Beginner Film Camera

milster

milster

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Gary
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Looking at buying a film camera to have a play with, after some research I was thinking a Olympus om2n as semi automatic but am open to suggestions....Would prefer Olympus or Nikon due to glass I can get my hands on but would consider anything

Cheers
 
There are lots of choices. One downside of the OM-10 is you need a 'manual adapter' if you ever want to control the shutter speed manually. The OM-20, like the OM-2/OM-2n. has this built in. I'd probably hold out for the OM-2n. In the Nikon world, you might look for an FE or FE2, or their manual only cousins the FM and FM2/FM2n, or Nikon's final word in this line, the FM3a. But perhaps the real bargains are the late AF SLRs, which anyone who uses a Nikon dSLR will immediately be at home with. The F65 is extremely cheap, but it's probably worth stepping up to the more capable F80. Or ideally pay a bit more and go for the excellent F100, the nearest film equivalent to the D700/D800/D810. For any of the AF models, avoid cameras where the grips have gone 'sticky'.
 
An OM2 is a racehorse - mechanically and electronically temperamental. Completely battery-dependent, and can screw up in obscure ways. Also, the whole OM series, whilst awfully pretty to look at, are something of an ergonomic disaster. What I think you need is a workhorse - something straightforward and practical to use, without sacrifice of exposure accuracy or image quality - so I'd recommend a Nikon FM, or better an FM2, if not an F3 or an FE2 ... do you get my drift?
 
On the matter of lenses, the forwards-backwards compatibility of old film cameras to digital cameras, can be a bit of a magenta-mackerel.
You have a D3100? A Crop-sensor DSLR, so lenses for that are optimized for the smaller sensor. on a full-frame DSLR, they usually show quit pronounced edge aberrations, vignetting and masking towards the edge of frame, so would on 35mm film too. Old f-mount lenses from film cameras will likely mount to your D3100; optimized for larger sensor edge anomalies are likely reversed, and taking a 'crop' section only from the sweet-spot in the centre of the image circle, you often get an IQ gain from them; BUT, D3100 doesn't have motor in body AF, so older AF lenses will be manual focus, and most manual focus lenses don't have electric aperture or camera connections to tell the metering system what its dong, so only 'work' on the camera in full manual mode, without any view-finder metering indication.
I have D3200, and do use some of my old M32 screw fit lenses for film camera on an adapter on them; get very sweet images, but renders the cameras electrickery about as useful as my old clock-work meter-less Zenit film camera! Pretty much a case of horses for courses, and keeping the 'kits' contained, and not trying to cross over or double up. Keep the electric lenses for the DSLR, keep the clock-work lenses for the film camera.
I wont comment on the anomaly of the OM system & MFT. Again, an enormous apparent IQ gain is being achieved from the even bigger crop factor, but same crop factor is effectively denying you wide angle legacy lenses on MFT, as even a 21mm is still barely standard angle!
Do you have old Mannual Focus OM lenses? Which ones?
As an OM shooter of old; it was a great system; but most significantly by the '90's when was using it, because it was out of fashion and soooo 'cheap'. There's still a lot of glass and cameras about for it; but system was popular as zooms came into vogue; primes, other than the 50's are not so common, and anything much below 35mm was always scare and expensive. What OM lenses might you have that would actually be much use to you?
The single digit OM's do command a collectors premium these days; and I wouldn't be too fast to jump in to dabble with film with one.I have an OM4, which was the last of the line; I ACTUALLY prefer using my trusty OM10! Whe new they were offered as almost point ad shoot friendly, and they are an incredibly versatile little film SLR, that were always a heck of a lot of bang for your buck; and still are. If you want to TRY and make some use of existing legacy lenses, then an OM10 would probably be a fair call; mostly on the 'cheap' they offer, and they were a great beginners camera, and easy to use, ad still are.
Otherwise; I'd suggest you dont worry so much about system compatablity; and look at film as a stand-alone deal.
Mentioned my all manual clock-work Zent; that was the budget entry Film SLR of yore. Still cheap starter cameras, and you get a lot of that manual only involvement from one. M42 screw lenses for them, were ultra cheap in the 90's, especially primes, which were often pretty good; the Helios 44 that was the standard lens with a Zenit, even now has something of a cult status, as the MFT and legacy lens trend has popularized them.
My favored film camera (after my pocket Olympus XA2!), though is y Sigma MK1 SLR, a Japanese Richoch copy, fully manual, no automation, with all metal construction, leaf blade shutter and a non-coupled, Through-The-Lens light meter. firing the shutter is like closing the door on a classic Mercedes, sort of dull, deliberate mechanical smoothness! The standard lens for that is Ziess Jena f2; a fantastic 50 of that era but you know what, the things rarely command much more than £25 these days!
For the 'cheaps' if you are into primes, then M42 fit, still has an awful lot to offer, and you an likely build a pretty useful ad versatile 'kit' around one for an awful lot less money than a single digit OM.
Practika's, I would tend to avoid; they were always some-what strange their handling, and didn't have that 'quality' feel even of the Russian built like a brick Zent! But if you want to spend the extra, a genuine Pentax, was always the OM's great rival, and probably the better bet.
But depends how much you want to spend, and how far you want to go, in film.
There is a heck of a lot f SLR short-signtedness and snobery about; The 80's saw boom in 'cheap' 35mm compacts, which almost swamped the old Range-Finders that were very often fantastic high end film cameras, that are now enormously under-valued, compared to under-valued SLR's that are still recognizable as the 'enthusiast' cameras of the era with their interchangeable system lenses.
Alluded to my Olympus XA2 compact, which helped get that particular ball rolling, unfortunately, but, for quarter of a century that was my most-used camera; fixed 35mm lens, was small handicap, and certainly little or no different to having an SLR if you only have one prime lens for it!
Slightly more sportingly I also have ad stll use a Konica C35; of my Grandads, that has aperture priory metering system, as well as automatic program AE, and a cracking fixed 35mm 'true focal length' lens. Back n 1973, that was a mid range enthusiast camera; and not cheap 'compact'.. be lucky to get a tenner for it now! BUT. In that era, such cameras were oft applauded for their better optics than SLR's that were compromised by the view-finder mechanism, and oft not exploited, where owners didn't have the added lenses to make use of the interchangeable lens mount!
With a lot of folk, exploring film, without pushing the boundaries very much, taking landscapes or portraits or street-shots; not tacking more challenging stuff, like macro-photo, or action photography, or anything, these now incredibly 'chap' non interchangeable lens cameras are right in their comfort zone, and can deliver fantastic results, without the bulk or the faff of SLRs!
As said XA2 or the Konica still goes where I do; it's still a fantastically usable camera; for those film-ops, or when the batteries die n the electric picture maker! Takes up less room in the gadget bag than a travel-charger too!

