What Camera?

[Moonie]

Right, doing Photography A level late as one of my subjects clashed, and need to buy a camera.

I have literally no idea what I need/want.

The school does a Pheonix SLR with 28-70mm zoom lens camera bag and batteries for £77. Is this good value?

Also that is in a pack which includes 100 sheets of 5x7 photo paper, 5 negative sleeves, film cannisters, darkroom filters which brings the price up to £100. Are they trying to rip me off?

Anyone else recommend me a cheapish SLR that's as good/better?

Any help appreciated ASAP thankyouplease
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Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you don't get it wrong.
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[stemc]

Seems like a good price to me,

check out the prices on this site

https://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/products/phenix-dc303k-cw-50mm-f1-7-lens/768/

[Kickstart]

Hi

Never heard of a Phoenix camera, but that just looks like one of the many cheap clones of older Pentax cameras. Jessops flogged off the last of their equivalent for a hell of a lot less than that.

Film cameras are worth peanuts these days. You could pick up an autofocus film slr for a lot less than that (eg, I paid £43 I think for a 2nd hand Canon Eos50E film SLR from Jessops with a 3 month warrenty), and you could pay a lot less on Ebay. And with almost every autofocus SLR you can still set them to manual focus.

Plenty of camera shops do 2nd hand stuff. For example:-

https://www.mifsuds.com/usedpriceindex.htm

https://www.apertureuk.com/used.htm

The first camera you mentioned has a Pentax lens mount. Pentax manual focus lenses are pretty cheap and common. If you do go for an older manual focus film camera then I would avoid Canon as when they went from the manual FD cameras to the autofocus EOS cameras in the laste 1980s they changed the lens mount totally. While Pentax, Nikon, etc kept their lense mounts backwards compatable. Arguably it means the Canon a/f lens mount is better for a/f though.

The paper is pretty cheap, same for the film sleeves and likely you will use colour darkroom printing heads which have built in filters.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Moonie]

So get my own then basically?

It has to be manual zoom, has to be film and as far as I'm aware has to have a 28-70mm zoom lens, any recommendations in particular? I honestly have no isea what I'm doing when it comes to cameras, it was just to avoid doing Spanish AS.
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Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you don't get it wrong.
Presenting the one and only Chinkmobile

[Kickstart]

Hi

I would say get your own. Chances are you have a local camera shop who will have some 2nd hand stuff in.

As said, film SLRs are cheap. For example the Mifsuds site is list a Canon EOS1NRS for £250. That is one hell of a camera, and a very special bit of kit (it would shoot 10 images a second, and used a special kind of mirror that didn't need to move out of the way as it let some light through to the film and directed some up to the viewfinder). A hideously expensive camera when new yet now going pretty cheaply.

Ebay prices I would say that something like this would be a better deal. The P30T is a good solid and reliable camera (we have one floating around), uses the Pentax K mount lenses which can be picked up cheaply and is easy to use.

Another option would be to pick up a dirt cheap film SLR. For years the high street chains (Dixons, etc) sold cheap cameras using the Pentax K mount. Most were made Cosina but with a variety of badges such as Petri (basically old defunct camera makes whose brand name was used). These can be bought for next to nothing, but still do the same basic job.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[stemc]

I'd check with the course tutor first before you buy anything, they might require you to have a fully manual camera.

If you go down the second hand route check the light seals, look for fungus in the lenses, sticky shutters etc.

If the £77 Phenix has a warranty that covers the length of your course then i'd personally go for that.

Incidently I picked up an old Canon ftb for £10 and replaced the seals, mirror foam etc and it's my favourite camera

[Moonie]

Cheers guys

Think I'm gonna go for the ebay link you put up Keith,

The first project is "my life", wish my bike wasn't in bits even more now lol.
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Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you don't get it wrong.
Presenting the one and only Chinkmobile

[Handsome]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Whereabouts do you live? Probably someone local to you with a bit of experience who can help you out.

That link looked fine, but deals like that are not rare so don't be too inclined to bid too much.

Black & white film itself is cheap. And developing chemicals you will probably have free access to at college. Paper is pretty cheap on the small sizes but rapidly goes up in price. 10x8 paper is a decent compromise for me, which works out at about £20 for 100 sheets. 7 Day Shop seem to be pretty cheap for film and paper.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Moonie]

Banbury, Oxfordshire.

And I will probably put some pics up.

Although tbh it's only cleaning the carbs and swapping the engine, not very interesting.
____________________
Don't practice it until you get it right, practice it until you don't get it wrong.
Presenting the one and only Chinkmobile