This gives me hope.

For the world in general. It’s a Nikon FM10. It’s a camera. That takes film. High quality, works with the zillion Nikkor lenses already out there, and does nothing automatically. It’s even more manual than my trusty F3. The fact that there is a market for a brand new, no-frills high quality film SLR makes me happy.

For years, Nikon has only made very, very expensive professional film cameras, and lower quality less expensive consumer cameras. All of them have tons of features, auto-focus, auto-exposure, etc. They haven’t made a camera like this in a long time. You’ll need to pick your shutter speed, your f-stop, and learn to use the center-weighted spot meter.

And, apparently, people are still buying it. I’ve got this worry that I’m not going to be able to afford paper or chemicals whenever I get around to building a darkroom again, and things like this give me hope.

I’ve also got hope that there are kids today who are apparently interested in learning something about photography and doing, well, real photography. Yes, strange things warm my heart.

(Admittedly, it’s been around since 1995, and I just now noticed it, but hey…)

While we’re asking for random things

I’d like a Bose Quiet Comfort 2 with the UFlyMike microphone, TSO’d standard 2-plug version (with earbuds).

That said, what I’d like that you might be able to actually afford are some good books. I’m not going to read pop fiction nonsense, and it’s hard to find genuinely good books. I have a lot of time to read these days, so I’m often looking for something.

Also, I could use a nice magnifying glass, the sort that you can just set on a book and don’t have to hold up would be great.