What budget (used?) camera with full manual and manual focus for kids?

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Im tasked with buying some camera for a school photography club. Ideally looking for something with full manual control and focus. MP hugeness not important, more about technique than size.

Any ideas? Id thought about used 350d's or 20d's but are there any compacts etc I should check out, sub £100 ea

Cheers
 
you could get a bridge-camera. any lumix or sony would be a good start in your budget range.

if you want to really show the benefits of aperture, then 350D type cameras with a kit lens and a 50mm f/1.8 to pass around the class would be a good start too.

don't forget that old canon cameras like the 350D (entry level) use compact flash rather than SD as far as I recall.
Also if you are getting a few, you could mix and match but I would make sure that they all take the same battery for ease of use and charging.
 
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With any ILC the lenses are going to be the budget killer. If you're teaching manual exposure something with a good rear screen and WYSIWYG live view - something like a Fuji X-A1/ -M1/ -E1 but these are probably above budget even secondhand.

It might be worth contacting some of the larger dealers (WEX, LCE, etc.) and the manufacturers with refurb outlets (Fuji UK, Sony UK, etc.), explaining what you want and that you ideally need X identical cameras, what they'll be used for, and seeing what have available.

If your budget is £100 each for four cameras (just guess), it's worth considering whether £135 each for three cameras and an adjustment to the lesson plans would give a better range of choices. Or ten £40 fully automatic compacts and place the emphasis on taking interesting images rather than technical details - depends on the target demographic.
 
Cheers for the replies thus far all. The reason I wanted manual control was plans to teach lighting techniques and long exposures to show movement etc.

Spose I could have a rethink. Its all up in the air atm as to how many and how long etc.
 
You can often either trick a compact into giving you the setting you want or exploit the "wrong" scene mode to get the result, and that might be enough sometimes to get the point across with children. The example that comes to mind is when faced with a waterfall and with only a Sony compact to hand, placing the camera on a rock/branch and using the "twilight tripod" scene mode gets you an exposure time just that little bit longer than P mode does and just enough to slightly soften the water movement. Whereas "action sport" scene mode would capture individual water drops frozen in time.
 
There's the Panasonic G1. I still have and use one and they're under £100 these days. Add a £10 adapter and sub £20 manual focus 28mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 and IMVHO it's a good learning tool for under £150.
 
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