But, conclusion IS:-
1/ don't get hug up on system comparability its likely far less than you would imagine, and even less useful to you.
2/ Think stand alone systems.. and dont necesserily think 'system SLR'
3/ Lots of non SLR compacts and range-rinders are damn good film cameras, and in a lot of situations more use-able, and oft pocketable.
4/ Old Film cameras are pretty cheap on the whole, BUT the more aspirationL ones of old, do still acquire a collectors premium... but it was always the photographer that made the photo, not the camera; and that's no less true ow than way back when.

Of whats out there? For a toe in the water, start; keeping cash in the bank for film, and I WILL say that if regret anything from quarter century of film era, it was not buying 'better' film, rather than not having 'better' cameras; I would take an OM10 as my bench-mark; possibly a Pentax K; but keep an open mind, and not get hung up on 'systems' or legacy-digital intercompatbilty, its just making matters more complicated and hard for yourself, for little practical benefit..

And why 35mm... it was always a compromised format.. convenient and like digital delivered a pretty good 'acceptable quality level'... but, lke the older non SLR's, plenty of astounding bargains out there in the non system 120 roll-film world.. 35mm still has the mass-market convenience it always did. and all in probably the better start place, but like I said, don't let modern pre-conceptions and prejudices rule; take a look, at whats on offer outside 35mm; s a very wide world in film, and 35mm SLR's were always but a small state within it!
 
Retune said:
One downside of the OM-10 is you need a 'manual adapter' if you ever want to control the shutter speed manually.
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As a long standing OM user, and already mentioned, I actually oft prefer y 10 to my 4; the 10's 'manual adapter' is a bit of a placebo.
My first OM10 was handed down to me by my Dad, back in 1989! And he made a big deal of the fact it had the manual-adapter on it... and it was a little disconcerting, in the '90's to go into camera shops, and see OM10's on the second hand shelves, for maybe £20-25.. and the manual adapter, that had obviously come with it as a 'kit' when new separately in the accessory display marked up at £10-15! A very over-rated bolt on!
Practically; the OM10 was designed as a 'semi-auto' aperture priority camera, and worked incredibly well as such. Exploiting the ASA dial to dial in any required exposure compensation, effected as much 'practical' manual control as I ever oft needed, and in AE the electronics offered 1/3 stop shutter increments, you don't have on the adapter dial, as well as very long exposure intervals, also not on the dial.
Remember too that the OM's party-piece was its acclaimed 'Off-The-Film' metering system; which continued metering after the shutter was released, and could adjust the shutter speed during exposure, using the Manual Adapter over rode that. Yet, in low-light or long exposure situations, the automatic exposure was very very good, and was oft exploited for light-painting type situations; or dynamic lighting conditions; it was certainly a boon dong gig photography at uni, with changing stage lights or firework displays.
Was and remains a heck of a lot of camera for the cash; and a darn good start point for a newb to film, used to the full automation of digital.
 
Call Rob at http://vintageclassiccamera.com
He has a lot more stock than he lists. If the seals are shot a repair will cost around £100. I got a Canon A-1 from him with completely new seals and a full service for I think £130. It was for my son's girlfriend and it's a peach.
Medium format are heavy, but I have a Bronica Zenza that has new seals and cost me £240. Used to be known as the student's medium format camera. Almost 2kg and big.
Avoid auction sites, many old lenses have fungus and, whilst they work, will make them worthless.
Personally I used an Olympus OM2 for years and loved it.
I have an M7 and it is far an away the most fun I've ever had with a camera, I also think it is very nice to look at, which is not really what cameras are about. I shall be out with it tomorrow.
If you have plenty of cash, an M4, M6 or M7 is the business and they go up in value (mine by about 50% in two years), but they are for life and to leave to your kids.
29603220735_50df17756d_k.jpg
For a cheaper rangefinder, my son uses this exact combination, the Bessa 2R and the Voightlander Color Scopar 35/f2.5
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Excellent...par-35mm-f-2-5-MC-from-japan-19-/182641556921
s-l1600.jpg

35mm film with a good lens can provide great results, so get something with a good clean lens. You will have to think of scanning costs. If you get into it properly, something like this will give you good results, rather than paying for high resolution scans.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EPSON-PER...212367&hash=item3f805f43df:g:2OMAAOSw~rpZUXzu

If you have about £33,000 spare, you could get this. You'll still need some lenses.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ultra-Rar...813565?hash=item28233bcd3d:g:8DcAAOSw54xUXdQT
 
Err.. I'm not so sure that leaping in Leica stylee is a necessrily logical starting point, but notion of self scanning does beg some add-on ideas.

When Direct-toDigital SLRS's started to enter the consumer arena around the millennia, and I had packed away the home-dark room to make space for kidz; exorbitant cost of DSLR's and pretty low resolution prompted me buy a dedicated 35mm flm scanner, and a bulk length of E6 slide film and chemicals!

Home developing is not a hugely difficult task and doesn't demand a lot of gear; a dev-tank and spiral; bottle opener and a changing bag, or a black T-Shirt and a few pillow cases will suffice!
You have to work 'blind' to open the film can and wind the exposed film onto the developing spiral and pop it the tank, inside the changig bag, but then, you can work in day-light on the kitchen side.
Chemicals & processing will depend on your choice of film; B&W is a 'cold' process, all you need is a clock that measures seconds, and some flasks to mix your chems in; concertina bottles are a bit 'posh', but you can squash them down to exclude air for storage; if you batch up films to do in one go; usually two of three, you can use two or three disguarded pop bottles for temp storage between devs. B&W is a two shot process, Dev then Fix, the wash and dry. You can usually go fro bag to hang in maybe fifteen minutes.

Colour, print or slide, is a little more involved, and is normally temperature dependent and begs you keep the chemicals and dev-tank warm in a washing up bowl of warm water. and use a thermometer. Otherwise, often a two shot process little different to B&W and often not a lot longer from bag to cloths-pegs. For C41 colour print film; first shot is dev, second shot is bleach/fix. For E6 slide, again, dev then reversal/fix; wash then dry.

