Point and shoot film camera suggestions

October 15, 2004 1:15 PM

camera filter - i am looking for a cool little vintage or new standard (film) camera, an aluminum clad, small and nifty point and shoot... recommendations?
posted by specialk420 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (15 comments total)

Lomo? (don't kill me)
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:25 PM on October 15, 2004

i haven't had good experiences with point & shoots, but i have had goos experiences with keh.com for buying all sorts of used 35mm equipment. they do list point & shoots for all the usual suspects (nikon, pentax, yashica, leica, canon). so you might find something that strikes your fancy there.
posted by crush-onastick at 1:29 PM on October 15, 2004

If you love wide angle, then I highly, highly, highly recommend the Ricoh GR-1 series (GR-1, GR-1s, GR-1v), which is a cult classic. Very hard to find since Ricoh stopped selling it, but totally awesome camera for many reasons.

- photo.net review
- luminous landscape review
- essential GR-1 page
- rough guide to the GR-1

It is seriously tiny. And thin. And all magnesium. And the lens is wonderful. And the LCD is backlit. And it is shutter-priority AF.

If you can find one, you will fall in love with it. It takes wonderful photos.
posted by gen at 1:42 PM on October 15, 2004

wow. sweet. the gr 1 isnt the prettiest thing in the world but sounds awesome.

the d-lux by leica certainly has the right style factor (its a gift) - a zoom might be nice...

http://www.leica-camera.com/digitalekameras/d-lux/index.html
posted by specialk420 at 1:53 PM on October 15, 2004

If your budget allows, consider the Yashica T4. It's film. It has a great lens. It's not aluminium, but looks good. Good reviews all over the WWW. I have a first generation one from about 1997, travelled everywhere with it, it still works great. About $175.
posted by carter at 2:04 PM on October 15, 2004

Get a Canonet.
They're awesome. Great, fast lens. Solid construction. The only downside is the strange batteries they use, although you can get them on eBay.

Oh, and they have a rangefinder-based focussing system, which is fantastic for quick manual focussing.
posted by bshort at 4:01 PM on October 15, 2004

If you're looking for something old, cool and classic, for not outrageous money and that might actually take very good pictures, go here, check out the articles under "Compact 35's", then go hit ebay and be pleasantly surprised how cheap some of these great old cameras sell for. I can pesonally recommend Olympus RDs as super little cameras.

For cute and modern, but classy too, I like the Nikon Nuvis, as long as you can live with APS format (perfectly ok for snapshots).

If you want to go up-market and esoteric, the Nikon 35Ti have a very cool aesthetic - analogue needle display! File under rare, expensive and now hard to find. though.
posted by normy at 5:41 PM on October 15, 2004

If you want nifty, you of course can't get much niftier than a Minox. I think they're all manual-focus (rangefinder) though.
posted by neckro23 at 6:43 PM on October 15, 2004

I second the Yashica T4 - it's fantastic. It has a Zeiss lens, which is one of the best lenses ever, and its casing is pretty tough. I've banged it around a lot while traveling and it works perfectly. Incidentally, I got mine for $2 at a moving sale.

I also have an Olympus Stylus Epic. Good lens, styling is similar to the T4, except it's thinner on one end. It's a little smaller, too, so it fits in the side pocket on one of my camera bags. It's around $80 at B&H.

Both take great photos, but I like the T4 better. When I go out shooting with SLRs, I always bring the T4 as a backup, but I bring the Oly with me as well if I've got a big camera bag and lots of stuff to shoot.
posted by bedhead at 9:51 PM on October 15, 2004

I've had three Yashica T4s over the years and each one had the same erratic fault where the automatic rewind prematurely rewound after only part-way through a film. The focus lag is worse than on the Stylus Epic and it eats more batteries, as well. In 10x8s I can't tell the lenses apart and with 35mm film lenses only have to be 'good' to be good enough, anyhow.

The Olympus Stylus Epic is the bargain of the century in compact cameras and all I ever want to use if I'm not going to drag an SLR and lenses around. It's so good in so many ways that I use the SLR kit far less often than I used to.
posted by normy at 1:03 AM on October 16, 2004

...it's boring as heck as an object to look at, though.
posted by normy at 1:04 AM on October 16, 2004

leica. best optics since forever.
posted by crunchland at 7:42 AM on October 16, 2004

You can score Olympus XA in pawn shops for under $50. Fantastic lens, which really is what you need be most concerned about.

The T4 is also well-reknown as a quality compact camera.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:14 PM on October 16, 2004

I have an older version of this Contax -- very sexy (older = less swooopy). The T3 is more attractive to my eyes -- note: lacks zoom (but what a fine lens -- speed, speed, speed).
posted by Dick Paris at 4:11 AM on October 17, 2004

I second the the (old, non-zoom) Yashica T4 and the Contax T3 suggestions -- they are great cameras
posted by matteo at 1:00 AM on October 18, 2004