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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bob Blaylock" data-source="post: 425559" data-attributes="member: 16749">Back in the 1970s, as a teenager, I developed an obsession with photography. and collecting cameras—mostly cameras that I picked up at thrift stores for a dollar or two.  I also collected brochures from camera stores, on various brands and models, that, of course, were well outside of my budget at that time.  From all the brochures, I came to develop a particular affinity for the Nikon F2 series.  At that time, the F2A and F2AS were the current models, but I came to understand that the pre-AI variants had the advantage of being compatible with all extant F-mount lenses, while the post-AI variants were only fully compatible with the newer AI lenses; and therefore, I came to regard the pre-AI variants as more desirable.  Late in 1986, having been in my first real job since the beginning of that year, and in anticipation of a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Arctic in connection with that job, I decided I finally had the excuse to buy the camera I had lusted after for a decade or more.  By this time, I think the F3 was the current model, but that wasn't what I wanted.  I wanted a pre-AI F2.  I found one in a local camera store, and bought it, along with three lenses, all described in my .sig.  What I didn't know then, that I know now, is that digital photography was coming in a few decades, and how the dominance of different brands would shift around.  Nikon, which I regarded then as more of a high-end luxury brand (I tended to think of Pentax and Minolta as the dominant, middle-class brands of Japanese SLRs back then), would come out as one of the two dominant brands in DSLRs (Canon being the other).  When the time came that I found myself in a position to be able to buy a modern DSLR, I went with Nikon  largely out of some admittedly irrational brand loyalty based on my ownership of the F2, but also on some hope, which turned out to be realized, that the ancient lenses that I had for my F2 would work with my new DSLR.  They are all non-AI lenses, and <a href="https://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14439/~/can-i-use-my-lens-from-my-old-camera-on-a-new-digital-slr%3F" target="_blank">Nikon claims that non-AI lenses will not work on any DSLR except their DF model</a>, but Nikon is wrong about this; they work just fine on my D3200.  As far as I know, Nikon is the only brand of SLR  that I could have purchased back in the 1980s, along with some lenses for it, and have those lenses for that camera be usable on a DSLR that I would purchase nearly three decades later.  Had I known that, then, I would certainly not have considered any other brand.</blockquote>

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