Drying begs somewhere to hang the unspooled film; proper film clips with a weighted end are handy, but we used to just use cloths-pegs often with a hole drilled through the end to loop a bit of cotton to hang from for the top peg, and weight with a bit of kitchen cutlery the other!

Basic kit for home dev, by way of a dev-tank, should be under £25; add a proper changing bag, clips measuring grad, you should still be able to set up for under £50. Chemicals are the more expensive bit; for C41 colour print film, a chem kit that will do around 10-12 35mm films will likely cost about £30 so approx £3 a film. Slide film kits are likely more expensive but you might get a few extra films out of one if you batch up, and maybe get it down to around £1 a film. B&W? Dev is around £10 a litre, as is Fix; how many films you may get from £20/30's worth of chemicals is hugely variable; and again down to whether you batch up; but again, rough reckoner of about £2 a film wont be far off.

It's a lot of 'fun' dong your own developing, and it is like 'magic' when you open the tank and pull pictures out the spiral and hang them on the pegs... worth more than money that.... (and still gives me a little thrill, so many films after my frst!)

And it 'can' be relatively economical to DIY, certainly B&W which is usually not an over the counter process, and often a higher cost special from a lab. Colour Print film, though, if you shop around you 'may' still be able to find a mini-lab that will do them for about a quid, process only, no prints, or scans; start adding scanning and or prints, then it can start to get a bit pricey. I think ASDA may still do dev & scan for about £2.50 for a 24exp film, but TBH I have never been particularly enamored of the scan quality, so don't bother.

Home scaning then takes us off into another realm....

As mentioned I bought a dedicated 35mm flm scanner back in Y2K, and I think it cost me something daft just shy of £500 then. Actually an Acer Scan-Wit, they still pop up on e-bay from time to time; and they are a pretty useful bit of kit with more modern scanning software; you can drag 10Mpix images off them at 48bt colour depth; and 'old' scanners like that can be a real bargain, starting from a little as £30 second hand.

Be warned though; I have to run mine on a stand alone PC running a 32 bit operating system, Ie Windows XP, as it runs on a SCSI interface card in the expansion port; which 64 bit operating systems don't like. You may find some newer models that are USB connectable, but don't expect them to be any too fast.. not that an SCSI scanner is exactly 'quick' especially f you are pushing 10Mpix 48bit colour depth scans with multi-pass software! You can be down in the realms of 15 minutes or more per neg, an hour or so for a strip of 4! (seven strips to a film! Yup, you van be running up ad down stairs all day, swapping strips to do one film!) .... but scans are pretty good. There are also a lot of what were 'cheaper' parallel port caners sold in the transition era; mostly because they were cheap; they 'may' be a little easy to connect via prter port to a ore modern PC, but they were painfully slow when new; so you DO need to be a bit clued up looking at older 2nd hand kit, to work out whether what you are getting is actually even useable, let alone a bargain!

Cheap 'web-cam' scanners are essentially a web-cam over a light box; they are cheap, often under £50, new. USB connectable, and relatively fast. Actual resolution can look reasonably impressive, perhaps 16Mpix, bit often achieved by interpolation, and really they are only a 4Mpix scan, boosted by a bit of computer guesswork. They can be quick, though, a for web-pub, they can deliver relatively acceptable results, at least as good as if not possibly a bit better than mini-lab scan to disc.

The ubiquitous Epsom flat-bed is a paper scanner with an adapter to scan transparencies. More favoured by folk that shoot Medium Format that doesn't fit in dedicated 35mm scanners; they can exploit the huge negative area to get a very big Mpix scan. for 35mm, resolution is often no better than a dedcated 35mm scanner, as the machine is looking at such a small scan area. Again, more modern mult-pass software will often get far better results than what came i the box with the scanner; and again older ones may not be so easily compatible with modern PC's.

Big leap in outlay for either a more modern higher end 35mm scanner or flatbed, up in the £Hundreds, rather than down in the pocket money region; but depends how good you want scans to be, and how much you are prepared to pay for them; and how much else you have to buy to make it work.

As a toe in the water start, a cheap, even better eve cheaper 2nd hand, web-cam scanner is probably not a bad way to go. Scans aren't fantastic, but you will get pictures, and whilst the scanner will be the weak link long before the camera comes into question, you as operator of both will most likely be the weakest! And will save on set up and immediate running costs, to see how you go; you can always revisit older negs, if you upgrade to a better scanner later, to let them breath a bit.

However, point is, that you don't need to spend mega money to start making scans from film, and again, looking down the rankings of camera to save £100 or so for dev tank and cheapo scanner to get you going, is likely to help more than putting that extra upfront for a supposedly 'better' camera, to get films out of and then curse at the cost of D&P&Scan, and not get so much use as a result, whilst not getting the better mages a more expensive camera might deliver in camera.

Obviously making conventional halide print, IS the best way to get the best results from film; but that does beg an enlarger and dark room, and even more involved proessing to make the prints, especially if you want to tackle colour printing, which I never managed to master; it IS a lot more tricky! (And expense!)

But, in the mongrel world of Digi-Film, it IS worth noting that scanning is the weak-link in the chain; that £500 scanner I bought n Y2K stayed ahead of the game, just for best part of a decade, compared to direct to digital; but by crikey it was, and even with more modern and better software, STILL pretty slow! And optimized for 35mm, results from 110 cartridge are no great shakes; Wort a mention that I have used an old slide duplicator lens on the electric picture maker to make digital negatives, that I can then manually 'process' in photo-editor to a positive; others have used a macro lens and light-box a similar way and got pretty good results. I found that with the duplicator lens on a crop sensor body though, I could only get crop sections of a 35mm neg, that then begged taking 6 or more sections and stitching to get a full-frame; resulted in some pretty huge pixel counts, in the order of 35pix, but a lot of faff and not always successful, and a lot of the 'quality'was actually lost in the digital post processing merging and reversing; Did work well for 110 negatives that could be duped in one frame shot, but were generally not that brilliant to start with, and camera scanning a roll of tiny sub-miniature minox film where the lens allowed optical enlargement to full-fame proportions, did show that there is so much detail on film that conventional scanners just don't resolve.

Which s all to lead to a conclusion, that there is more to ponder on than 'just' the camera; and if digital viewing medium is likely your main product; does chuck back to whether the extra for a higher end camera is really all that worth the while; may be great to use; might put fantastic results on the celluloid; BUT if you never get to look at it, all rather wasted. Home processing is natural follow on; home scanning natural follow on from that, and 'cheap' film cameras can start to tot up a bit, by the time you have costed getting a picture on screen.

