Thursday, February 08, 2007
Cameras
I just got a new camera. There's a story behind my reason for getting it.
My dad had a Canon system1 a number of years ago, but the camera was damaged in a car crash. My mom had a Pentax Spotmatic which she said she'd give to me, but she couldn't find it. I'd been bugging her about it for a while. When she finally found it I was like a kid on Christmas morning. In the camera bag with the Pentax and the one rather long lens she had for it was another lens from my dad's Canon. The lens was a 75-300mm auto-focus zoom. A decent lens though also rather long even at its widest. But it will not fit on the Pentax. I kinda tried selling the lens, but later decided that I'd like to use it. I found a used Canon Elan II for $54. In comparison, the lens would be around $200 brand new. The camera body itself is easily one of the cheapest parts of a good SLR system - in film that is.
The Elan is pretty nice. It's my first modern SLR. The Pentax is nice, but all mechanical with manual film advance and manual focus only - and the meter is broken. The Elan has a servo drive, evaluative metering, auto focus, and a lot of other features I am eager to try out. Though it is only a mid-level SLR. The auto focus is not all that fast and the subject tracking doesn't work very well. Also the servo drive is only capable of 3 fps - I bet I could thumb the manual lever on the Pentax that fast - though I doubt I could maintain scene composure while doing so.
I shot an entire roll of film today - just trying it out. Then I went to Kits Camera, dropped off the film and picked up a strap and some filters.
If Kits Camera is an accurate example of what camera stores have become, we are living in sad times. The have a poor selection of lenses in stock - they could order them of course. When I asked for a price list of lenses, they told me I had to look it up on the web site. They have to send out for black and white processing as well as E-6 (color slide) processing. They do still repair lenses and cameras, but the prices are quite ridiculous - almost as much as buying the same lens brand new. I intend to learn to repair my own gear. I'll probably need a number of special tools to do so.
I have also bid on a bunch of cameras on ebay - I don't trust ebay stuff to be in good working order - not being able to try it out before buying it, but like I said, I plan to learn to repair stuff. And if I get any of the stuff from ebay, it'll be at pretty good prices.
My dad had a Canon system1 a number of years ago, but the camera was damaged in a car crash. My mom had a Pentax Spotmatic which she said she'd give to me, but she couldn't find it. I'd been bugging her about it for a while. When she finally found it I was like a kid on Christmas morning. In the camera bag with the Pentax and the one rather long lens she had for it was another lens from my dad's Canon. The lens was a 75-300mm auto-focus zoom. A decent lens though also rather long even at its widest. But it will not fit on the Pentax. I kinda tried selling the lens, but later decided that I'd like to use it. I found a used Canon Elan II for $54. In comparison, the lens would be around $200 brand new. The camera body itself is easily one of the cheapest parts of a good SLR system - in film that is.
The Elan is pretty nice. It's my first modern SLR. The Pentax is nice, but all mechanical with manual film advance and manual focus only - and the meter is broken. The Elan has a servo drive, evaluative metering, auto focus, and a lot of other features I am eager to try out. Though it is only a mid-level SLR. The auto focus is not all that fast and the subject tracking doesn't work very well. Also the servo drive is only capable of 3 fps - I bet I could thumb the manual lever on the Pentax that fast - though I doubt I could maintain scene composure while doing so.
I shot an entire roll of film today - just trying it out. Then I went to Kits Camera, dropped off the film and picked up a strap and some filters.
If Kits Camera is an accurate example of what camera stores have become, we are living in sad times. The have a poor selection of lenses in stock - they could order them of course. When I asked for a price list of lenses, they told me I had to look it up on the web site. They have to send out for black and white processing as well as E-6 (color slide) processing. They do still repair lenses and cameras, but the prices are quite ridiculous - almost as much as buying the same lens brand new. I intend to learn to repair my own gear. I'll probably need a number of special tools to do so.
I have also bid on a bunch of cameras on ebay - I don't trust ebay stuff to be in good working order - not being able to try it out before buying it, but like I said, I plan to learn to repair stuff. And if I get any of the stuff from ebay, it'll be at pretty good prices.
