>>3011931>meteringWhere available, fancy SLRs have some form of center-weighted TTL metering. Generally the weight of the center area goes up as age of camera goes down; often this comes from the center area becoming smaller, to the point where the Nikon F3 has more of a "fat spot". Cheap, or mildly retrograde SLRs, will use a frame-averaging TTL meter, which is very easily confused by a bright sky. In any case for auto-metering cameras it's better to get one that can either lock exposure and recompose (e.g. F3, any DSLR-style body), or has an EC knob in easy one-handed reach (which the F3 doesn't have, because it's fiddly as fuck and also has no click stops). This doesn't matter for manual mode where EC is done by adjusting the settings anyway.
Similarly some old cameras can only be set to a relatively low maximum ISO, 1600 isn't uncommon. This affects the way the EC knob works as well, for example the OM-2 will only allow positive EC values when set to ISO 1600.
>film transportContrary to what hipsters will tell you, it's fine to have a camera with a motor drive. Those will eat batteries at frustrating rates (like, 10-15 rolls to a change) so you'll want some Eneloops to go with it, which can double the price of a camera body. And they're usually noisy; high-pitched whirring like you'd expect from early 80s tech is common. This is much less pleasant at a social gathering than an old-school clack-clack.
Most cameras with a built-in motor transport (F100, N2020 [aka F-501], etc.) will also load film automatically, whereas manually-wound cameras will never do that. It's possible to fuck up loading 35mm film with both "didn't take any pictures" and "all pictures ruined due to light leak" results. Motor transport will often also rewind the film for the user, which is nice.
(with that, I think I'm done.)
