I knew I (probably) wasn’t going to score a Nikon FM for twenty bucks, but I saw plenty of lesser-known and less-loved cameras, mostly newer and more automatic, well within my budget. Option 3: Go with what I know: the SLRĪs my sorted-by-price listings hit the $10 range, I started seeing interchangeable-lens single-lens reflex cameras, the kind I know best. I couldn’t believe how many beautiful old cameras were available for such cheap prices.
With shipping taken into account, a lot of the cameras went above my budget – but only by a few bucks.
#Camera retro gold manual
I couldn’t believe how many beautiful old cameras were available for such cheap pricesīuying a vintage camera takes a bit of legwork, most importantly including research to figure out if there’s an instruction manual available online or on eBay. Several of these classics made my short list.
#Camera retro gold free
I also saw an East German camera called a Beriette for $19.99 with free shipping.
There was a Canon Canonet, advertised as working, though I understand the selenium meter cells go bad and can’t be replaced. As a former resident of Rochester, New York, I’ve been keeping half an eye out for an old Kodak, and I found lots that were in or near my price range: Ponys, Signets, Automatics, even a couple of Retinas (though I didn’t expect those to stay under my budget once bidding began). One of the things I’m eager to add to my collection is an antique 35mm camera, and I was surprised at how many I found in my price range. But then I realized that I already have one, a weatherproof Pentax Zoom 90WR, that I still haven’t gotten around to trying.Īlso, I was starting to realize that $20 could buy something even niftier. I thought seriously about a compact a cool power-wind P&S might be a nice addition to my collection. They’re good for Lomographers, but not for those who want sharp photos. They’re the ones that are styled to look like 35mm SLRs but obviously aren’t. And then there are the plastic-fantastic toy cameras of the sort given away free with magazine subscriptions. They don’t have a moving lens element, but instead rely on a small aperture to get everything more-or-less in focus. These include “focus free” or “fixed focus” cameras from Argus, Vivitar, LeClic, and even Kodak, Olympus and Minolta. The problem is that the good point-and-shoot cameras are in the same price range as the really crappy ones. There are a trillion of these cameras out there, and aside from a few really advanced models that sell for crazy money (Nikon Ti, Olympus XA, anything from Contax or Leica, and don’t even get me started on the Olympus mju II), you’ll find a lot of them under $10 before shipping. If a compact is what you want, the $20 camera hunt is both a gold mine and a mine field. That’s why 35mm point-and-shoot cameras were so popular: Even the most inept photographer could get decent results. It’s the lens, not the guts of the camera, that determines how sharp the image is. Not that there’s anything wrong with them – in fact, for those new to film, they highlight a strange tenet: When it comes to film, the quality of the camera has little impact on the quality of the images. I figured my best budget option was a compact point-and-shoot camera, even though I’m not the biggest fan. I know marching orders when I see them, so it was time to fire up eBay and see what I could find. Everyone gets a $20 budget, including shipping, to buy a working film rig and see what kind of pictures it makes. We’ll get some DPR staffers and maybe a few prominent film bloggers. I emailed Dan Bracaglia, my editor at DPReview. Maybe it was time to put my money where my mouth was. I’ve been railing against the (mis)conception that film is prohibitively expensive, and one of the pillars of that argument is the low cost of equipment In today’s film world, you can buy some shockingly good cameras for ridiculously low prices. I’ve been railing against the (mis)conception that film is prohibitively expensive, and one of the pillars of that argument is the low cost of equipment. $700 might be reasonable by digital standards (or perhaps even by Leica standards), but for a 35mm camera it’s a king’s ransom. I choked on my Mountain Dew, mercifully missing the laptop screen. Not long ago, I was poking through a film camera forum where someone mentioned they were looking to 'dabble' in film – and they were about to spend $700 on a Leica. All other images: courtesy of Ebay and used with permission.
0 kommentar(er)
