Okay, in the first instance, what do I mean by an "old camera"? I started my career with one of the best 35mm film cameras, a Nikon F2, although I regularly had to use a Hasselblad for studio work and a 5x4 plate camera for architecture, so I’m talking about the cameras of the late '70s and early '80s. Surely these old cameras are no match for the modern, mirrorless, all-singing and dancing, feature-driven, computerized wonder machines of today?
So, did "old" cameras do things better? Basically they were light-tight boxes with a manual focus lens, a light meter and, if you were really lucky, a motor drive. Pro-spec models were invariably built to last; my Nikon F2 from the mid-1970s still works perfectly well and my Leica M3 from 1955 is still a joy to behold, but were they any better?
