 Sue |
Purchasing first camera Hello. I have wanted to try my hand at photography for along time now, and I am not sure what camera I should buy to start out with. I have been looking at ebay, and have found many older 35 mm SLR. I have been trying to research some but am not sure which ones I should keep an eye out for. I am currently looking at a Minolta XG7, a Pentax Me, Pentax P3, Cannon AE-1 and AE-1 Program. I would like to know which of these or if any of these would be a good choice for a beginner? I have also seen some Rikoh, Yashica, and Mamya brands are these good cameras? Also how hard is it to get more lenses, flashes and accessories for some of the older cameras? Thank you for your time any feedback or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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Kerry L. Walker |
Minolta, Canon and Pentax are all good cameras. Any of those listed should do well for you. Two other good choices are Nikon and Olympus. So is Nikormat (the name Nikon gave to its consumer cameras before they decided to trade on the Nikon name for consumers. Even though they were considered consumer cameras they were still great cameras, equal to all of those you listed.) I have never used a Rikoh but I believe they used the Pentax K mount lenses. Yashica was a good camera, especially if you mount the Contax line of lenses on them, which are still readily available. Mamiya was a good 35mm camera but you will probably have a hard time finding accessories for them. Mamiya is strictly MF now and they make some great ones. To have the easiest chance of finding lenses and flashes, I would stick with Minolta, Pentax, Canon, Nikon or Olympus.
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Jon Close |
Some sources for researching different models and their features... The Photography in Malaysia site is a terrific site with a lot of detailed information on vintage Nikon and Canon SLRs - including instruction manuals for many - plus select Olympus, Minolta, and Pentax SLRs. Canon: Canon Camera Museum lists specs and features of all their models, online/downloadable manuals for the older manual focus models are available at http://www.canonfd.com/choose.htm Pentax: Bojidar Dimitrov's Pentax K-Mount Page has just about everything you need to know about Pentax's old models. You can download manuals free from Pentax USA site. Minolta: Manuals are available for free download from Konica-Minolta USA. http://www.geocities.com/eskoufos/fmm.html also has manuals, plus some repair manuals and brochures. Olympus model information and user manuals can be found at OlympusAmerica.com. http://www.butkus.org/chinon/ is a terrific source for information/manuals on Ricoh, Yashica, Chinon, Konica, Sears, Fuji/Fujica, etc. SLRs.
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Sue |
Thank you very much for the information Kerry W. and for the links Jon C. It is very helpfull. I hope to purchase my first SLR very soon. I can't wait!
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