The weather lifted a bit after Storm Bert and I finally got the New FND Nana camera out for a wee try. But this was no single review – it needed some opposition. Let the Nana Drama shoot out begin.

FilmNeverDie’s (FND) part metal bodies shooter has been mired in controversy before anyone got their grubby mitts on it. But it’s finally here. So how does it fare against the Harman EZ35. That’s another film company branded camera made from the same generic stock as the Nana. But it sells for a fraction of the cost. And lets chuck in a a little mystery £30 opposition as well

The Cameras

FND Nana

The Nana is a fixed focus 35mm P&S with a motordrive and flash. It has a 31mm 1:11 single element lens camera with a fixed shutter speed of 1/125and fixed aperture. There is no metering or low light system and the hole at the front is for a pre-flash red-eye feature. The camera is based off the same OEM design used by the Harman. A version of that camera famously could be found for bulk sales on Chinese sites for $30USD

The Nana However does come with an upgraded part metal body that has a 30mm filter ring and FND claim it comes with “world’s first known aspherical single-element lenses in this new 35mm full-frame form factor”. 

FND in communications with PetaPixel have confirmed this is indeed based off the MF-301, a model called the MF-308 with their new aspherical single element glass lens.

FND’s own sample images would suggest that things aren’t improved. The current available limited edition comes with a UV filter, keyring, posh wrist strap, battery, 400ISO Colour film and UV filter and soft cloth bag. That is currently being sold for ~£180GBP on the FND site before postage

Harman EZ35

The Harman is the same camera underneath but based more on the OEM so plastic body and the the standard 1 element lens with exactly the same spec. There is no filter ring but stick one on would be easy. It comes boxed with a roll of HP5+ and a battery and a reasonable but cheap plastic cord wrist strap.

Costing around £50GBP at launch, you can now buy for less than £25. Now discontinued but is still widely available. Ironically FND had been selling it alongside the Nana at around original retail until this week.

And the Wild Card ?

Meet the Fetana 35NF.

This cost just under £30GBP with free shipping (but about a fiver of tax) from AliExpress. It on paper is the most advanced. It incorporates a low light warning system, a 3 element 34mm 1:5.6 lens and 2 apertures. we’ve seen its pop up flash, non MD brother – the Fetana 35FT – in a recent review. They both seem to share the same lens and exposure set up

The camera shoots at f/11 most of the time but when you turn on flash it widens to f/5.6. Shutter is 1/100. The low light system is rudimentary and doesn’t link to film ISO. It needs 2 AA batteries to work. Oddly it came with 2 in the camera. That’s a worry given the camera seems long discontinue. Luckily mines these were just flat and hadn’t leaked. In the box you get functional nylon corded wrist strap and a vinyl pouch bag.

Boxing

I’ll give FND cred the box is nice and accessories feel lux. It’s the nicest boxed camera I’ve had a in while. It gives Lomography a run for their money on that front . The EZ35 has a colourful but more simple box. Both are well packaged inside but the Nana is way more lux as are the current accessories (mines was the launch limited edition so this may change).

And the Fetana….

Yeah it had the worst box which says Digital camera (and interesting is the same box as the fetana 35FC). It arrived with no realy protection and was quite crumpled.

Looks & Build

Again the Nana looks the best of 3 although I’m not sure of the light brown metallic colour (neither Bronze or Gold). The metal only covers the front, top plate and part of the sides the rear and the bulk of the base is plastic. There’s a nice leatherette grip plate on front. It feels sold enough but some creak on plastic parts.

The Harman is also well enough made mainly in black plastic with green insets. Like the Nana there is a switch under the lens. This moves the lens cover out of the way from closed to open and the 3 point turns the flash on. It looks cheaper than the Nana but not awfully so.

For more on the Nana and Harman boxes & Build read my Nana Unboxing post

The Fetana looks like a 90’s cheapy black plastic slab. You could stick any familiar lo-fi name like Halina, Ansco, vivitar etc . It is in fairness a well enough made cheap brick and the red shutter button is a nice feature

All 3 camera have a wee window you can remind yourself of the film type

Loading and lab notes

All 3 camera use relatively easy drum load system. The Nana and the Harman have a similar audible but reassuring winding noise. I say reassuring because in spite of being loaded with two high end AA batteries from a high end brand, the Fetana sounded like it was dying. It’s quieter but sounds like it’s going to expire and I wasn’t sure it was winding (thankfully it was). The other 2 made do with the generic single AA in their box.

