Wow, that is stunning for such a professional-grade camera.
I Googled it and the top hit said this:
“The New F-1 does not shoot in Program at all, and it only shoots in Shutter Priority if you have one of the two motor drives attached.”
From what I can see, it was produced from 1981 until 1992. The AE-1 Program was also introduced in 1981. You’d think that the New F-1 would also have a Program mode. OTOH, professionals may have scoffed.
We’re going on vacation next month. I thought I’d take my Olympus system with us, but now I’m leaning toward the AE-1 Program and the A-1.
Canon T-90 was introduced within New F1 lifetime. Lots of automation in that hockeypuck of a camera.
EOS line debuted around the midpoint. Took a while, but automation gained ground with serious photographers. Led by OTF flash metering, imho. AF got better with each new camera as well.
Many pros and other serious users see automation as simply one more tool. Know what it does, know when and how to use or not use. A photographer can still be in control even with different levels of automation.
F3 kinda led the way, I think, with people accepting more electronics in their rugged cameras
@Johnny_L.A , I finally got around to recording a video on the AE-1 Program vs. the A-1. Please be kind and give it a thumbs up if you find it helpful!
Fantastic! When you said you might do a video, I was expecting five or six minutes. 32½ minutes? Incredible. Your enthusiasm really shows.
A couple of things of note: I like how you compared and contrasted the instructions for the AE lock buttons in the different manuals, as I was perplexed by the AE-1 Program instructions earlier in this thread. And I like that you differentiated between the AE-1 Program being a consumer camera, and the A-1 being a pro-sumer camera. I’ve been fiddling with both cameras (and the New F-1), and I still think the ‘Action Grip’ is one of the best features on all of them. I’ll be honest: I still prefer my Olympus OM-1 and OM-4, and my Nikon FM2 (although I don’t care for the LED exposure display) and FM3A. I just love the compactness of the Olympus cameras. But, the AE-1 Program being my first 35mm SLR, I still like it. I can’t wait to use the A-1.
Today my Canon ‘system’ is complete. I received a Canon New FD 35-135mm f/3.5 zoom, and the other day I received a Canon New FD 70-210mm F/4 zoom. I have two 50mm Canon lenses (f/1.4 on the A-1, and f/1.8 on the AE-1 Program), plus the DD 28mm f/2.8 lens that came with the New F-1. Bodies are the AE-1 Program, A-1, and New F-1 (plus a Canonet QL17). The New F-1 also came with an AE Power Winder FN. I also have a Canon Speedlite 199A but, like you, I don’t shoot flash.
Thanks! 32 minutes was a challenge because I realized after giving the subject suitable treatment that it was probably too long. Imagine chatting with a friend and explaining a couple of cameras you really like–it’s easy to ramble. Lots of editing and trimming got it to 32 minutes 
I am fascinated by the other cameras that aren’t in my repertoire: Olympus, Pentax, Nikon, among others. Though I may have a couple of cameras with those names, I have never used a film SLR from any of those.
I can only imagine the cool features (and annoying quirks) that each of those must have.
But I’m a bit wary of starting collecting lenses and cameras for a different system.
I shoot primes, so my Canon system currently has just 4 lenses: a portrait lens (135mm), a wide angle (28mm), a proper normal lens (50mm) and a macro (also 50mm).
I’m not sure where I want to go next with that since the core is pretty much filled.
Here is a 38-minute review. The guy is not as high-energy as you are in your video. He spends over half of the video taking pictures, so you really only need to see the first 15 minutes, where he goes over controls and the viewfinder.
British guy tries out his ‘new’ (to him) OM-4 Ti (11:27). The Ti was an OM-4 with titanium top and bottom.
Olympus OM-4 Video Manual 1 of 2: Overview, Features, and Camera Layout
Olympus OM-4 Video Manual 2 of 2: Operation, Use, How to Take a Photo, and Functions
TBH, I set the playback speed to 2x for the last two, after watching the first two videos. I think the first video probably has the best overview – before he gets into taking pictures.
