Need help on buying first film camera.

[ksmattfish]

The expensive part of film photography is the film and processing; save your money for that. If you are willing to go without a bunch of pansy bells and whistles you can get a great 35mm SLR with a lens for under $75.

Try out a Ricoh KR-5 w/50mm lens. It's what I started with, and I bet you can get one for under $35 on Ebay. It's a really good camera with an uncool label.

 

[Maexus]

manual focus only... the "older" version of cameras

Ahh. Ok.

 

[Rob]

If you are willing to go without a bunch of pansy bells and whistles you can get a great 35mm SLR with a lens for under $75.

I agree with Matt - I just bought a Voightlander Vito which doesn't even let you see through the lens. Manual focus, manual exposure, manual aperture - No batteries! It has a viewfinder and a light meter which is powered by magic.

It's great fun, silent to operate, bullet-proof, mint condition and best of all, it only cost me £20 ($35?). The pictures were fantastic. I would recommend a true TTL SLR, rather than this kind of camera, but it does illustrate what you can get for a very small amount of hard-earned.

If you have patience and can wait a week, you don't have to pay massive amounts for film processing - especially if you skip the prints and get a CD instead.

 

[thebeginning]

buy a holga.

 

[Origin]

Robhesketh,

How much does it cost to get a cd? I'm new to all of this & was going to get a digital so I could avoid the costly processing, but I wasn't aware of processing on a cd only. Time would not be a factor, only the cost ... Also, since it has been digitally burned onto a cd, could it be edited, or is that impossible?

 

[Kodan_Txips]

I bought a mint condition Minolta with a Rokkor f1.7 50mm lens. It cost me less than 45 dollars. I got a 135 for 16 dollars, a 28 mm Rokkor for 20 dollars, a 24 mm Sigma for 20 dollars, a 75-300mm zoom WITH a 2x teleconverter AND an f1.4 50 mm lens for a total of 25 dollars, 3 damned good flashguns all in working order (2 of them multi dedicated) for only 12 dollars.

And so on.

Ebay is the way to go - and like me you can then afford to buy a second body just in case, I got a Minolta x300 with a rokkor 100-200 zoom, a sigma 24-70 zoom. a (fourth) flashgun, and a camera carry bag, all for less than 100 dollars.

I now have the setup I have dreamed of owning for about 35 years, and it cost me less than 300 dollars.