You have the best knowledge of this model. Well done! Thank you.

Thank you, purchased the camera and today purchased the vertical grip.

Nice video....Very clear how you filmed and explained everything. I am repairing a similar Super 8 but the motor does not work....Can the motor be fixed or thats the end ?..Thank you !

Thanks for the great video! Wish you hadn't stopped posting them years ago...

Nicely done. Thanks.

Seems like an awesome camera. I'm worried though it might suffer from reliability issues. I've seen many people complain about the aperture control electronics breaking down, and this camera seems to suffer from cosmetic defects to the lcd and plastics over time.. what's your take on this? In your opinion is it worth taking the chance? Or should i stick with something more rugged like a traditional F100?

Excellent showing of this camera, best I've seen

Great tutorial boss, really helped out

Great video. I've recently discovered Fujica cameras on the secondhand market in Australia. I bought 2 ST 605N's. 35mm SLR's. They're probably early 1970's, shutter only goes to 1/700th sec.They're M42 mount. Regarding portrait orientation, Pentax will be putting out a new 35mm half-frame camera. Portrait has become the new Landscape, with the popularity of the smartphone over the last 15 years. I have an Olympus Pen F 1963 half-frame SLR, there were only 3 and all made by Olympus (Pen F, Pen FT and Pen FV.) Some with/some without light meter.

Good demonstration video for this camera. I bought mine in 1976 in Japan (Nikomat FT2), along with four lenses to match it. From 1962, I had previously used a Nikkorex F (made for Nikon my Mamiya) and a single 50mm 1.4, just like the one shown here except mine is Pre-AI of course. The wonky meter to lens indexing he shows here is exactly the same for all Nikon and Nikkormat cameras up through the FT2. Nikon planned to introduce its "great leap forward" into the AI meter indexing mechanics in 1977. The first AI model was the FT3, which was an FT2 with a modified meter coupling on the mount. This was replaced by the first FM model a year later, being the first entirely new Nikon model with AI metering. As he suggests in the video, the AI coupling is automatic, in that you just mount the lens (f-stop set wherever) and this indexes the meter to the lens without any matching of pin to "rabbit ears" or aperture ring maneuvers. The pre-AI bodies will not index to AI lenses unless they have the "claw connector", and they will often not mount the AI lenses because there can be mechanical interference. The FT3 and early FM models accommodate this problem by hinging the AI coupling arm so it can swing out of the way to avoid interference with pre-AI lenses, however this feature disappeared from newer models after a few years, in favor of a single, fixed-piece arm, probably because it was cheaper to make. In fairness to Nikon, it did offer to take in users' pre-AI lenses and rebuild them to fit and meter on AI indexing bodies, charging $25 including shipping. This was so cheap that many pre-AI lenses were modified then, and those lenses are often impossible to tell from original AI lenses, unless you dig into serial numbers or know a great deal about the details of the conversion process. (I had all of my pre-AI lenses modified, except for my 50mm 1.4 from 1962, which for some reason was one of the few Nikon did not modify. Years later, I had the 50mm modified by a private repairman.)

In all honesty, the Praktica L series, which is effectively the third generation of Praktica cameras, starting in 1969 with the Praktica L, Praktica LTL and Praktica LLC, is much more robust, durable and, after decades, more precise and less susceptible to repair than all the Japanese cameras. The quality of Praktica cameras, of which there are many different models, only declined from around the middle or end of the 1980s, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when economic problems and the decrease in state support up to and shortly after the fall of the Wall caused the quality of production to decline more and more. If you take this into account and use earlier models, you have cameras that can survive a lifetime. For example, I have a Praktica VLC2. There are also the sister models Praktica VLC and Praktica VLC3. All three models are a more than serious alternative to the Nikon F2, Nikon F3, Canon F-1, Canon F-1n, Canon New F-1, Pentax LX, Minolta XK, Minolta Xm and so on. All camera systems with interchangeable lenses and interchangeable viewfinder attachments. My Praktica VLC2 was built robustly, reliably and sustainably between 1976 and 1978 and still works precisely and without any problems. Oh yes, for a complete set, with 1-2 lenses, all three viewfinder attachments, a special clip-on flash shoe, original carrying strap and battery adapters including batteries, which are easily available today, for not much money, the total package costs about 200€ with intensive research and luck and up to 350€ if you search normally. As I said, the complete package. If you are looking for the same complete package from the Japanese manufacturers, you will pay from, with a lot of luck, 800€, with a little luck from 1000€ up to several 1000€. So you should perhaps take Praktica a lot more seriously than you did here in the video. Just a little tip. For my part, I don't need a Nikon F2 or F3 or the other Japanese professional SLR cameras mentioned above. I'm more than adequately equipped with my Praktica.

