“Best Film Camera,” According to 142K Analog.Cafe Readers

7 min read by Dmitri.
Published on September 23, 2025.

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Lists of popular film cameras are plenty, but they rarely go beyond looking up search trends, copying each other, guessing, or inserting whatever a local celebrity has recently flaunted. This is not what this article is doing.

Instead, I’m looking beyond publicly available data to reveal the desired budgets and features (not just brand names), as well as the most used and most trusted film cameras.

The info here is based on hundreds of thousands of reader visits to this blog (currently, it’s 142K/mo), as well as anonymized stats from interactive tools like the Best Film Camera Finder and the Film Log.

This article examines a wealth of data to reveal what people want and surfaces the one camera that we use and enjoy the most.

In this article: Who are the Analog.Cafe readers? Most popular film cameras. Most wanted film camera budgets and features. Most-used film cameras. Is this the best film camera? Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

Who are the Analog.Cafe readers?

Analog.Cafe has been around for over eight years. It is now one of the top five English-language blogs for film photography in the world by search traffic.

I use privacy-focused analytics; thus, there are no demographic details about who’s reading — but I can tell that the vast majority of the visitors are from the US (33%), followed by the UK (10%), and Canada (6%). Interestingly, folks from Germany and other EU countries are a little more likely to sign up and use special features on the website.

There are currently over 143,000 people reading this blog every month (which is 1~3% of all active film photographers today), and it serves over 15,000 accounts with access to special features.

Sources: Cloudflare, SpyFu, Fathom Analytics, custom internal analytics tools, and Film Price Trends.

Vancouver local film phtoography friends.

Most popular film cameras.

The most searched-for film camera, according to tools like SpyFu and Google Trends, is the Canon AE-1.

On Analog.Cafe, the most-read review is also about Canon AE-1, specifically the Canon AE-1 Program. It is closely followed by Fujifilm Cardia Tiara (DL Super Mini) and the Canon F-1.

The top three on Analog.Cafe won’t necessarily be the same as the top three on Google or globally. That’s because there are many more sources out there to learn about film cameras, some of which may be better or worse than this blog at attracting viewers to a particular review. And I haven’t covered all the popular cameras here (for example, the Contax T-2 and Leica M6 are missing).

Still, there is a clear trend on this blog that appears to agree with the rest of the world.

Most wanted film camera budgets and features.

The popularity of film cameras can be driven by word of mouth, availability, hype, and many other things. But just because something is a desired object, it doesn’t mean that it’s always the best option.

Film cameras are tools that come in all kinds of shapes, with various features, for many budgets. Best Film Camera Finder has so far helped 150 people¹ find options that would suit them, based on their responses to a short, anonymous survey.

The survey asks for a budget range, level of automation on the film camera, how advanced/well-made the camera should be, whether it needs to be portable, and whether an interchangeable lens system is important.

Those who used the app preferred hefty intermediate- or advanced-level² manual cameras within the $200-$500 price range and no interchangeable lens mount. A camera that satisfies this is the Voigtländer Vitessa, which happens to be my favourite rangefinder! It’s a hidden gem that can do more than most other cameras of any era, despite being seventy years old.

Once the survey is complete, Best Film Camera Finder renders matching cameras with links to reviews. The most-clicked reviews were for Olympus Trip 35, Olympus Mju Infinity Stylus, Minox 35 GT, and Yashica T5. Canon AE-1 Program was the 7th most-clicked.

The purpose of the Best Film Camera app is to help individuals find something that fits them the most. Naturally, that means different things to different people, which may’ve contributed to the diversity of options presented and selected.

¹ — This data is based on Fathom Analytics reporting, which excludes browsers that ask not to be tracked; in reality, this number is higher.

² — The app defines “basic” cameras as those with smaller lens apertures and limited shutter speeds. “Intermediate” cameras should be able to shoot in most light conditions. “Advanced” cameras must use the most advanced technology of the time.

Most-used film cameras.

Although the Canon AE-1 was not the most desired camera (based on the Best Film Camera usage data), it was still among the top 10, and it appeared second only to the Nikon FE, according to one interpretation of the Film Log app’s database.

Film Log stores records of camera names whenever somebody tags them with the film they just loaded, finished shooting, developed, or archived. Camera names can be written a few different ways, they can be abbreviated, and they can have spelling issues — but there are too many for me to parse through and edit. Instead, I used a software package (fuse.js) with a bit of code to help group some of those differently-spelled camera names.

To find the most common camera amongst the Film Log users, I wrote some more code to limit mentions of a camera name to one per user. It was the Nikon FE, followed by the Canon AE-1, the Olympus XA, the Nikon FM2, and the Leica M3.

However, the most-used cameras, those that had the most rolls of film put through them, were the Nikon F100, the Canon Elan 7, the Leica M7, the Holga 120 N, the Mamiya 7II, the Minolta TC-1, the Canon EOS 3, and then the Canon AE-1.

Is this the best film camera?

Canon AE-1 is the most searched for and the most-read review on Analog.Cafe. Its features and design may not be as attractive as those of some compact 35mm film cameras, but it’s still in the top 10 most-desired cameras, according to the Best Film Camera Finder app usage. It’s also the second most-tagged camera in the Film Log app (by ownership), suggesting that even if it’s not something we reach for every time, it is still a tool most of us have.

The AE-1 may not be built as well as the Nikon SLRs of the same era, like the Nikon FE (which is the most common camera among the Film Log users). It may not be as compact as the folks visiting the Best Film Camera Finder desire their tools to be. Yet the AE-1 either tops or is one of the top ten on all the dimensions examined in this article. It’s practical, relatively affordable, it’s well-known, and there are lots of these cameras on the market.

Nine million Canon AE-1s were made between the 1970s and the 1990s. Between AE-1 and AE-1 Program, they are the most popular SLRs ever sold (nine million units!).

These cameras were designed with new microprocessors to reduce the costs of timing mechanisms and manufactured using advanced plastic moulding techniques to further save on production costs. And yet, you can still find them in most film photographers’ collections, still regularly in use.

Though it may not be my or your favourite film camera, it remains one of the best choices for photographers of all levels, as this website’s usage data seems to suggest.