It was about 6:15 when I started and about 7 when I got home. The light was that spring, just before dark, ethereal magical light and you can't help but take good pictures with that. I find myself very drawn to water lately, and I keep going back to the lake. I love the way in smells in spring. There's something about listening to the water and smelling it that helps me get in the right mode for taking pictures. I just let my right brain take over. I love my right brain right now because it doesn't think - it just takes in the elements and reacts to them. When I am out there, fiddling with technology and trying to express myself through it, I don't have to think - I can just be. That's why I am doing this - it's the only thing that lets my brain stop.
I could go into a rant, like I did earlier today, about digital photography. In fact, I probably will go into that rant. Here it is:
I don't have a problem with digital photography, at all, but I am glad I came of photographic age right at the cusp of the change, and I am glad I actually had to learn about the way light hits film. I did learn with film, but the concept is similar for digital - it's just hitting a sensor instead. However, the way digital cameras are set up is inherently based on the increasingly obsolete language of film. If you don't know film, you don't really know how digital cameras work either. Digital cameras still use ISO (even though there is no film) and shutter speeds and aperture, although in a weird way, it shouldn't really matter with digital - it can capture the image no matter what. The limitations were set by film.
I'm glad I learnt those limitations because it taught me how light works - it taught me to look at the light at different times of day and taught me about the optimal film, the optimal times of day, and the optimal creative choices, and I still base my aesthetics upon that. I'm sure if I had a digital SLR, I would and could stretch those boundaries, but shooting for years with a manual SLR taught me to seek out the moments when great things are really possible, not just shoot, hope for the best, and hope I can fix it later in Photoshop.
I've heard this so much from people lately, and although I see the advantages inherent in digital, and I do like them, especially the lack of expense from processing and scanning, I still think it is better to get it right in camera than to go to the effort and time of fixing it afterwards, and that is what I hear so much from people. If you can do it right, and you know the way a camera works, you shouldn't have to fix it. The art is photography, not fixing your mistakes after you've taken the picture. Maybe I'm bitter because I had to try hard and I had to take many rolls of bad film in order to finally start getting it right, but I don't think so, because those bad rolls of film taught me how to do it right, and now, it engenders a confidence with my equipment, even when I do shoot digital. I know what's going on, and it doesn't bother me if I can't see the image straight away because I already have an idea, from my knowledge of how light works, of how it's going to look before/if I see it on an LCD screen. That's what's missing, and I think sometimes that the instant gratification from that LCD screen kills creativity and negates the adventurous spirit required of a photographer when shooting film. I know it takes practice and a certain amount of blind faith, and a certain amount of failure, but the knowledge gained from that is invaluable.
I had a teacher at Watkins College Of Art and Design who believed in the absolute truth of slide film. Slide film has very little latitude for error, so he said, if you can shoot slide film with confidence, you can learn how a camera works and make fewer errors in exposure. It forces compliance and competency, and honestly, that was the best lesson I learned about the behaviour of light and our ability to capture and express with it. I think it is still true. I think it would be a good experiment to take everyone who thinks they are competent with a digital camera and make them go out with a manual SLR and shoot slide film. It could be a new reality show! That might be one I would watch.
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