Review 3 of 19
Price Paid:
$130.00 Summary:
I bought this camera in 1980 at the age of 18; more than 20 years later, I taught my son the basics of manual film photography on the very same camera. In the meantime, my FX-3 has literally been all over the world, beaten, dropped from considerable heights, abused by customs officials, baggage handlers and above all myself. It's still going strong.
It's a superb camera for patient and exacting people. Owing to its lack of automatic and other features, it is a poor camera for impatient, sound-bite oriented, instant-gratification types. Strengths:
* Simplicity. As with most simple designs, the less complication, the less there is to go wrong. In 25 years, nothing has gone wrong. Nothing. After thousands of rolls.
* Has worked superbly with non-dedicated flash units.
*Yashica lenses are very good for the money. Zeiss lenses, of course, are without equal. Perhaps too good for most human eyes. If one is willing and able to put up large sums for Zeiss, it's as good as any manual 35mm system out there. Outrageous clarity and color definition. Weaknesses:
* The lens choice, oddly. Yashica at the low end and Zeiss at the high end; the latter are phenomenally expensive. I also tried some third-party lenses over the years and they were all--no exceptions--dreadful. Some middle-priced choices would have been appreciated back when I had little money.
* Also--let's face it now. In 10 years, 15 at the most, film will go the way of glass negatives and vinyl LP's. Digital SLR's are improving too fast, and their advantages in development costs and turnaround time are simply too great. Similar Products Used:
Minolta X-700, Canon Rebel G, Nikon FM2, Nikon D-1x. Customer Service:
Never needed any in 25 years and thousands of rolls. What does that say?
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