I don't know much about Nikon's but I'm not sure if the F60 would be great. when released it was aimed at the amateur end of the market and therefore might not be that easy to use in fully manual mode (I could be wrong).

You are likely to get more for your money and better experience buying a MF SLR like the Pentax/Olympus cameras mentioned earlier. then you wont have the distraction of scene modes and flash's popping up when you don't want them etc.