All part of the great adventure though...
 
Cheers for all the info all.

At teflon mike, I'm not on d3100, that went several years ago, I'm now fully m4/3 for the last couple of years. I'm not after adapting lenses really I just know my brother in law has a few Olympus and Nikon primes kicking about, not to sure what but I think more Nikon (definitely a 28mm and 100mm) from what you've said I think maybe the om10 looks like a good option for Olympus if I can pick one up with a 50mm. I was only really thinking of grabbing something with a prime or two to get going.

As for home developing that's for another time, my brother in law keeps banging on about getting back in to it so might see how he goes (although he's 200 miles away from me so no too easy to just pop round)
 
Just a quick one, just looking at a couple of you tube reviews and they haven't mentioned exposure compensation on the om10, presumably there is a dial?
 
Hi Gary, I'll try and keep this short and to the point.

Nikon FG, inexpensive, neat, light and excellent.

Any of the OM double digit cameras 10, 20, 30 or the om1n/2n the same applies.

The OM 10 has 2 stop exposure compensation.

Andy
 
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milster said:
Just a quick one, just looking at a couple of you tube reviews and they haven't mentioned exposure compensation on the om10, presumably there is a dial?
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H'mm forget OM10 and as mentioned go for the OM20.....but my 2p worth is don't go the OM route as there are more versatile makes around e.g. if you pick up an old screw lens you can't use it on the OM system (h'mm not Nikon either). But if you just want to try film then the OM20 is just as good as other makes and the lenses are very good.
Just to add the OM meter system is useless in dim light for manual exposure reading (well same as other makes of old cameras) you can't see it..but more modern cameras have shutter\f stop lit up in the viewfinder. If this is important to you then go for a camera that is more modern.
 
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milster said:
What's the difference between the om 10 and om 20?
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With the OM 20 you have manual shutter speeds as well as semi auto..the OM 10 you have to use an adapter. Also the OM20 has a redesigned top plate, which is better than the Om10.
 
When i shot om i found the om1 & 2 better cameras than the om10. In the nikon range the f90x, fm and fe 1 and 2 are great relatively cheap options. Compared to the fe2 the f3 is a bit of a dinosaur offering features not that usefull for hobbyists., mechanical 1/60 shutter, replaceable viewfinder, no factory mounted hot shoe and 1/60 syncspeed. Replaceable screens cen be of use but not a buying argument for most.
 
Nikon FG is the only Nikon I've seen that isn't awful to look at.... ;) And also works very well.

More seriously, from my point of view a point of film cameras is to go back to basics, as near all manual as you can get, although I do like a built-in light meter. Even aperture priority is a seduction away from actually thinking about your exposure. My favourite camera of all time is the Pentax MX: all manual, battery only needed for metering, works fine without it. I don't know if there is any equivalent in the Olympus or Nikon ranges.

BTW I do appreciate that other folk have other priorities!
 
I would only buy direct from a reputable camera shop, one that services and fixes their own stock, and even then you have to be careful. I would recommend:

http://vintageclassiccamera.com
See above. Rob's been at it for decades and does a lot of servicing. Call for stock, his website does not show his full stock.

http://www.ffordes.com
Up near Inverness, a massive business with a huge range of stock, new and used. Very well known.

http://www.apertureuk.com
Known as the main second hand Leica dealer, whose customers expect excellent service, but they do lots of good vintage and sensible prices.
Extremely experienced staff, a top repair service, a fabulous shop to visit if down in London.
For example, they have a nice Nikon F.
http://www.apertureuk.com/Nikon/F_1410/F_1410.html

https://www.cameraworld.co.uk
Around for years, popular, honest, lots of stock, I would prefer to visit this one.
 
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Retune said:
There are lots of choices. One downside of the OM-10 is you need a 'manual adapter' if you ever want to control the shutter speed manually. <snip >
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No, you don't - although Olympus certainly sold a manual adapter for this purpose. The simple way of manually choosing shutter speed on a OM10 is to alter the aperture until the camera selects the shutter speed you want (visible in the view finder). This is both easier and quicker than using the appalling manual adapter.
 
ChrisR said:
Nikon FG is the only Nikon I've seen that isn't awful to look at.... ;) And also works very well.

More seriously, from my point of view a point of film cameras is to go back to basics, as near all manual as you can get, although I do like a built-in light meter. Even aperture priority is a seduction away from actually thinking about your exposure. My favourite camera of all time is the Pentax MX: all manual, battery only needed for metering, works fine without it. I don't know if there is any equivalent in the Olympus or Nikon ranges.

BTW I do appreciate that other folk have other priorities!
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I'm with Chris on this. I appreciate that modern DSLR cameras give a huge range of possibilities, but I never liked them as I found them too complicated. I went to a talk once by a guy from Canon and I realised listening to him that I knew next to nothing about what the things can do. Everyday 35mm photography should be simple and fun (aperture, focus), click once and move on. One of my kids, aged 20, just does 35mm film and takes them to Snappy Snaps. His digital camera hardly gets used.

I think the two things are mechanical reliability and a good lens. A Contax G2 with a Zeiss 28/f2.8 is an incredible film camera, probably a better lens than most modern consumer lenses. The reality is, however, that he better the lens the greater the cost.
 
john.margetts said:
No, you don't - although Olympus certainly sold a manual adapter for this purpose. The simple way of manually choosing shutter speed on a OM10 is to alter the aperture until the camera selects the shutter speed you want (visible in the view finder). This is both easier and quicker than using the appalling manual adapter.
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That is not what I would call 'manual'!
 
Major said:
Had a look at the links posted here and found Leica R4 for peanuts :runaway::woot:....
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Yep, the cameras are reasonably priced .... the lenses however :eek:
 
Major said:
@Andysnap

But would it be good purchase? Think I saw some lenses for under 200 quid...
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Well its a Leica and the r4 is an extremely capable camera (the r4e had a few electronic issues I believe) and if you can get a reasonably priced lens, and of course reasonable varies for each person, then I think you will be very happy with it. Bear in mind that it is a probably 40 year old camera so it may need a service which will be about £50 but if you fancy it go for it. :D
 
StevenS said:
I think the two things are mechanical reliability and a good lens. A Contax G2 with a Zeiss 28/f2.8 is an incredible film camera, probably a better lens than most modern consumer lenses. The reality is, however, that he better the lens the greater the cost.
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Be careful, a G2 is anything but a mechanically reliable camera. It's a very electronic semi-auto focus point and shoot with very good but very expensive lenses.