You’ll hear the presenters say they were attracted to the OM-4 because of its small size. I find that attractive too. I also like the diopter adjustment on the viewfinder. The Big Annoying Quirk is that there is no Off switch, so you’ll need to remove your batteries when you put the camera away or else you’ll have dead batteries next time you take it out.
One video noted something I didn’t know: The OM-4 can use any accessory in the Olympus line-up.
Now I have some videos to watch. Cool!
Which camera was it that has some kind of “accumulated light metering” that simply measures light as it comes in and shuts the shutter when enough has arrived?
I seem to recall that might have been an Olympus. That’s a pretty cool feature for night photography since it doesn’t need to compute a shutter speed; it simply opens, and then closes after it deems the job complete.
I think the Nikon FE.
Long Exposures
The FE’s internal circuitry is analog, so it has none of the hard range limits of newer cameras with digital circuitry.
If you shoot scenes at night, the FE will meter and clock-off time exposures automatically. Forget newer cameras which require you to sit there like a dork holding a cable release while watching a wristwatch and holding a flashlight to see it all.
With an FE (or FE2 or FA), compose the scene, cover the eyepiece if your eye isn’t on it, wind the self timer, and press the shutter.
The FE measures and locks the exposure, flips up the mirror, counts off about ten seconds, and then makes the time exposure automatically.
You don’t need a cable release, and the mirror locks up and returns all by itself. It is way, way superior to any digital Nikon.
I’ve never had the patience to wait around and see just how long the Nikon FE will expose.
Out of curiosity, I loaded fresh A76 cells into an FE set to ASA 50 and, with the lens cap on in AUTO, pressed the shutter.
The shutter stayed open for 63 minutes, and then closed at ISO 50. Whoa!
I tried it again set to ASA 400, and the FE stayed open for 3 minutes and then 17 minutes. It will vary by temperature and the amount of light to which the FE was exposed a little while before you started the exposure. Remember, the FE is analog, and it’s the leakage currents which are defining the long exposure times.
These times correspond to LV -13 with an f/1.4 lens, which is about ten stops darker than normal night time.
These times are with a wide-open lens. The FE calculates even longer times if you stop down your lens!
The FE doesn’t calculate corrections for reciprocity failure. Luckily, the lessened effective exposure with most film gives the darker results we want to make night shots look like night; otherwise night shots would look as bright as day.
The battery check light works during a long exposure.
I haven’t used my FE yet, but I’d really like to take it out at night. Too bad we don’t have waves around here, as I’ve seen long exposures that show the bioluminescence around rocky outcrops. And I’ve always liked the streaky lights in nighttime street scenes.
BTW, I really like Ken Rockwell’s reviews. (With so many images, the Reviews page is taking some time to load.)
I have to say that yours is the best video. 
Here’s a review of the Olympus OM-2N (not video).
My OM-2 is a late addition to my collection, and I haven’t used it yet.
My first 35mm camera was my dad’s Argus C3. From there I went on to Brownies and Instamatics. My high school photo class lent out Pentax K-1000s and then I got a Mamiya/Sekor 500DTL. After that I had a AE-1, then a Nikon 6006, a Yashica T-4 and T-5 and finally a Nikon 8008 before I went digital with the D40.
I still have shoeboxes of photo packets with the negative sleeves that I’m too lazy to scan and too sentimental to throw away.
I bought an Argus C4 about 20 years ago. I think there’s still film in it. The controls are very stiff from sitting on a shelf.
While I haven’t shot film in … 20 years? … I still have my film cameras: Nikon FM2 (handed down to me by friend – it was his dad’s, who shot for Gamma Liason back in the 70s and 80s), a Nikon N90s/F90x (the first camera I bought with my own money), and a Nikon F5. Oh, and it looks like an old Lomo LC-A, as well. (I have a bigger digital boneyard – I don’t sell any of my old equipment. I either keep it, or give it away to people who I believe will make good use of them.) I used to have a TLR of some sort somewhere. Can’t remember what brand. No idea what happened to it. I also had some weird folding Russian camera that photographs in 6x9 format – it may have been a Moskva V, from looking at pictures on the internet. Quirky little thing that was. I kinda wish I had it still, but it must have gotten lost in a move or something, as I haven’t seen it for at least a decade. Oh, and my kids discovered I had an old classic Polaroid 600 camera I didn’t even know I had (I seem to remember it being gifted to me), and they got a lot of fun out of it over the spring/summer, taking it to the last day of school and everything. Damn, buying film for that is not cheap!
