The Canon FD and Pentax K mounts are two of the most successful lens mounts ever made with an enormous variety of lenses available. Lens Selection The SMC Pentax 50/2 lens is one of the cheapest and most basic lenses ever made, but it’s also one of the sharpest and best value lenses ever made too. You really need to use a freshly charged name brand battery for best results. Generic off brand batteries generally don’t fare well. Making matters worse, every Canon AE-1 or AE-1 Program I’ve handled is very particular about which batteries they work with. I’m all for modern conveniences, and having an electronic shutter on a camera does not automatically make it inferior to a mechanical one, but we have the benefit of nearly 4 decades worth of history to look back on, and the K1000’s shutter almost always works, whereas the Canon’s has proven to be more temperamental.
Although electronic shutters are said to be more accurate, they are also more likely to fail over time and also require a battery to work, whereas the mechanical shutter in the K1000 works without the need for a battery, making it a far more reliable design. Both the AE-1 and AE-1 Program use a electromagnetically controlled shutter, whereas the K1000 goes old school with a fully mechanical shutter that is controlled by springs, levers, and for the slow speeds, a mechanical governor.
The biggest difference in the shutters of the two cameras is not on the spec sheet, rather in how it’s operated. The K1000 was sold as a “Street Machine”, simple and reliable. The AE-1 was advertised as an advanced computerized camera loaded with technology. The K1000’s slowest available speed is 1 second, whereas the Canon can go down to 2 seconds, but frankly that’s not a major difference maker for most students, as slow shutter speeds would most likely be obtained using Bulb mode and a shutter release cable, which is available on both models. I make references to the AE-1 Program where relevant, but there’s enough that’s similar between the two to consider them the same.īoth cameras have horizontally traveling cloth focal plane shutters with a top speed of 1/1000 and a flash sync speed of 1/60. Note: For the purposes of this article, I am treating the Canon AE-1 and AE-1 Program to be the same model.
I’ve never actually written anything about either model, simply because there’s just so much information out there already, but I thought it was time that I took a look at these two oft-recommended cameras in what I’m calling the Student Camera Showdown! Of course other quality cameras made by Nikon, Olympus, Minolta, Rollei, Hasselblad, and many others regularly make these lists too, but for the same two models to be considered over and over again, there has to be something to it. That’s just the first two pages of a Google search.
The Canon AE-1 (or it’s later variant the AE-1 Program), and the Pentax K1000.īut don’t take my word for it, check these articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here….oh wait, and here too. Each of those articles make their own claim to have the best cameras for the beginner, but despite the variety, on nearly all of them, two models in particular show up the most often. There are countless lists out there telling you what camera is a great first film camera that is cheap, easy to use, and reliable. With an increase in interest among young photographers who might be looking to buy their first film camera, there is a lot of information out there from people making recommendations on what to buy. That means that roughly a third of people using film today grew up in the digital age and likely never shot film before, and if they have, they were likely cheap point and shoot or disposable cameras when they were kids. More than four years have passed since that article, so its plausible that the percentage is higher. Think about that for a minute, someone who was 35 in 2015 was 15 years old in 1995. OK, film never went anywhere, but like vinyl records did in the early 21st century, the steady decrease of film usage seems to have bottomed out and has started to increase again.Īccording to Ilford in an article published in February 2015, 30% of people shooting film are younger than 35.