Looking at the OP's posts and the fact that an OM20 is their front runner at the moment, I don't think they're liking to spend G2/Leica/Bessa money and in reality there's no need to if you just want to try out film photography. I think suggesting cameras in the hundreds (and thousands in the case of Leica) is a little more than the OP is looking for.
 
stevelmx5 said:
Be careful, a G2 is anything but a mechanically reliable camera. It's a very electronic semi-auto focus point and shoot with very good but very expensive lenses.

Looking at the OP's posts and the fact that an OM20 is their front runner at the moment, I don't think they're liking to spend G2/Leica/Bessa money and in reality there's no need to if you just want to try out film photography. I think suggesting cameras in the hundreds (and thousands in the case of Leica) is a little more than the OP is looking for.
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I seem to remember that my son's Bessa and 35/f2.5 Color Skopar, bought for his 18th birthday, cost £430 new and remain his everyday camera. My first mention was a refurbished A-1 that cost £130, also in regular use. The Bessa is simple, reliable and fun and takes huge punishment. The Colour Skopar are superb optics at a great price.

Some people think vintage Leica are expensive, for their build quality and reliability I consider them very good value. They will outlive their owner. Some like M6 are more expensive as people collect them, but they were made in huge numbers and even 50 or 60 years old they look like new. For what it's worth, my M7 cost £950 and is probably worth £1,300 to £1,500. For digital the R lenses offer incredible value for top quality primes, such as the 50/f2 and 60 macro, I have the latter, they made about 50,000 of them. I use mine on a Sony.
 
milster said:
Just a quick one, just looking at a couple of you tube reviews and they haven't mentioned exposure compensation on the om10, presumably there is a dial?
Click to expand...
There is an ASA selector; you have to set the speed of the film you load; the dial is marked with compensation marks, so essentially you set however many stops exp comp as you want, by picking an alternative ASA setting; by aligning the +/- 1 & 2 sops are mark on the bezel, istead of the noninal pointer, with your loaded film speed.

Lets say I took the camera skiing; Bright clear blue sky, lots of light reflected off the white snow on the floor; camera's meter is calibrated to expect a scene to average approx 18% grey, it sees lots of white, it will tend to under exposure; By eye, I would reckon it was probably a genuine f16 sunny day, so if loaded with 100ASA, I'd probably want 1/125th at f16 'ish'. Camera's meter on the other hand seeing so much un-averagely bright scene, would probably try to up the shutter speed and fire at 1/5000th, and my shot would come out under exposed, the white snow, grey rather than white... So to bring the shutter back down, I would dial in some exp comp on the ASA dial and set the pointer to 25ASA, which would brig the -2 mark in line with 100ASA...

Which is what used to do with the little XA2 compact, TBH that didn't have the compensation marks! So no great shakes having them really... OM4, & others, has cunning little ratchet on the ASA bezel, so you set the ASA speed of film loaded, to show in a window; then twisting the bezel without lifting it, leaves the film ASA in the window, and aligns the knob to a +/1 or 2 either side, so you can 'see' what film you loaded and that you have set some compensation! HEY this was a noteworthy feature in the 80's!

However, same 'trick' adjusting the ASA setting to cheat the meter, pretty much works on any automatic exposure camera of the era; provided you aren't against the stops on the film speed to start with... we called it 'know-how'... trick of course is to be able to guestmate how much exposure compensation would be appropriate... hence the f16-sunny rule which applied with a little experience can actually render the meter almost entirely redundant!

Mentioned that D3200 used with legacy lenses loose metering functionality; O/H's son brought the tear-away toddler grand-daughter round a while back; she was playing the back garden, and I had left one of the M42 lenses on the adapter on the camera.. dilemma time; do I go grab a meter, do I go find an electric lens.... Oh stufft! It's err... F16, not quite sunny..... I took a guess that the ambient light was approx or maybe 3-4 stops beneath f16-sunny... so dialed in ISO100, and 1/100th and stopped down t about f5.6 or f4, think and got a mantelpiece echibt, before she tore off or got covered in mud or anything!

A few tricks like that, and you can get a heck of a lot out of a humble OM10, and most other cameras!,.. OM has a pretty crude y modern standards center-weighted-average metering system; that gives a 'priority' approx 2/3 the exposure value to the light level reading from approx the focus circle in the view-finder.

Oh-Kay... lets take a pseudo 'incident' light reading with a TTL reflected meter! A purist will send an assistant out to the scene with a grey-cad, to take a reflected reading off.. but this is oft a little inconvenient, so meh! Find a concrete paving slab or bit of pale tarmac, or something similar 'tone' the scene, it'll be close... use zoom lens to fill as much of the frame with it as you can, note the suggested shutter speed... that's your incident reading! (or close enough)

Want to do a pseudo 'spot' for high-lights or shadows? Same trick; use zoom lens to fill frame with as much shadow area of scene or highlight portion of scene as you can; note the suggested shutter speed..

Want to do what the OM4's fancy mult-spot calculator does? Same deal; use zoom, sample small sections of the scene; note the 'range' of shutter speeds from highest to lowest; pick something in between you think appropriate...

Swap lens, frame the scene you want.. diddle ASA dial to get the shutter speed you want, with the aperture you have set. SIMPLES! lol....

Actually it isn't that much of a faff as it sounds, and its really not a 'work-around' for lack of gadgets, just dong old fashioned scene assessment and NOT blindly following the meter.. and still works, with modern electric picture makers!! For all their elevated electrickery and convoluted evaluative matrix, compound multi-spot in an instant metering systems... they STILL suffer the same underlying niggle of not knowing what they are looking at! You do! And f16-Sunny and a bit of cocum and a few of these 'tricks' can take you an awful long way.

Not that you often need to beat the meter, but is a little old fashioned technique that can take you a long way.. oh and films rather generous exposure latitude oft helps too!

excalibur2 said:
Just to add the OM meter system is useless in dim light for manual exposure reading (well same as other makes of old cameras) you can't see it..but more modern cameras have shutter\f stop lit up in the viewfinder. If this is important to you then go for a camera that is more modern.
Click to expand...