All 3 were loaded with very fresh 24 Exp Kodak Ultramax. This for speed, was just a one roll test.

Ultramax is a 400 ISO consumer film with a good latitude. It is my usual choice for this calss of camera. The finished films were processed by AG photo labs at their higher JPEG scan setting with auto correction. The Fetana is the only one that auto rewinded at the end of the roll. The other 2 will keep on trying to wind and will cause multiple exposures and risks ripping film. You need to manually use the rewind switch on the base.

Shooting notes

Wheezing winder aside the Fetana has slightly wider FOV in the finder than the other 2. It also benefits from having separate flash and lens cover/shutter lock switches

The other 2 are easier to hold slightly. Their flash really takes it time to charge. In fairness the Fetana had 2 serious high end batteries versus their single generic. But the manual indicates the Nana has a whopping 30 sec recharge time and the Harman was much the same.

And I as a muppet left the filter on for the first few shots. It does make a colour difference.

The Fetana has a low light warning LED in the viewfinder that works well enough but is tied to 100/200 ISO.

Finger in front of lens was most common on the Harman followed by the Fetana. It only happened on one Nana shot.

Granted I’d have rather shot this on a Summer’s day but all 3 cameras had to endure the conditions. And I think it gives a better feel for real world shooting.

Results

Look the main story here is the ~£180 Nana’s lens any different from the £25 Harman. And I think it is but only subtly. But that’s doing a disservice to the Fetana. None of these cameras is perfect but it’s a close matched thing between the Nana & the Harman. But oddly clinically it’s the triplet Fetana that steals the show in the main.

I’m going to take you though a set of paired shots. I’ve included more images elsewhere on this post but broadly what you see here is what I got on the whole rolls for each camera.

The Bro on the Bridge

This Blue Brothers Grafitti has been a regular on this site and these were taken about 2m from the image

The differences between the Nana and the Harman are subtle. The Nana appears brighter

But there is less pincushion radial distortion with the Harman

If crop the bro we get this The Nana is just that little bit more contrasty and clearer centrally but not by much

Going slight off centre things flip the other way. You get a lot more detail on the Harman

The Fetana finder is more off centre than the other 2 and takes a darker image slightly. It as I expected vignettes a bit but it’s barrel distortion is less noticable than the other’s pincushion distortion

But it keeps up centrally

But has way less fall off centre with both less radial and chromatic aberrations. They are still there but less and bear in mind for comparisons this is right to edge of the image unlike the other 2

Down the High Street

I was grabbing shots where I could. So these were taken on a crisp but Sunny November morning around 9.30 on Annan High Street. I’ll start with the Fetana. Note I’ve blanked out Number plates

And the Fetana serves as the best of the bunch. Near and median it’s sharpest and whilst it falls off at the clock tower and the far distance. But the number plate on that white Mercedes was easily readable. It softens to the edges slightly but less than the other 2 and it’s mild barrel distortion. It Vignettes again and it’s darker than the others

There is almost noting between the Nana and Harman shots. I could easily put them down to being the same camera but I just moved slightly. They’re softer overall and distort more. I think the number plate (that I’ve blanked) is crisper with the Harman as are the edges. And the pincushion distortion is milder again. The Nana has a brighter overall image suggesting the lens is more contrasty

If we crop the the clock tower on these shots the Fetana although soft is obviously better. There is little to pick between the Nana and Harman.

The Bridge

This was too close to call between all 3 at first glance bar the Fetana having some vignetting (including my finger) and less radial distortion

Centrally things are very similar. There’s nothing to pick here bar the differing radial distortion

But go off centre a bit and it become apparent that the Fetana does produce a less fringing and is marginally sharper (it’s not great however). The Harman and Nana are pretty tied.

Flash Shot (poor Lola)

Taken at around 1.2-1.5m these are close shots. We begin with what looks like the best shot of the 3 this time from the Nana. But there’s a problem…..

I left the UV filter on for this. So the colour saturation which is pretty good may be down to that but not the sharpness.

The Harman runs a close second but that might just be due to filter

It’s still ahead of the Fetana which is blurry and washed out. It will suffer as it drops a stop to f/5.6 . However, I’d note the dressing gown behind our Lola. It’s more detailed and better exposed. This suggests that it’s more optimal at longer distances.

It wasn’t just on this one shot ( I took 3 close flash shots and got consistent results across all 3 . sadly I never got to try a 3 m flash shoot group.

