While everyone today seems to be concentrating on who has the best electronics and most features, they often lose sight of one minor little fact - many of the world's best photographs, of both today and yesterday, were taken on manual focus cameras of some type. Simply put, the current barrage of "auto everything" and "wonder cameras" isn't the photographic miricle that so many think it is.
Pick up a current mid-level autofocus camera, such as a Nikon N70, and compare it to an entry-level manual focus camera such as the Pentax K-1000. The first thing you'll notice is the difference in weight and construction - that N70 may be a super whiz-bang machine, but it lacks the construction quality of the metal bodied Pentax. Such is the case when you compare many of the current cameras to an older manual focus camera, or well built cameras such as the Leica M series. While the manual focus cameras lack features, they often have durability and repairability far better than many of today's electronic cameras.
In terms of actual use, the main difference between a manual focus camera and an autofocus camera is speed. In action situations, such as sports games, an autofocus camera can have an advantage, but in most normal shooting situations where speed isn't a concern (landscapes, portraits, travel, macro work, copy work, etc), there really isn't that much of a difference. In fact, because a manual focus camera slows you down a bit, you may end up with better photographs as you think a bit more about what you're doing. I certainly found this to be the case when I started using manual focus cameras in addition to my autofocus system - my results on the manual focus camera tended to be better, and I also used less film. As a final note, manual focus cameras generally make far better cameras to learn photography on as the manual controls force you to learn exactly what everything does, and how it affects the final image (unlike current autofocus cameras, that do all the thinking for you).
And now for the cameras. As with the other sections, all cameras are separated by brand. Also included is a "primer" for manual focus 35mm cameras, giving some basic information and also listing some known bugs.
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