With the OM's semi auto automatic exposure system; I am sanguine why any-one would really want to make manual settings on an OM.... oh.... yeah.. I have a four.... I just remembered.... to shot everything at 1/60th guestmating exposures, when the new batteries go flat before the film's used :cool:! Have to say that the Fours view-finder display is pretty irksome; it has an LCD display with a ported ambient back-light that's a bit flakey.. but not as flakey as the electrc back-light button, that seems to make not a jot of difference half the time! cant remember what the view-finder display was like in the 30 & 40, and cant lay my hands on the OM Bible to chek; seem to recall a slightly more colourful led array than the OM10.... that was actually rather 'nice' in low lght. Sure it may be more difficult to see what number the lit LED's next to and not just in dmmer light, as scale is over the viewfinder, and can get a bit lost i some scenes; but it goes from 1 to 1000, and 60 is about half way up, and you get to know what the reading is by how high up the lit LED s, without necessarily having to see the numbers, and in auto, all you really want to know is that the shutter speed is above your motion blur or hand-holding limit.. ish. And its easier to read than most un back lit swing needle view-finder meters.

Worth noting thaton the OM's in AE, the shutter speed display, is not necessarily the shutter speed that will be used though; OTMH I think that the system incremented in 1/3 stop intervals, and the scale only shows full stops; so even f the meter shows 1/60th it could actually set the curtain delay to 1/50th or maybe 1/75th; but after shutter release, off-the-film metering could still tweek the second curtain timing to extend or shorten the shutter speed, if meter reading changes. The 'indicator' is just that, it's not actually telling dead settings.

milster said:
What's the difference between the om 10 and om 20?
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OTMH I cant find the book at the moment; it was slightly more solid in style, and had the manual adapter built into the top plate, and a slightly revised view-finder display.
Note that the 'double digit' OM10/20/30/40 series were the hobby range, the single digit OM1/2/3/4 series the 'pro-am' grade models The single digit OM's are sturdier cameras, but not so simple to use, and generally significantly more expensive.

The OM10, was the most popular of them all by far; it was built as an easy to use entry level camera, and it delivered. Unlike the company!

Launched in '79, to retail for under £100, it sold by the bucket load on price and usability, and the well establshed Sngle dgit OM's reputatio and available lenses. But Olympus, seemed to not know what to do! The ameteur range of OM 's was essentially abandoned, after the still-born OM30 by '83, that piloted auto-focus... but only had one AF lens, and wasn't particularly accurate or fast at it, and simply had a focus 'confirm' led with most lenses.. By 1990, Olympus had let range of pro-am single digit models pretty much stagnate, and the OM4 & 4Ti, was the last of the line, roundly critasised for the small problem of eating its batteries faster than you could shoot film! (Mine is the US recall model supposedly 'fixed' with the electrics they used in the OM4Ti. face-lift model... so I hate to think how quick a un-fxed model ate batteries!)

Having pioneered 'consumer' AF SLR's, wth the 30 ad face-lft 40, they were quickly eclipsed by rivals; and for 1990 the company pinned hopes to win back the amateur market with an 'all in one' super-zoom Auto-Focus SLR.... to answer the critasmof the cost of lenses for AF cameras; quite a good idea actually... we call them bridge cameras now! But in 1990, and SLR you couldn't change the lens on was a bit of an alien concept, and with a zoom range of 'only' 35-135mm just shy of 4x, whilst 'useful' was a little too little for most buyers, and the OM system was pretty significant decline, with many folk shfting to Minolta or Cannon AF.

This DID mean that i the late 80's and 90's OM cameras were very cheap. Hence why I used them. And the popularity of the OM10 in the 80's meant that you could pick up OM10 bodes for around £20.. and they haven't appreciated any since! the popularity of the model that sold along side the 20 it wasn't replaced by it; makes it my 'pick' of the bunch. have had three over the space of fifteen years, none died of natural causes! They were sorely abused in my uni days! I actually made a good camera out of the two, which served for a while, until I went to buy some film, and spotted one for a tenner, and thought "That's cheaper than the FILM I'm buying! Why am I wasting an evening trying to make screws stay in!" Lol! still have that one, though a bash means the battery check no longer works! Was a big bash actually; fell 20 feet off a castle battlement when I was bumped by errant child! Hint; USE THE STRAP!

For how common the 10 is compared to the 20; and the likely premium any-one is likely to put on a 20, I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt one out over the two a penny 'ten'. Similarly the AF enabled focus confirm 30 & 40. Meanwhile, single digit OM's do command a premium; though fours are reletively cheap.. I cant think WHY ;-)! But you are talking £150 ish rather than £15ish! Given you are likely to be making high quality large scale prints, and probably viewing scans, and as mentioned, digtisatio is weakest link the chain from view-finder to display; I'd leave those to the collectors; the faithful 'Ten' remains all-round favorite in the range.. and for a starter film camera, I wouldn't rue the lack of the manual adapter.

However, if you are thnking along the lines of a 'traditional' starter outfit of a body 'standard' 50mm prime, and likely a 35mm or 28mm wide angle... brigs back the suggestio do you really want to follow the herd into interchangeable lens system SLRs?.Plenty of crackng fixed lens zone or range-fnders out there that are truly peauts, and are more easily pocket-able to boot, you can carry about i tandem with a digi, and ot get bogged down in GAS tryig to buld a kit around chosen system, just because extras are available.

I have probably mentoned the Olympus XA2; which is fatastically compact and pot and shoot easy to use. Slightly more 'manual' I also have a Konica C35, which has true focal length 35mm lens, that is i many ways better than either the XA or an OM, Whlst if you want a little exotica i the Lieca/rolie vein, then the Miox 35 is a pretty astoundng TINY 35mm film camera, that was rival to ether of the designer names in its day, and you can pick up for around £50 these days! And sure others could offer plenty of other Non SLR suggestions in a similar vein, like the Olympus Trip.

As said, the world of film cameras is a very large arena, of which 35mm, whilst the most popular, is but a small segment, whilst 35mm SLR an even smaller segment of that; and 35mm SLR's were never necessarily the 'best' at anything; they were always compromised by the small film format and that Through-The-Lens view-finder mechanism; jack-of-all-trades, masters of none; range finders, compacts, medium format, large format, fixed lens folders, fixed or interchangeable lens TLR's; all offered things 35mm SLR didn't, and frequently excelled in their own area over 35mm SLR.. its still worth a peek, just to see what you aren't getting for the premium of buying into 'system' SLR.
 
