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This is not the Nikon FE I bought about twenty to twenty-five years ago. I sold that and then a few years later I had a yen to have one again, so I bought this one.

It’s a manual focus camera that uses one little Mallory cell to power the exposure meter, and the battery lasts about a year of normal shooting. To take a reading you half cock the wind-on lever and that activates the meter. Then you adjust either the aperture on the lens or the shutter speed on the dial on the top plate until the needle and your settings coincide.

As long as you remain in similar lighting conditions you can leave that where it is once you have set it. If the lighting changes you have to reset the exposure.

After a while you get into the habit of keeping an eye on that floating needle in the viewfinder.

And for years I have used it in the same way to get the correct exposure, namely to line up the floating needle in the left of the viewfinder to the control needle by changing aperture or shutter speed. And I never gave a thought to the word ‘Auto’ on the shutter speed dial.

At least I didn’t until tonight when I was watching a video about the Nikon F3, and the presenter explained its development from the Nikon F2. In the course of doing that he mentioned that the Nikon FE could operate in Aperture Priority with auto exposure by setting the shutter speed dial to Auto.

What a revelation, because my reason for leaving the camera on the shelf is that having to do two things – focus the manual focus lens and also to get the exposure right – when I want to take a shot.

The lens on the camera is a Nikon 50mm f1.8 E lens, and I know the E series were budget lenses. Apparently they used less premium coatings compared to the professional Nikkor line, which could produce a more dreamy or filmic image character.

So now that the camera has suddenly seemed more useful, maybe I will get a better lens. It could be an AIS or an AI lens because on a Nikon FE, there is no practical difference in everyday use between a Nikkor AI and Nikkor AIS lens.

Both mount the same way, meter the same way, and work in the same modes. Both allow full-aperture metering. Both support the FE’s Aperture Priority (A) and Manual (M) exposure modes. Both have the mechanical “meter coupling ridge” the FE needs, and both stop down normally when you take the shot.

So which lens might I get? Maybe the 50mm f1.4 AIS. That desire can park itself until I use the camera and see what I think of the result with current lens.

Although I shoot nearly all digital, I still like to shoot film from time to time.

I bought a Nikon F80 on eBay. The F80 was released in 2000, nine years after the Nikon F801s. The F801s model was itself an update to the F801 that was released in 1988. The updates were to improve the autofocus and the metering. And these improvements were carried over to the F80 and its bigger brother the F100 that was released in 1999.

The F80 feels softer to the touch compared to the F801s, reflecting the evolution in the use of plastics.

So I took a chance on the F80 on eBay and put a roll through it to see what problems it had or didn’t have. I got the scans today and these shots from the test roll. Thankfully it seems to be OK.

The guitarist is Sebastian Diez, and he was playing a Paco de Lucia piece outside the Tate Modern. The third shot is in Borough Market and I was attracted to the way the older man was tagging along holding onto the other man. At first I thought the older man might be a bit out of his depth. And then I thought maybe this was a system they used so the older man could guide the man with the 360° camera when he was videoing.

I wrote previously on how to remove any stickiness from the camera body, but thankfully my camera is not suffering from that problem.

I have a Nikon FE. It is not the one I used in the early 2000s. I sold that one and then wished I had it, so I bought a replacement. It’s a manual focus camera that uses one little Mallory cell to power the exposure meter, and the battery lasts about a year of normal shooting. To take a reading you half cock the wind-on lever and that activates the meter. Then you adjust either the aperture on the lens or the shutter speed on the dial on the top plate until the needle and your settings coincide.

As long as you remain in similar lighting conditions you can leave that where it is once you have set it. If the lighting changes you have to reset the exposure.

After a while you get into the habit of keeping an eye on that floating needle in the viewfinder.

The Nikon FE2 is, I think pretty much the same except for one thing. With the FE, if you leave the wind-on lever half cocked then it will continue to drain the battery. So you have to remember to uncock it when you put the camera back on the shelf. The FE2 cured that issue, if you can really call it an issue because once you know about it, it is not a big problem to remember to uncock the lever.

But to actually take a photo, and having set the correct exposure, the next thing you have to do is to focus the lens while looking through the viewfinder.

The viewfinder has a little circle in the centre that is split into two hotizontally. One half of the circle shows whatever you are pointed at and the other is how far distant the lens is focused.

To focus, you twist the lens until the two halves of the circle coincide and you can see all of whatever you are pointed at in focus.

You can imagine that after shooting digital where everyting is just ‘there’, shooting on the street with manual focus and semi-manual expsoure you have to tailor your expectations of what you can actually photograph.

Plainly, some very famous photographers did shoot on the street and captured decisive moments with manual-everything cameras. But now that we have focus and metering handed to us on a plate, why deny ourselves that capability?

And that’s why I got the Nikon F80. It has automatic exposure and autofocus.

What if I don’t care about IBIS (in-body image stabilisation)?

I didn’t have it on my film cameras and it was the lack of ISO headroom that forced me to cut my shutter speed. With digital, I can increase the ISO, and that’s what I did with the Fuji X100s, the X100f, the X-E3 and several Nikons and didn’t think twice about IBIS.

Shutter speed was just something to think about – just don’t let it drop too low. It still is a consideration with IBIS; it’s just that there’s more headroom to which to drop shutter speed.

But there are other things that bug me more than any lack of IBIS.

Weight is still bugging me. My Canon EOS R6 weighs 680g with card and battery. I love it dearly, and after a couple of hours with the bag on my shoulder I don’t notice the weight. But as a carry-around camera it is too heavy if I am on holiday, because then I might be carrying a guide book, binoculars, and who knows what else. Only the Ricoh GRIII is light enough that I can forget about the weight.

But consider this shot I took with the GRIII, as an example. The sun was behind me and I couldn’t see a blessed thing in the LCD and I ended up cutting off the top of the tree. Maybe it doesn’t matter for the shot, but I want to make decisions like that consciously and not have a photo spring a surprise on me. That said, I still love the camera dearly for the right circumstances.

As an aside, why do Councils cut London Plane trees right back every year. They look good in full leaf, and they do look very graphic when they are cut back like this.

But getting back to IBIS, if I opt for a camera without it, what is a good balance between features and weight?

The X-T3 weighs 539g. That’s not much a saving over the weight of the Canon.

How about the X-T30 or the X-T30 II at 383g? Are they too small to handle well? Surely not when I don’t think the Ricoh is too small. Now a saving of 307g over the Canon is significant.

The X-T30 II is looking to be a possibility. Or rather, it was looking to be a possibility but it’s not what I ended up getting.

The Fuji X-T50

I ended up getting a Fuji X-T50, which comes in at 438g, which is pretty light considering that it has IBIS and a 40MP sensor.

I paired it with a 35mm f2 lens and took it to Amsterdam. This first shot is on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and the next shot is a waterway in village of Edam.