Thinking of resurrecting my old film camera

[jambo101]

Back in the mid 80's i bought a Nikon FG20, came with nice lens and i also bought a zoom lens for it..It took great pics but as digital technology came to the forefront the Nikon got used less and less to the point where i havent used it at all in the last 10 years.
Cleaning an old bookshelf there it was in its case covered in dust,i got to thinking this was a $500+ camera in its day and it would be a shame for it to never be used again..I'd contemplate selling it to some one who would enjoy it but browsing prices makes it not worth the price of shipping it to some one so maybe its time to get back into photography old style where you takes your pics,get em developed then a little while later you get a packet of prints.I'm just wondering if this is still possible, do they sell film? is developing the film still an option? is it possible to find a battery for this thing?

[liberal N proud]

1. That would be my question - where do you get film

Then where do you get it developed?

Battery should not be too difficult, if you can't find it in store, you can always go on line http://www.batteriesplus.com/

[alfredo]

2. Walgreens, and other drug stores carry film. Camera stores still carry it.

Look for Ilford for Black and White. Shop around for labs to develop it. I used to develop my own B&W and color slides. It's easy.

Amazon sells film.

[liberal N proud]

3. B&W is easy

[alfredo]

6. I got good at feeding the film onto the reels.

The trick was not rolling the film all the way back into the cassette. If you did, you'd have to use a bottle opener to open the cassette to retrieve the film's tail.

[alfredo]

4. The lens can be adapted to be used in many different digital cameras.

[sir pball]

8. They don't need any adaptation for Nikon digital bodies, being AI already

But outside of the highest-end models, and certainly not with other brands, there's not only no autofocus or on-camera aperture control (gotta turn the ring) but also no metering whatsoever, at all, not even a +/- indicator in the viewfinder. You have to guess, shoot, and check the LCD. That doesn't hobble me too much for what I use my old lenses for, but YMMV.

[alfredo]

9. When I use legacy glass on my Oly the meter still works.

I put it at Aperture Priority, set the Aperture to f8, and go on my merry way.

[sir pball]

10. OM has always been TTL though.

The beauty and ugly of F-mount lenses is its 60-year lifespan, predating auto-anything...the adaptations made for TTL metering are quite elegant, but lenses without them (which are still perfectly common given how well Nikon made stuff in the 60s) won't meter on any bodies, and even the AI lenses need a prosumer/professional body to work properly.

That being said I wouldn't trade my 1970 55mm Micro-Nikkor for anything. It's literally the best SLR lens I've ever used.

[alfredo]

11. I have stuck with the M42 mount. It seems there are more than enough high quality lenses

to satisfy my Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I figure if it was good enough for my old Pentax, it is good enough for me.

[sir pball]

12. Man, there's a mount I haven't heard of in ages... nt

[alfredo]

13. My Yashinon DX and Industar 50-2 are M42, and were both bought for $20.

Both a fine lenses.

[Stevenmarc]

5. If the battery was a mercury battery

Then you should try http://www.weincell.com/ since mercury batteries are not sold anymore.

Film is a whole lot easier, I get mine at B&H Photo, they fully support film.

[sir pball]

7. I still regularly shoot film

But I'm spoiled, what with a state-of-the-1970s-art Nikkormat with a pretty large array of top-flight lenses (which are still, optically and mechanically, among the best ever made, anywhere, at any time), easy access to same-day developing services at ~$9 a roll, and most importantly a good scanner. That's the rub...nobody does traditional color prints these days, even measly 35mm film is scanned into a digital workflow. Most places that process in-house will also do the scanning; with Fuji Velvia slide film behind a good lens you're looking at 16 megapixel pictures which may or may not be better than what your digital gear can do. Don't use drugstore film or services though, buy good film at your local camera store or from B&H and have it professionally processed.

The bigger deal (I find) is the thought required to shoot film. Cost aside, you don't get to see your images until they're back from the lab as tangible physical items, which drives home the concept of "photograph vs snapshot" in a way digital never could. I've found that having started out with film, and still using it regularly, vastly improves all my photography by keeping my eye trained in the practice of looking through the viewfinder with thought to how the image will look on paper, composition, balance, lighting, all the details that make a photograph, as opposed to just using it to aim the camera at what I'm taking a snapshot of.

PS - your camera takes LR44 batteries, if you can't get them at the drugstore, you can definitely find them online.