StevenS said:
I seem to remember that my son's Bessa and 35/f2.5 Color Skopar, bought for his 18th birthday, cost £430 new and remain his everyday camera. My first mention was a refurbished A-1 that cost £130, also in regular use. The Bessa is simple, reliable and fun and takes huge punishment. The Colour Skopar are superb optics at a great price.

Some people think vintage Leica are expensive, for their build quality and reliability I consider them very good value. They will outlive their owner. Some like M6 are more expensive as people collect them, but they were made in huge numbers and even 50 or 60 years old they look like new. For what it's worth, my M7 cost £950 and is probably worth £1,300 to £1,500. For digital the R lenses offer incredible value for top quality primes, such as the 50/f2 and 60 macro, I have the latter, they made about 50,000 of them. I use mine on a Sony.
Click to expand...

I appreciate that a well made camera will last a lifetime so that makes it good value eventually but I think, being realistic, if an OM20 is the popular suggestion, that's well under the £430 you paid for the Bessa. I'm not suggesting that they're not excellent suggestions on the whole but just not everyone has the available budget for such an outlay, especially when only looking to try out film.
 
Yeah, cheers all. I'm certainly not intending to spend that much to dip my toe in. Like my original post, the om2n was front runner so I wouldn't pay any more than I could pick one of them up for but if the suggestions of the om10/20 seem like they'd suit what I want for cheaper all the better. [emoji3]
 
Teflon-Mike said:
There is an ASA selector; you have to set the speed of the film you load; the dial is marked with compensation marks, so essentially you set however many stops exp comp as you want, by picking an alternative ASA setting; by aligning the +/- 1 & 2 sops are mark on the bezel, istead of the noninal pointer, with your loaded film speed.

Lets say I took the camera skiing; Bright clear blue sky, lots of light reflected off the white snow on the floor; camera's meter is calibrated to expect a scene to average approx 18% grey, it sees lots of white, it will tend to under exposure; By eye, I would reckon it was probably a genuine f16 sunny day, so if loaded with 100ASA, I'd probably want 1/125th at f16 'ish'. Camera's meter on the other hand seeing so much un-averagely bright scene, would probably try to up the shutter speed and fire at 1/5000th, and my shot would come out under exposed, the white snow, grey rather than white... So to bring the shutter back down, I would dial in some exp comp on the ASA dial and set the pointer to 25ASA, which would brig the -2 mark in line with 100ASA...

Which is what used to do with the little XA2 compact, TBH that didn't have the compensation marks! So no great shakes having them really... OM4, & others, has cunning little ratchet on the ASA bezel, so you set the ASA speed of film loaded, to show in a window; then twisting the bezel without lifting it, leaves the film ASA in the window, and aligns the knob to a +/1 or 2 either side, so you can 'see' what film you loaded and that you have set some compensation! HEY this was a noteworthy feature in the 80's!

However, same 'trick' adjusting the ASA setting to cheat the meter, pretty much works on any automatic exposure camera of the era; provided you aren't against the stops on the film speed to start with... we called it 'know-how'... trick of course is to be able to guestmate how much exposure compensation would be appropriate... hence the f16-sunny rule which applied with a little experience can actually render the meter almost entirely redundant!

Mentioned that D3200 used with legacy lenses loose metering functionality; O/H's son brought the tear-away toddler grand-daughter round a while back; she was playing the back garden, and I had left one of the M42 lenses on the adapter on the camera.. dilemma time; do I go grab a meter, do I go find an electric lens.... Oh stufft! It's err... F16, not quite sunny..... I took a guess that the ambient light was approx or maybe 3-4 stops beneath f16-sunny... so dialed in ISO100, and 1/100th and stopped down t about f5.6 or f4, think and got a mantelpiece echibt, before she tore off or got covered in mud or anything!

A few tricks like that, and you can get a heck of a lot out of a humble OM10, and most other cameras!,.. OM has a pretty crude y modern standards center-weighted-average metering system; that gives a 'priority' approx 2/3 the exposure value to the light level reading from approx the focus circle in the view-finder.

Oh-Kay... lets take a pseudo 'incident' light reading with a TTL reflected meter! A purist will send an assistant out to the scene with a grey-cad, to take a reflected reading off.. but this is oft a little inconvenient, so meh! Find a concrete paving slab or bit of pale tarmac, or something similar 'tone' the scene, it'll be close... use zoom lens to fill as much of the frame with it as you can, note the suggested shutter speed... that's your incident reading! (or close enough)

Want to do a pseudo 'spot' for high-lights or shadows? Same trick; use zoom lens to fill frame with as much shadow area of scene or highlight portion of scene as you can; note the suggested shutter speed..

Want to do what the OM4's fancy mult-spot calculator does? Same deal; use zoom, sample small sections of the scene; note the 'range' of shutter speeds from highest to lowest; pick something in between you think appropriate...

Swap lens, frame the scene you want.. diddle ASA dial to get the shutter speed you want, with the aperture you have set. SIMPLES! lol....

Actually it isn't that much of a faff as it sounds, and its really not a 'work-around' for lack of gadgets, just dong old fashioned scene assessment and NOT blindly following the meter.. and still works, with modern electric picture makers!! For all their elevated electrickery and convoluted evaluative matrix, compound multi-spot in an instant metering systems... they STILL suffer the same underlying niggle of not knowing what they are looking at! You do! And f16-Sunny and a bit of cocum and a few of these 'tricks' can take you an awful long way.

Not that you often need to beat the meter, but is a little old fashioned technique that can take you a long way.. oh and films rather generous exposure latitude oft helps too!



With the OM's semi auto automatic exposure system; I am sanguine why any-one would really want to make manual settings on an OM.... oh.... yeah.. I have a four.... I just remembered.... to shot everything at 1/60th guestmating exposures, when the new batteries go flat before the film's used :cool:! Have to say that the Fours view-finder display is pretty irksome; it has an LCD display with a ported ambient back-light that's a bit flakey.. but not as flakey as the electrc back-light button, that seems to make not a jot of difference half the time! cant remember what the view-finder display was like in the 30 & 40, and cant lay my hands on the OM Bible to chek; seem to recall a slightly more colourful led array than the OM10.... that was actually rather 'nice' in low lght. Sure it may be more difficult to see what number the lit LED's next to and not just in dmmer light, as scale is over the viewfinder, and can get a bit lost i some scenes; but it goes from 1 to 1000, and 60 is about half way up, and you get to know what the reading is by how high up the lit LED s, without necessarily having to see the numbers, and in auto, all you really want to know is that the shutter speed is above your motion blur or hand-holding limit.. ish. And its easier to read than most un back lit swing needle view-finder meters.

