Forums > Social Chat > Buying a camera

Posted: 16th Dec 2002
anything made by pentax, canon, olympus and nikkon are fine. Beware of cheap clones made by russian sounding companies!

You'd be best off buying second hand unless you have a huge budget. In my opinion, buying anything new that costs under 200 is a waste of money. Second hand costing under 200 and you have a nice piece of kit. London Camera Exchange shops can be found in most large towns/cities in the UK and always have a load in stock and will let you play with them in the shop/give you advice without having to buy anything. You may also find that when you've found something its cheaper online - I bought my digital camera 150 pounds cheaper than its currently selling for in argos!

My SLR is a Pentax K1000. It's old, fully manual, but built like a rock and the second hand price hasn't changed since I bought it 6 years ago (about 130 for the body). I got it for studio use/arty shots, where you need fully manual, but if you want something to take holiday photos on/point and shoot ones I would advise a semi automatic. They are recomended by art teachers worldwide, my art teacher had several of them. The Canon EOS range fit the semi automatic description, and you can get a low end one for under 200 quid (maybe cheaper). They have more sleaker looking bodies and are more of a point and shoot slr. The high end EOS cameras (costing over a grand) is what you see a lot of reporters using.

Personally I don't use my SLR anymore (may even flog it on ebay soon), mainly because I'm now vegan and film isn't, but even if it was i still find it a bit bulky for general use/taking pictures of drunk friends whilst drunk. I used to take pictures of trees and hills where you can set the shot up, but now mainly impulse type pictures where if you can take the picture in the next 5 seconds the moment is lost. If your budget can stretch to it there are many good quality SLR style digital cameras now for around the 350 mark. I got myself a Olympus 3020 a few months ago and i love it to death. The quality is good enough that i rarely take pictures in full quality because it's just redundant. It can be fully automatic for point and shoot shots and almost fully manual (sadely only upto 4 second exposure, as opposed to my slr which has infinite).

The only real downside to digital cameras (other than quality if you wanna do large prints) is that the cheaper ones don't have replaceable lenses. Instead they have a screw filter thread on the end to which conversion lenses can be attached. This means that you can't put on big telescopic lenses for instance. It's also expensive to buy them and at the moment a bit of a gimick. The second hand slr market is flooded with cheap clone lenses, you can get 1500mm mirror lenses (that's one large phallic!) for the pentax k for 150 quid.

I know that traditional photographers would spit blood at my digital recomendation, but for instance when taking pictures you can shoot off 10 pictures, then choose the best without paying for development. When I do pictures of firechains I take maybe 100 photos in the night and can tweak settings as I go.

Posted: 17th Jun 2005
what'd you buy then bov? I sold my pentax slr a couple of years ago for slightly less than I bought it for 6 years previous. I'm going to be selling the for mentioned digital camera soon, which i doubt i'll get much more than a 1/3 of what i paid for it back. Still, ebay does have many many idiots

Posted: 17th Jun 2005
heh, unsurprisingly, I'd completely forgotten about this thread.

I didn't end up buying a camera, but I inherited a Zenit E a while ago which I've been playing with a bit.

There's the incredably crap holga camera I've got now too, the one that I stuck velcro all over to patch up the light leaks and to hold the back on. Surprisingly, that one's ended up with some reasonably good photos

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Posted: 17th Jun 2005
I've got an Olympus 3020 too.

The 8x optical zoom with good resolution convinced me to buy it.. then when I got the fucker home I realised it was really big and chunky. This is not good for me because I do quite a bit of photography at raves and you don't want to have to look after something so clunky n chunky when you in that environment. However.. i did manage to find a really good money belt that it fits into like a glove so I'm happy with it now.

Posted: 17th Jun 2005
Damn, geocities' hourly bandwith has been exceeded already, no more holga pictures for a while
EDITED_BY: TheBovrilMonkey (1119023114)

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Posted: 18th Jun 2005
:o I remember mrchut telling me about your camera, it takes gorgouse pictures yum, or is it your pure photographic skill

Are they difficult to get hold of now days?

Never assume
Always Acknowledge

Posted: 18th Jun 2005
While I'd like to say that it's down to my pure photographic skill, I reckon that's highly unlikely

They're pretty easy to get hold of, I got mine mail order. The film is a pain to get developed though, which is why I only have a few photos, I can't afford to get more processed

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.