The price to performance of used cameras is absurd. My view is that digital photography tech hit maturity in 2008 with the release of the Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D700.
Sales of point and shoot cameras peaked in 2010. Interchangeable lens cameras in 2012. Since then, photographic improvements have taken a back seat to video capabilities.
Have you ever been paranoid about the capacity of a battery? Especially if it was from a third party? I was.
I have figured out how ANYONE can inexpensively capacity test camera batteries. I have written a guide on how to capacity test camera batteries. It is a simple DIY project that only requires a screwdriver and pair of wire strippers.
Picking Out Vintage Lens Winners
All lenses aren’t equal, especially when it comes to vintage and early digital camera lenses. Modern lenses will give you images that are razor sharp corner to corner. Vintage lenses can set themselves apart by how they render, the color you can get with them, interesting bokeh, or other characteristics not valued by current photographers.
On the other hand, many vintage lenses are not good. Their performance may not be good enough to set them apart from other lenses. Worse, as time has gone on some lenses have defects such as haze, fungus, balsam separation, or degraded grease, that will render them worthless because of the difficulty in repair.
I’m somewhat indiscriminate in my purchasing of gear, so I get a mix of good, bad, and average. The lens reviews will help you find a lens worth owning. These are popular film cameras that recieve frequent lens questions.
Here are the 6 best cameras I could find for less than $100. Take note of memory card requirements. Make sure to get a charger included because none of them can be charged by USB.
Prices are pulled from eBay using the ‘Completed Items’ filter.
Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, thrift stores, Kajiji, Gumtree, Yahoo Auctions, flea markets, swap meets, garage sales, and estate sales are other good places to look.
Affiliate LinksOutside the Shot is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.
All of these Fujifilm digital cameras can use SD cards with capacities up to 2TB. Some cameras need faster SD cards with UHS-II.
The cameras with the best video capabilities need CFexpress cards.
All Fujifilm X series and G-mount interchangeable lens cameras are covered along with premium point and shoot cameras.
Affiliate LinksOutside the Shot is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.
Lens mounts can have hundreds of compatible lenses. Price lists allow you to quickly narrow down your search.
Comparable lenses tend to have similar uses prices. Specialty/niche use cases can have large differences in price to performance between systems.
Only $20,000 used! Most Expensive: Sigma 200-500mm f/2.8 APO, $25,995. Highest Macro Magnification: 5x, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Micro Four ThirdsMy favorite because of the quantity of inexpensive quality glass available.
LP-E6, LP-E6N, and LP-E6Nh batteries have different capacities. They are all forward and backwards compatible.
There are 19 different models that are compatible with the batteries.
In my testing, all third party battery manufacturers overstate the capacity of their batteries. Considering the price of OEM Canon batteries, third party options can still be compelling.
Compatible CamerasThese are the 19 models that use LP-E6 batteries.
It’s impressive how long Canon has stuck with the battery format.
The Canon 5D mark II has a type II CompactFlash memory card slot. Type II slots are wider so microdrives could be used. Any Compact Flash card will fit.
An SD to CF card adapter can be used. As long as the SD card is fast enough, the maximum speeds I tested were 18MB/s continuous write and 20MB/s continuous read.
For Magic Lantern RAW video, only the fastest CompactFlash cards are will work.
These are used prices for Canon EF mount telephoto lenses in good condition. It covers lenses with the best availability. It is not a complete list of all lenses.
Zoom/prime preference and a budget will narrow down options to a handful of lenses.
I haven’t gone through and checked for teleconverter compatibility.
Affiliate LinksOutside the Shot is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.