Worth noting thaton the OM's in AE, the shutter speed display, is not necessarily the shutter speed that will be used though; OTMH I think that the system incremented in 1/3 stop intervals, and the scale only shows full stops; so even f the meter shows 1/60th it could actually set the curtain delay to 1/50th or maybe 1/75th; but after shutter release, off-the-film metering could still tweek the second curtain timing to extend or shorten the shutter speed, if meter reading changes. The 'indicator' is just that, it's not actually telling dead settings.


OTMH I cant find the book at the moment; it was slightly more solid in style, and had the manual adapter built into the top plate, and a slightly revised view-finder display.
Note that the 'double digit' OM10/20/30/40 series were the hobby range, the single digit OM1/2/3/4 series the 'pro-am' grade models The single digit OM's are sturdier cameras, but not so simple to use, and generally significantly more expensive.

The OM10, was the most popular of them all by far; it was built as an easy to use entry level camera, and it delivered. Unlike the company!

Launched in '79, to retail for under £100, it sold by the bucket load on price and usability, and the well establshed Sngle dgit OM's reputatio and available lenses. But Olympus, seemed to not know what to do! The ameteur range of OM 's was essentially abandoned, after the still-born OM30 by '83, that piloted auto-focus... but only had one AF lens, and wasn't particularly accurate or fast at it, and simply had a focus 'confirm' led with most lenses.. By 1990, Olympus had let range of pro-am single digit models pretty much stagnate, and the OM4 & 4Ti, was the last of the line, roundly critasised for the small problem of eating its batteries faster than you could shoot film! (Mine is the US recall model supposedly 'fixed' with the electrics they used in the OM4Ti. face-lift model... so I hate to think how quick a un-fxed model ate batteries!)

Having pioneered 'consumer' AF SLR's, wth the 30 ad face-lft 40, they were quickly eclipsed by rivals; and for 1990 the company pinned hopes to win back the amateur market with an 'all in one' super-zoom Auto-Focus SLR.... to answer the critasmof the cost of lenses for AF cameras; quite a good idea actually... we call them bridge cameras now! But in 1990, and SLR you couldn't change the lens on was a bit of an alien concept, and with a zoom range of 'only' 35-135mm just shy of 4x, whilst 'useful' was a little too little for most buyers, and the OM system was pretty significant decline, with many folk shfting to Minolta or Cannon AF.

This DID mean that i the late 80's and 90's OM cameras were very cheap. Hence why I used them. And the popularity of the OM10 in the 80's meant that you could pick up OM10 bodes for around £20.. and they haven't appreciated any since! the popularity of the model that sold along side the 20 it wasn't replaced by it; makes it my 'pick' of the bunch. have had three over the space of fifteen years, none died of natural causes! They were sorely abused in my uni days! I actually made a good camera out of the two, which served for a while, until I went to buy some film, and spotted one for a tenner, and thought "That's cheaper than the FILM I'm buying! Why am I wasting an evening trying to make screws stay in!" Lol! still have that one, though a bash means the battery check no longer works! Was a big bash actually; fell 20 feet off a castle battlement when I was bumped by errant child! Hint; USE THE STRAP!

For how common the 10 is compared to the 20; and the likely premium any-one is likely to put on a 20, I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt one out over the two a penny 'ten'. Similarly the AF enabled focus confirm 30 & 40. Meanwhile, single digit OM's do command a premium; though fours are reletively cheap.. I cant think WHY ;-)! But you are talking £150 ish rather than £15ish! Given you are likely to be making high quality large scale prints, and probably viewing scans, and as mentioned, digtisatio is weakest link the chain from view-finder to display; I'd leave those to the collectors; the faithful 'Ten' remains all-round favorite in the range.. and for a starter film camera, I wouldn't rue the lack of the manual adapter.

However, if you are thnking along the lines of a 'traditional' starter outfit of a body 'standard' 50mm prime, and likely a 35mm or 28mm wide angle... brigs back the suggestio do you really want to follow the herd into interchangeable lens system SLRs?.Plenty of crackng fixed lens zone or range-fnders out there that are truly peauts, and are more easily pocket-able to boot, you can carry about i tandem with a digi, and ot get bogged down in GAS tryig to buld a kit around chosen system, just because extras are available.

I have probably mentoned the Olympus XA2; which is fatastically compact and pot and shoot easy to use. Slightly more 'manual' I also have a Konica C35, which has true focal length 35mm lens, that is i many ways better than either the XA or an OM, Whlst if you want a little exotica i the Lieca/rolie vein, then the Miox 35 is a pretty astoundng TINY 35mm film camera, that was rival to ether of the designer names in its day, and you can pick up for around £50 these days! And sure others could offer plenty of other Non SLR suggestions in a similar vein, like the Olympus Trip.

As said, the world of film cameras is a very large arena, of which 35mm, whilst the most popular, is but a small segment, whilst 35mm SLR an even smaller segment of that; and 35mm SLR's were never necessarily the 'best' at anything; they were always compromised by the small film format and that Through-The-Lens view-finder mechanism; jack-of-all-trades, masters of none; range finders, compacts, medium format, large format, fixed lens folders, fixed or interchangeable lens TLR's; all offered things 35mm SLR didn't, and frequently excelled in their own area over 35mm SLR.. its still worth a peek, just to see what you aren't getting for the premium of buying into 'system' SLR.
Click to expand...
Wow, you've certainly given me plenty to think about (Or confused the hell out of me[emoji16])
 
Looking at fleabay now, I found few Zenits that are cheap and looking at listings, some even work. Had a look at Zenit E and this look very interesting, solid build, many cheap lenses, think this would be much better option than buying Leica for 100 and then keeping it hidden for months before i can afford any good lens.

What do you think of Zenit E gents?
 
Major said:
Looking at fleabay now, I found few Zenits that are cheap and looking at listings, some even work. Had a look at Zenit E and this look very interesting, solid build, many cheap lenses, think this would be much better option than buying Leica for 100 and then keeping it hidden for months before i can afford any good lens.

What do you think of Zenit E gents?
Click to expand...

Large lumps of metal that are either ok or completely useless, depends on how much vodka the technician had taken that day.
Pentax also made an m42 mount camera, Spotmatic? And they are significantly better imo.
 
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