What a fantastic review this is, will watch again as I am in the market for :buying this beauty, many thanks, best regards Rob (UK).

Go with an F2, trust me on that

AI has 2 rows of f-stops

I'm glad you didn't say knee-kon

God if you don’t know much about Nikons, why make a video?

What film is 6x9 then ? I have some Fuji FP-100C in the freezer but once they are gone?

The first video about this camera that I watched… since I have purchased 3 times. Thanks!

Excellent overview!

I think I missed it how do I change f stop

Really good information and showing about loading 120 film into the fuji gs645s wide 60. Was so glad I found you to get to know how to learn and do this. But one question is still: What do I have to when I am finished with my 15 shoots of the film? Are there things I need to pay more attention to? Or do I just have to use the film transport lever like when loading the film until it can't go any further?

I know this is 8 years old but a video like this, just as in depth for the a9 would be amazing for me! If you have one and have the time, that would be appreciated 🙏

So the 'quirk' with the meter being upside down (- on top, + on bottom) - that's always been a nikon thing, and still is to this day! Even the modern Nikon digital cameras, the positive exposure is on the left, and the negative exposure is on the right. So when metering, if you look at the gauge from left-to-right, you're actually going from brighter exposure (left) to darker exposure (right.). You can reverse it in the menus, and I've actually always had mine reversed for 20 years now. However I'm a college photography instructor, and I always had to remind myself that any students in the class with Nikons, their menus were 'normal' Nikon, meaning they were reversed!

You can use the LR44 battery with the prakticas no problem.

Just got mine. Watched your video like 5 years ago. Wanted one ever since, just got one for my birthday

I’ve never heard of this camera and bought the Canon F1 for wedding work, I’m selling it for this camera.

Just received this camera. Shutter speed only turns smoothly between 1/500 s to 1/4 sec. When it’s turned to be slower than 1/4sec, it has a lot of resistance. Just wondering if this was experienced before?

how do you rewind on this camera?

I have a Nikkormat FT2, when putting on my flash mount on the camera, I noticed the whole flash mount is slightly crooked! Way did they do this?

Hey I have that lens!

I had a camera like that once, the battery had exploded, and glued itself to the compartment. Also mercury, it is highly toxic. I would not be touching that with your bare hands. Deoxit is good for cleaning as it won't damage any of the plastic or contacts. It's non-abrasive. The coin battery is for the light meter, not the motor.... The batteries for the motor are generally AAs in a different compartment. The frame speed change is for frames per second, not feet per second. You want to set the frames per second to 24fps for modern video.

YOu could sand the side of the holder a bit to get the fit 'just' right

The reason for the strange lens-mounting procedure on the Nikkormats FT, FTn, FT2 and EL is that the original Nikon F used EXTERNAL light meter cells. This meant that the camera body had to know the ACTUAL aperture setting in order to calculate the required shutter speed. When Through-The-lens (TTL) metering was introduced later on the Nikon F, and later at the launch of the Nikkormat FT series, the camera body then only needed to know the DIFFERENCE between the taking aperture and the maximum aperture in order for open-aperture metering to work. A full rotation of the aperture ring, each time a lens is mounted, is required to transmit this DIFFERENCE information to the camera body. [Note that, if the metering is carried out with the lens stopped down (e.g. with the depth-of-field button pressed or, if using a lens that does not have an automatic aperture-closing mechanism), there is no need to tell the TTL meter what the actual aperture setting is. This is because the TTL meter will be measuring the actual light which reaches the film and so it does not need to know the f-stop number as such.] The later AI (Automatic Indexing) system (introduced on the Nikkormat FT3) relays the above-mentioned aperture DIFFERENCE information to the camera body in a much simplified way which does not involve communicating the actual f-stop number. A ridge is provided on the back of the aperture ring. This makes contact with a tooth on a spring-loaded collar which rotates around the lens mount. The ridge on the lens is always positioned at the same distance (4 stops) from the maximum aperture engraving on the aperture ring of the lens, for all Nikon AI lenses. The ridge automatically comes into contact with the tooth on the collar when the lens is rotated during mounting. This solution provides the meter with a reading of how many stops difference there are between the taking aperture and the maximum aperture. If the Nikon F had used TTL metering from the start of its production, I guess that all the Nikon F-Mount lenses could have been designed with the simpler AI coupling from the outset and this would have saved Nikon and its customers a ton of trouble later on! You can tell a proper Nikon AI lens by three features: (A) The ridge on the back of the aperture ring, (B) An additional aperture scale at the back of the aperture ring - this is used to enable the f-stop setting to be visible in the viewfinder via a periscope on the later FM, FE, FA etc. cameras, (C) The small windows in the "Rabbit Ears" (i.e. the fork) on the lens which were added so that enough light reached the "f5.6" engraving for it to be visible via the periscope in low light conditions.