Into the Sun

AS you’d by now expect the Fetana is the crispest at all distances here but it does have Lens flare effect (a curse or blessing to different folk) and that corner vignetting. The frame edge creeps in as well a thing we see on a few shots.

The Nan doesn’t flare much

But the Harman did . Otherwise it looks very similar to the Nana

Final thoughts on the The FND Nana and it’s rivals

If this was just a run of the mill 3 camera Lo-Fi shoot out the Fetana 35 NF would have clinically won. Bar close up flash shots with that wider f/5.6 aperture, it had the better image quality. That’s despite being the worst boxed and not even having a roll of film to rub together.

But in reality you wanna know the difference between the Harman and the Nana. They’re the same camera underneath but one costs a seventh of the price of the other. The only thing we didn’t know about was if the Nana lens was different

And we can now confirm it is. But I’m not convinced it’s better.

The Nana is more contrasty but distorts more and is less sharp off centre.. If these 2 cameras cost around the same it would be a toss up but if i had to chose on lens alone it would be the Harman.

But they don’t cost the same. Not by some vast margin.

Currently you can pick a Harman for £25, that’s a seventh of the price of the Nana currently. Even if it was original list price it would still be less than a ⅓.

Do the new features justify the price hike ?

That hike is ~160

It’s hard to compare as you currently can only by the Ltd Edition which is pretty lux But the posher strap, keyring and filter aren’t going to add loads maybe 10-15 quid

And it is initially hard to make comparisons one the market. But there is one camera out there on the market that you can get in both cheaper plastic and metal forms. That’s the not so great IMHO Lomomatic 110. My metal bodied one came with a flash unit and today costs about £40 more than it’s plastic sibling. Now it is titchy but has many more metal parts. Although I’m critical of it the camera is way more advanced than the Nana with metering ands automatic exposure as well as a focuable lens.

The Nana just has a front metal shell that would have easily replaced the plastic one so no need for a new line so that’s likely cheaper to do. The lens will also cost a bit more but likely going from a quid or so to £5-10.

So a £40-50 up lift seems reasonable and it’s telling that pre-Kickstarter backers paid just £110 before postage. That seems okay for the camera & all the limited edition add-ons. And Lets be honest they would still be getting profit on that. And I wouldn’t have to write this if that was the current price. But it’s not.

So Nana not forever ?

Sadly I think the damage has been done. And FND have only themselves to blame.

Looks lots of companies have sold generic OEM cameras with their logo on and I have no issue. Take the Dubblefilm Show clones you’ll find models from film & camera makers the world over including Kodak, Agfaphoto, Ilford, Harman, Escura. But none claimed a new innovative camera built from scratch or tried to cover up the origin. And then there’s the dubiety around the Kickstarter funding (in Fairness KS tend to be pretty firm on dealing with this and it hasn’t happened here).

The bitter taste has angered many and soured FND reputation. They are the only film camera that I can think of that PetaPixel actually returned their review copy without testing because of this.

And it is grossly over priced if you want to buy it from Scratch

Shame as it is nicely put together and the filter feature is nifty. I’m lucky I only paid the£110 pre KS for my one. That was almost reasonable but over £70 less than what you’ll pay now.

The Harman is almost the same camera for a fraction of the cost and although that’s discontinued the Kodak S88 which looks mighty similar isn’t and still costs about a ⅓. If this sort of thing floats yer boat buy them (or the fetana). And use the wads of cash you save to buy film and maybe a filter ring. Or look at one of alternatives below

---

Alternatives to the FND Nana

I’ve mentioned the legion of Dubblefilm clones in here already. The LomoApparat is the current blingy lo-fi pretender with a well but camera with lots of lo-fi adds on in box. It cost about half of what the Nana does.

If you don’t need flash get a Reto UWS or other VUWS clone. It’s 22mm lens is a cult legend and is the smallest production full frame camera in the world. That lens was used in both the Kodak Ektar H35 and in a hybridised plastic and glass elements form the Kodak Ektar H35N. These Half frames are joy to use and the H35N shoots better clinical images than almost any 35mm full frame costing less than £100. You can pick almost three H35N up for the same cost as the Nana although you don’t get any included film.

An odd ball choice is the Holga 135BC. QC varies with these but you get a useable (if luck smiles) camera that kinda focuses and has more features. again no flash but it does have a hotshoe.