Taking a college photo class. Need a camera with manual aperture & shutter. Good & Low price. Ideas?Thanks!?

Question

Excellent, excellent answers. Great resources. Thank you so much. Should have added "digital camera" to the question. Sorry.

Answer 1

The best all manual cameras were made by Nikon or Pentax. If you can find them used, in good condition, buy them! They are the Nikon FM2 and the Pentax K1000.

Nikon still makes a manual camera that's nearly as good as the old FM2. It's the FM10. There's a camera made by Promaster that's very similar to the Pentax K1000. It's the Promaster 2500PX.

Go to a good, reputable camera store to find these. They might even sell used cameras. They should have the new ones in stock.

Answer 2

You need to be a bit more specific. Almost all digital cameras of any quality allow you to change these settings manually. However, since you are taking a class, it leads me to believe that they want you to use a digital SLR camera. That is very different than a regular point and shoot digicam (not to mention way more expensive). A decent digicam runs about $300. An entry level dSLR is 3 to 4 times that.

Answer 3

Buy either a Nikon or Canon camera, such as a Nikon N-80 (autofocus), Nikon FM-10 (manual focus), Canon EOS Elan 7N (autofocus), or one of the Canon Rebel cameras. Get one "general purpose lens" of a wide-to-tele zoom of the same brand as your camera in the 35-105 range.

The Pentax K1000 is certainly a proven student camera that would serve you well, but you'll have to shop used, as I don't think it's a current model. It has been replaced by the KX-M, which looks like a good student camera.

Here are a couple of suggestions from B&H Photo and Video in New York that fall into your price range..

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=319781&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=199516&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=165829&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=145120&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

My reasons for suggesting Nikon or Canon is so that you can have the widest possibile selection of high quality lenses available to you. Once you have really gotten into photography, you will have a few lenses and then you can keep your top quality lenses and upgrade to a more expensive camera in the same line. Pentax is another fine camera with a huge line of lenses and I always owned Pentax film cameras, but I think you have even more to choose from in Nikon and Canon, so these are the brands I have recommended to my own children.

You might also ask the instructor if he/she has a favorite camera for student use. It will help not to have to translate too much from one brand to the other.

Answer 4

This Samsung has good reviews and seems to be the cheapest in its class. Check it out here. I think they are cheapest here: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=2142836&mpre=http%3A//search.ebay.com/search/search.dll%3Fsofocus%3Dbs%26sbrftog%3D1%26from%3DR10%26catref%3DC6%26satitle%3DSamsung+Pro815%26sacat%3D-1%2526catref%253DC6%26a25563%3D-24%26a14%3D-24%26a25565%3D-24%26a25564%3D-24%26a10244%3D-24%26gcs%3D1420%26pfid%3D1721%26reqtype%3D1%26pfmode%3D1%26alist%3Da25563%252Ca14%252Ca25565%252Ca25564%252Ca10244%252Ca24197%252Ca3801%26pf_query%3DSamsung+Pro815%26sargn%3D-1%2526saslc%253D2%26sadis%3D200%26fpos%3D08080%26ftrt%3D1%26ftrv%3D1%26saprclo%3D%26saprchi%3D%26fsop%3D1%2526fsoo%253D1%26coaction%3Dcompare%26copagenum%3D1%26coentrypage%3Dsearch. Good luck in your search!!

Answer 5

i use an olympus om-g and a minolta xg-1. i love both. try ebay