Note for new users to the camera: the silver lenses are cheaper but exactly the same as the black variants. Aesthetically its not very pretty, but if youre looking to save on a good 35-60mm lens its worth checking out.

Only a very brief overview, hundreds of models missed.

I get that the aperture has to be placed on 5.6 in order to work, however does shutter speed or iso need to be placed on a certain position?

My first SLR was a Praktica Pro L, which was a rebadged Praktica L, and sold in the U.S. I remember going over to the next town with my Dad in 1969, where the only camera store within 30 miles was so I could pick out my new camera, put in on layaway, and eventually get it paid for over the summer by doing various jobs. I really wanted a Minolta SRT-101, but the Praktica was around $100 and the Minolta a little over $200, and my hot little 13 yr. old hands wanted an SLR ASAP. It was loud and clunky, but I took a years worth of pictures with before I used it as a trade-in + cash for the Minolta the following year. The biggest improvement in my mind was finally getting away from M42 screw-on lenses and entering the world of bayonet mount cameras. Not too long ago I picked up a 70's Praktica model, and while not exactly the same camera, it still looks good on my shelf. Nice video - Thanks.

His 50mm 1.4 was made long before the AI mount system was introduced in 1977. I bought mine in 1962.. What you see here is an old lens which has been modified to upgrade it to AI operation. In 1977, Nikon offered owners of pre-AI lenses a service to replace parts to do the AI upgrade. Nikon also offered little parts kits to repair shops to do the job. What I find interesting is that at the time I had all of my lenses except one modified by Nikon. The exception was this 50mm, being informed by Nikon that they did not offer the service for this lens. Yet, this lens is modified, and the parts to do it look exactly like what you would expect from a Nikon modification. Very curious! (Years later, I had my 50mm AI modified by an independent repairman, who modifies the original parts to do the job. Yeh, I know I blew the value of that lens as a bit of a collectors item.)

The metering system! wowww

Bellísima 😊

Nikkormat series began in 1965 with the FT, then in about late 1967, the FTn appears. That model was sold into 1975, over a million were made. And they are all mechanical marvels of engineering! Next was the FT2. Sold up to about 1977 when the beautiful and smaller Nikon FM was introduced. Only about a quarter million of the FT2 were sold. But, well worth having if you can find a good one. These Nikkormats are all metal and heavy! I use mine mostly in studio or on a sturdy tripod. For around the neck carry? Get the FM !

I have a canon 512xl, and it seems to be making a screeching noise with the powerzoom.

What is a professional feel ?

Thanks!

The Praktica Cameras have very durable

can you tell me if you can open the lens of this camera to clean if there is fungus?

Nice video. I have a question. I got a Yeshica Super-50 which is technically identical to your camera. But the view finder works very slow (the diaphargm values). I see in your movie that the numbers in the left corner changes normally. In my camera it looks like it stuck and it moves slowly, it takes minutes before it goes from 22 to 2.8. In the meanwhile I opened the camera to see whats happing. If I switch to manual and turn the button, it goes easy to 22, but back to 2.8 nothing happens. If I press (very) gently this blade (I suppose it's the diaphragm of the camera) back, the diaphragma value in the upper left corner goes also back to 2.8. It looks like the coil where the diaphragm is connected to doesn't get electricity in one of the coils to bring the diaphragm back. My question is: how do I disasemble the camera so I can take out this part (and in the best case it's a losen wire what has to reconnect), or where can I find a new sparepart, or does that not exist anymore, due to the camera's age? I hope you have some advise for me :o) . Thanks for sharing this video

Just got my Dynax 7 in the last week. Really useful video. Many thanks.

But sadly now i found another problem...... Focus ring....damn ....zoom works perfect but the other ring.... No...

Hii i did as you di and now It works perfect