Film Equipment Ruminations

Overall, I have to say I am pretty happy with my film cameras and lenses so far. Back in the 1970’s I spent nearly $500 for a fully manual Olympus OM-1N body with a 50mm lens, a 35mm lens and a 135mm lens, and that “kit” served me well for almost 30 years. In the last couple months I bought two fully manual camera bodies, a 50mm lens, and a 135mm lens and now I just picked up a 28mm lens to complete my camera bag. I have spent a total of about $300 on all of it. Not bad – especially when you consider that $500 spent back in the 70’s is roughly equivalent to about $2000 today.

The two bodies I have now of course cannot compare with the OM-1N for quality but they are functionally similar and more than adequate for my current needs as long as I don’t abuse them too much. My newly acquired lenses are excellent by any standard. My skill using these all manual film SLRs is steadily improving along with the quality of my pictures as I relearn the nuts & bolts of manual film photography.

Have I given up on digital photography – not at all! I just don’t like the cameras. I still like the idea of digital photography and I still hope to eventually find a camera I like. I favor the Pentax DSLRs because they seem to provide excellent value and they keep their catalog of offerings simple. Besides, I just like the way Pentax does things. Having lived with both the ist-DL and the 10D, I can attest to the quality of both the equipment and the pictures they produce. I am also very pleased that my K-mount manual lenses work with the Pentax DSLRs. I just read a review on the K5 and it seems impressive but I am just not willing to part with that much money for another DSLR that likely has the same quirks I dislike about the others I have tried.

I would really like to have a nice compact digital point & shoot with good zoom capability, a fast enough lens to shoot those great available light pictures everyone loves so much, and “easy to use” manual functions for those times when the automatic everything settings just won’t do what I want them to do. Pentax so far doesn’t seem to have anything like that to offer. Canon and Nikon seem to have better offerings in this area but they are generally over priced and like most other manufacturers they produce a confusing array of cameras with overlapping capabilities and still somehow manage to miss producing exactly what I am looking for.

So I will keep shooting film to satisfy my creative urges and I will use digital when I need to. Maybe one day I will find a digital camera that I enjoy using as much as my film cameras, hopefully that will happen before my film cameras wear out.

**** Update 10/12/13 ****

Okay so here's another blog post update - I actually did find exactly what I was looking for in the Nikon P-300 (not a Pentax but otherwise perfect), and wrote blog posts on 10/31/11 entitled, "The Perfect Digital Camera - Part 2" and on 11/1/11 entitled, "The Proof is in the Pictures" discussing why I thought this was such a great little digital camera. Since then I have acquired and explored other cameras both film and digital but have never lost my love or respect for this little digital wonder. As I write this update I am considering which camera to bring with me to Oktoberfest this afternoon and regardless what else I bring with me the P-300 will be going for sure.