 My name is Dave Feely, and I have been in the camera business for several decades. We are going to talk to you today in regard towards the film camera industry to how popular it's been in the last 10 years. I have several people come in all the time looking and bringing in film cameras. And the 70s and 80s, early 80s were the most popular in the film camera business. The major manufacturers of that 70s era, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minota, and Olympus. These are the most common cameras that have been sold during that period of time. These cameras were well engineered in the 70s, and they still maintain their ability to take good photos. Granted, there are several different models and makers of cameras, but they are not popular as much or reliable as they get to age on the camera. What to look for when you buy a camera or pick up a camera and then you determine whether you need service or not. Today we'll start out with the Canon AE-1. The Canon AE-1 was a reliable camera in regard towards functionality. It is to this day still a good camera. I have one that's in good working shape, and then we'll talk about what to look for in this one here. The most important thing when you go through a camera is to determine, alright, is it light tight? Does the shutter work correctly? And is the aperture working correctly? If the aperture is not working correctly and the shutter is not working correctly, you're not going to get good exposure. The check on light seals is the first thing you do is you open up the door by pulling up the knob on the AE-1, pop the door open, and then you run your finger along the back door, and you'll feel roughness to the point of stuff comes off on your finger like so. And that is the light seal material deteriorating in regard towards light tight for the camera. So this one definitely needs seals. This one here has a little bit of a thinnest squeal. With the Canon squeal, the mirror moves very slowly. And this one here is going to progressively get worse, and then when it becomes that problem, you'll be thinking you're taking a picture and you're not. The next thing you want to check is the shutter speeds. Alright, in doing so, checking the camera, your shutter speed dial assembly is here on the AE-1, and you want to select your shutter speeds. And shutter speeds are all graduated in stops, and you've got a 1,000 of a second all the way down to one second. And determining shutter speeds and testing, you want to go and test one second to see if it sounds like one second, you know, as such. And then you go up into a 1,000 of a second. Now, determining how to check a 1,000 of a second, you would have to physically open the back door of the camera and physically look through it and see light coming through here in regard towards a full slit of the opening of the aperture. In doing that, you can sign the light in or hold it up to the light bulb or lamp or anything in that regard, and you can look into it and you can see the opening of the shutter. Also you want to check is that the diaphragm levers are working. This is the diaphragm lever down here. I do have a camera here that does work, and it does move. You can see it physically. And then diaphragm, when it's checking the diaphragm lever, you want to check the camera lens. And this is your diaphragm in the lens. Okay? And in Canon E1, you have to make sure it's out of A. And then you get to close the breach in this model. This is the FD mount, not an FDM mount. The FDM mount's different. And then you have this aperture lever here. Can you see that in regard towards the opening and closing of the aperture? And if it does work very smoothly and very rapidly, then you're okay. Today we're going to also talk about the K1000. They produced this camera from 1977 through 98. It had gone through its different issues in regard to it's modernizing it and updating it and going from metal top covers to plastic top covers, blah blah blah in that regard, just for cost efficiency. But it was strictly a mechanical camera, and the battery only operates as the meter. The rest of the camera is fully functional in regard towards mechanics. The battery compartment's down in the bottom, as you can see, and it takes one 76 battery in there. And it's very basic. We've got to open up the back door. It's just pulling the vents. Where you want to knob up? And of course, when you go and check all the cameras, you always want to check your light seal material and make sure there's no foam on the door. It's all there. It all feels nice and flush. This is a focal plane shutter. This is just a lot of cloth focal plane shutter. No special design or nothing. Basic film camera. The K1000 was a K-mount. That was the K with four. It has a release button over here. Let me get the lens cap off. A release button over here in regard to it's dismounting the camera lens. You know, rotate it over and it comes off. And this is one of the first models that they were using the K-mount. K2 came out shortly after. It was a little bit more advanced. But this is the most popular camera to be made. And it's so basic. It's unreal. Just a plain photo box. Okay, in doing so, in checking the shutter speed, you only have to go through and check your slow speeds first and see if you have a half second, one second exposure. And you can see that by just looking in time in it. And then you want to also check is the 15th of a second. And 15th of a second will sound like Philip. Philip. And that's how you would check that simple. That's old school technology of checking speeds. In a thousandth of a second, you want to hold it up to the light, fluorescent light or outdoor light or something in that manner. And look through the back of the camera. And in doing that, you'll see a full aperture from side to side, which will be from here to here, light. If you don't see a full aperture, they call this the shutter aperture area. If you don't see a full aperture, then you have issues and you need to take it to your local repair shop because you'll be burning film. It's not going to open up. And after you've determined your shutter speed is good enough, then you want it to close up and get ready to shoot your picture. You put roll film in. Check the aperture in the lens just like normal. You just flick it like so. And you can see it operate in the slowest aperture to the widest aperture. And then you're ready to go. That is the K1000. Okay, we're going to move on to the next major manufacturer of the 70s and early 80s. And then until today is Nikon. And Nikon's most popular camera in the film industry during the consumer age of the 70s is the Nikon FM. That FM was a rugged, mechanical shutter camera. And all I think it had batteries in it is for the metering. So we'll talk real quickly on how to check one out in regard towards that when if you pick one up. The first off is always going through and checking out the light seals. And opening it up in Nikon FM, you've got a little lever right here. You push that over and pull the door open in that regard. You're going your finger across the air and your pressure plate rails. And you look at your finger and boy you can see this one really has a lot of light seal material that's deteriorating. And what the problem is is it won't seal the back very good for a light leak. So do not put a roll of film into this camera or you're just wasting time and money. The camera has batteries down in the bottom cap here and there are 76 alkaline batteries. You always look for battery corrosion. That's obvious right there. The next thing you want to check in regard to an old camera like this is the shutter. Does it cock and does it open? And then what we want to do is throw something like a slow speed down to a half second or something like that regard. Well that's not good. The camera jammed. It's jammed up. This one has issues. There it goes. This one does have issues. I've got all kinds of issues. But the shutter should be operating and it does. And the transport should operate. This one is hanging up. Intermittently hanging up. And you can do the same test for your high shutter speeds. Just look through the camera. Open it up. Put it out a thousand a second and look through it and see if you've got full aperture in that regard. And if you've got full aperture then you're okay. And checking your lens on a Nikon is fairly simple. It doesn't have any special aperture that you have to engage in. It just pulls your aperture lever here and look at it and see if the blades are flipping open smoothly and quickly. Also you want to look inside and see if there's any oil on the blades and you'll see if there's oil on the blades will be shiny. And then you want to look and see how clear the lens is with a wide open aperture. You turn it to the wide open aperture and you look through it and see how clear it is with a haze and scratches and all that kind of stuff that debris that would affect your image quality. And doing so when you find it's nice and clean then I would proceed and use it as a regular shooting lens. If you have issues with it then sometimes you can get it cleaned out and sometimes you can't. So that's just buyer beware in regard when you buy one off of eBay or get one at a garage sale that has closet from the 70s and you go I want to start shooting film. Well, guess what? That is some of the things you want to check because this stuff is getting old.