I took the B&W film I shot last weekend to the camera store in town today. I also brought the F-1 so that I could burn the last five shots – which I did, along the street across from the shop. The mystery film turned out to be ‘old style’ Ektachrome, which they said is more expensive to process. That, plus the B&W, came out to over $50 including scanning – but not including any prints – and it would take at least four weeks.
At dinner tonight, my wife asked me how much processing was, and I told her. She said that if I’m going to be using my cameras, I should develop the film myself. If I could develop the negatives, it would be a lot quicker to see the results since the shop scans onsite.
I took a B&W photography class in college 40 years ago. That was the last time I developed my own film. I’m going to need to research how to do it. I’ve never developed my own colour negatives. I searched Amazon, and got these results. Detailed recommendations would be appreciated.
Black and white is trivially easy to do. Temperature control is not particularly critical, and for a reasonable range of room-temperatures, you can lookup a time compensation that does not significantly effect the final image.
C-41 process does require some critical attention to temperature control, typically with a heated water bath for your chemical bottles. You gotta be at 102 degrees F plus or minus not very much.
E-6 is similar, but with even less latitude for temperature deviance. I wouldn’t develop slides until you’re really comfortable with negatives.
Cinestill has some decent products, but more importantly has some excellent tutorials that apply regardless of whose chemistry you buy.
I do think their temperature control system (a reprogrammed sous-vide cooker) is a must and about as good a product in that space as can be bought until you’re ready to drop $1k+ on a semi-automated JOBO unit.
I’d recommend watching every Cinestill tutorial from using a changing bag, to loading tanks, to developing both color and B&W with their kits. You really don’t need a ton more info than that to get started.
Once you’ve gotten your head around their videos, then the real fun begins. And that’s arguing about brands of chemistry, processing techniques and how much to depend on the Massive Dev Chart.
The development for the E-6 and C-41 color processes is not much more complicated than B&W, but the temperature control is much more critical. If you are going to do this, get a temperature-controlled water bath to put the developing tank in.
To quote myself and pre-emptively start this off, almost every C-41 kit out there combines the bleach and fix steps into a step called ‘blix’. Personally, I think this is cheap and lazy and creates a demonstrably worse negative. Right now, I only know of two reliable sources for C-41 chemistry that still has the two separate steps. One is the Bellini kit and one is the Kodak FlexiColor line.
The Bellini product is great but sometimes hard to get. The Kodak product is arguably the very best available, but punishingly difficult to buy and use, as it’s really intended to be used by pro labs in their automated equipment. So you end up with gallons of the various chemicals that then have complicated replenishing formulas that are hard to manage if you aren’t just cranking out negatives.
In the b&w world, there are a number of kits available that are monobaths. That is, developer and fixer in one step. These are awful.
It’s surprisingly not that much harder. I have a story – when I was in college, the Bulls were on their 5th championship run. My roommate was an excellent shooter and second shot for AFP (Agence-France Presse). They were short a lab tech for the playoffs, so he asked me if I could do it. I was scared as shit. I said, dude, I’ve only processed BW film, never C41 and he said, don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine. It’s one less step than BW (they used blix), and for temperature control, there’s a thingie you put in the water (it was like a little coil with a dial you can dial in the temp with).
So my first experience with developing C41 was at the Bulls conference semi-finals in 1997 (I did not do a trial run beforehand) and I, thankfully did not fuck up. I did all the home games for the playoff series then, as well as 1998. No problems. Plus I got to shoot first and fourth quarter and got photos on the wire and published. It was a fun time, especially as a 21-year-old who thought he had no clue what he was doing.
I think B&W is the way to start, and then graduate to colour. Are there any products on Amazon that would be appropriate for me?
I have a couple of Harrison changing tents, and a changing bag, for loading 16mm motion picture magazines. (My super-16 cameras are Aaton LTRs.)
All you need is developer:
Stop bath:
and Fixer: