Bargain basement camera

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gary
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I shoot with fuji xe1 and x100t
Have an itch to scratch
Looking for a reasonable entry back into shooting film
Basic slrs and p&s cameras seem to go for quite high prices on EBay
I have bid unsuccessfully on a couple recently
Any recommendations as to what to buy
 
I shoot with fuji xe1 and x100t
Have an itch to scratch
Looking for a reasonable entry back into shooting film
Basic slrs and p&s cameras seem to go for quite high prices on EBay
I have bid unsuccessfully on a couple recently
Any recommendations as to what to buy

You can get loads of very capable point and shoot cameras for not very much. I've got a couple of Canon Sure Shot cameras and a Pentax Espio that take great photos. You can easily get them for less than £20.

My Sure Shot Z135 gallery is here if you want to take a look: https://flic.kr/s/aHskUpHaQC

There will be loads of good SLRs for less than £50 too if you stay away from the stuff that has become fashionable and whose prices have risen as a result.

Happy shopping!
 
Voightlander Vito B if you fancy going fully manual and range finder. Should be available for about £20 for a reasonable one.
 
Thanks will keep looking
 
How basic? Minolta AF SLRs and lenses represent excellent value, especially now the A mount is effectively dead - however you should avoid minolta plastic 'consumer' lenses (because they're garbage, unlike the Nikon equivalents). I bought a Nikon F301 earlier this year for £30 which offers aperture priority & manual exposure with manual focus and takes all Nikon F mount lenses that have a mechanical coupling (i.e. anything younger than G lenses) - it's not a 'classic' like an FE but it is a very functional camera..
 
I don't mind 'basic '
Will look at minolta/Nikon
Thanks
 
True enough
Pentax Nikon and Olympus manual go for silly money
Now looking at voigtlander or minolta as mentioned above
 
If you're lucky you can find some great stuff at knock down prices from charity shops and even from dealers if you know what you want. I put this outfit together for around £150 over 6 or 7 months. The AE-1 cost £15 with a Vivitar zoom attached and the FTQL body was £12. The 24mm on the FTQL cost £16 and the 135mm was £10 on eBay. The 300mm on the left cost me £18 from a dealer and the teleconverter next to it was £15. The 17mm on the right was by far my most expensive buy at £59. I had to buy 2 Tamron adapters of course but I only need 1 for each of the cameras. Moreover, if I fancy using a different make of body I only need a Tamron adapter and I can use all these lenses on it. :LOL:

Panasonic GM5_black 8GB 07 _1050343.JPG
 
Minolta, Ricoh, and some of the more consumer orientated Pentax and Olympus models are where you are likely to pick up a body + 50mm prime at a reasonable price.

Consumer orientated models being the Pentax ME Super, ME etc., and Olympus OM10/20/30/40
 
Another idea:- If you want a simple camera that is just aperture priority and sorta manual in that you adjust the aperture to suit the shutter speed then the Canon AV1 is a cheap buy..don't pay silly prices when I've seen an AV1 on the bay (last month) go for £23 inc postage with an excellent Canon zoom 35-70mm f4 (the usual cheaper kit lens 35-70mm doesn't have a fixed aperture).
With any old Canon "A" series e.g. AE1, AV1 etc you have to confirm it doesn't have the "canon cough" caused by oil drying out in the mirror damping assembly over the years...most of us here fix this ourselves. And of course with any old camera the light seals might have gone, also easy fixed by us here.
 
The hipsters with their interest in posing [...]
When looking for a film camera that has not suffered the hipster [...] the hipsters. These bearded followers of fashion [...]. These cameras are featured in music videos from their favoured hipster [...].
Other cameras that hipsters [...], autofocus film cameras are also totally ignored buy hipsters [..].

Not sure where you live, but where I live plenty of these young film users (you seem to have found the perfect term to define them all) buy cameras, buy film, buy scanners, buy chemicals and make useful youtube tutorials, thus getting more and more people into film photography and keeping the industry alive *for all* of us.

The same cannot be said, unfortunately, about the old fa*rts and baby boomer collectors, who amass 20 near-mint copies of the Rolleiflex 2.8F, 10 Nikon FM3a, 10 Mamiya 7II, and resell to fellow armchair 'photographers'.

Pity - beautiful machines rendered completely unaffordable by these parasite collectors, which'll sit in a cabinet and probably never take a single picture again in a generation.
 
Thanks for all the replies
I will keep looking and steer away from the more popular and hip models
 
I will keep looking and steer away from the more popular and hip models

I've bought some Chinon and Ricoh cameras cheap.......the later non M42 screw mount ones also take Pentax lenses so you have a choice to find Chinon , Ricoh and Pentax lenses if wanting something other than a nifty fifty lens. Anyway what ever camera you decide you can always ask us for our opinion.
 
Film cameras in general have gone up in price, good for those of us who have large collections but bad for the people (like me) that thinned out their collection when they were still cheap :LOL:

It depends on what sort of thing you’d like, if you just want to use some film and get a pretty modern experience of it you could always look along the lines of Nikon F55/65/75, some of which go for buttons still; some with lenses. Failing that the commendable 50mm 1.8D goes for daft amounts second hand!

Granted it’ll give you a fairly similar experience to your current cameras but there’s a charm to using them :) I enjoy using all my film cameras albeit I don’t use them as much as I should, I have a Nikon F90, Agfa Isolette folding camera, Canon AE1, Contax T2 and Canon Sureshot AF35M II, all very different but love using them in their own way.

You can sometimes get decent point and shoots in charity shops but in my experience they’ve been few and far between, the best I’ve ever done was the Sureshot which cost me £3 with a case although that was when film cameras were at their lowest prices, there’s some on eBay for about £50 now which I wouldn’t spend on one!

Edit: correction I once found a Yashica T2 for £5 in a charity shop and sold it on eBay when I was thinning out my collection, for a substantial amount less than they go for now :LOL:
 
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Get an rb67. Not collectable, near indestructible, good selection of lenses and as far away from a dslr as your likely to get using roll film.
 
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Get an rb67. Not collectable, near indestructible, good selection of lenses and as far away from a dslr as your likely to get using roll film.
Every RB comes with a free hernia retaining strap, it's why all RB users walk like they have had a trouser accident....:D
 
Film cameras in general have gone up in price, good for those of us who have large collections but bad for the people (like me) that thinned out their collection when they were still cheap :LOL:
If you check the ebay sold listings you might be surprised by how little even quite desirable cameras go for. A Fujica 801 with the very nice 55/1.8 Fujinon went for £24 yesterday and a nice black Praktica LTL with 50/1.8 for £10.50. The bargains are there if you search hard enough and are prepared to say "no thank you" when appropriate.
 
If you check the ebay sold listings you might be surprised by how little even quite desirable cameras go for. A Fujica 801 with the very nice 55/1.8 Fujinon went for £24 yesterday and a nice black Praktica LTL with 50/1.8 for £10.50. The bargains are there if you search hard enough and are prepared to say "no thank you" when appropriate.

Oooo nice, that’s promising for the OP then! I need to stay away myself, I have a tendency to not stop when I start buying kit again :LOL:
 
Every RB comes with a free hernia retaining strap, it's why all RB users walk like they have had a trouser accident....:D


thats just to thin out the weak and uncommitted!

(helps keep the price down too, how many houses do you think can take 10x mint RB67?)
 
I've never really followed the "RB67 is excessively heavy" idea. It seems that it weighs less than twice as much as a Nikon D850 (body only in both cases), and as an outfit probably less. I suspect that the RZ67 is about the same weight, and I've carried that in my backpack as a point and shoot alternative to my 5x4 before now. Now, if you add a shift lens to the RZ67, then that is a tad heavy.

Just carried with one lens, it's a reasonable weight. I may reconsider when I get older....
 
I'd agree with the 'hipster factor' increasing camera prices theory, and this being dependent on the camera looking 'retro'. The Canon AE1 is silver and black and now often sells for more money than the far higher spec (and significantly more expensive when new) but all black Canon A1, which in my opinion is just plain silly! Give me the A1 over the AE1 any day of the week!
 
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On a serious note, get an RB67, You won't regret having owned and tried one and if you don't get on with it you can always sell it on.
 
Just carried with one lens, it's a reasonable weight. I may reconsider when I get older....

LOL no problem carrying the RB67 with two lenses in a back pack. but even a fairly heavy SLR can make my muscles hurt slung around my neck and I can't remember if my neck hurt when young :rolleyes:
 
Thanks again for all the suggestions
I think an rb67 is a bit over the top at the moment
Looking at praktica , seem solid simple and reasonably priced
May well take a punt
 
Thanks again for all the suggestions
I think an rb67 is a bit over the top at the moment
Looking at praktica , seem solid simple and reasonably priced
May well take a punt

Screw lenses are useful as if you want to upgrade to a more modern camera by Minolta, Canon, Pentax and a few others but not Nikon and Olympus you can buy an adapter that can take these screw lenses.
 
Fleabay isn’t necessarily the best place for a good deal tbh. I no longer live in the uk but retailers such as forded and West Yorkshire cameras come to mind. There are plenty more reputable outlets that sell film kit, I’m sure someone else will come forward with more details.
 
Fleabay isn’t necessarily the best place for a good deal tbh. I no longer live in the uk but retailers such as forded and West Yorkshire cameras come to mind. There are plenty more reputable outlets that sell film kit, I’m sure someone else will come forward with more details.
Fair point.
Two of my "silver coloured pentaprism" cameras came from charity shops.
£5 for a Pentax Spotmatic F with 55/1.8. New battery and it works brilliantly.
£35 for an Olympus OM20 with 50mm/24mm/70-210 lenses, plus motorwinder, Cokin filters and a bag.
One of my other bargains was a Canon EOS 100QD body for £5 from the bargain box in London Camera Exchange (Strand branch). It takes all my autofocus EF mount lenses and works with manual/aperture/shutter priority so it really is good for point and shoot. But it's not that fashionable.

I recently found a charity shop that had at at least 4 Zenit SLR bodies, a Praktica MTL5, Olympus OM20 plus a few lenses.
 
Looking at praktica , seem solid simple and reasonably priced. May well take a punt
Stay away from the Nova and its derivatives such as the Super TTL or the Prakticamat. I've owned several and they're unreliable. The question is not if they'll fail but when. The later "L" series (square body with a Copal Square shutter) are very much better and actually quite nice to use. ( https://www.lomography.com/magazine/11419-praktica-l-a-deserving-piece-of-east-german-history )
 
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