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.
The Minolta SR-mount, a bayonet mounting system, was used in 35mm SLR cameras produced by Minolta from 1958 to 1998. Over the years, several iterations of this mount were introduced, leading to occasional references to the mount by the names of the corresponding lens generations, such as “MC”, “MD”, and “X-600”.
It is also common to see the camera mount referred to as the Minolta MD-mount. This is because the MD series of lenses were the last widely available lenses before the mount was discontinued.
The Nimslo 3D camera is the original quadra lens camera. The design was to allow for the creation of lenticular prints from 35mm film.
A lenticular print would combine the four different images into a single print. That print would appear 3 dimensional when moved.
The Nishika N8000 and Nishika N9000 both have four lenses. They were released after the Nimslo 3D.
I am not aware of printers that can produce lenticular prints for individuals.
Sports and wildlife photography requires expensive and often heavy telephoto lenses. The cheapest interchangeable lens camera kits can still be close to $1,000.
Bridge cameras offer an inexpensive entry point into a super telephoto field of view. Another huge benefit is that they are relatively light. This makes them the ideal choice for taking on nature hikes or to children’s sporting events.
The reach on many of these cameras is quite impressive.
There are so many compatible Pentax Spotmatic lenses that making a choice can be difficult. The Pentax Spotmatic was a popular camera that had many different versions and sold well during it’s production run.
The Pentax Spotmatic uses the M42 lens mount, of which there are an incredible number of M42 lenses made by Asahi Optical Co. Ltd (Pentax) and other manufacturers.
With some rare exceptions any M42 mount lens will be compatible with the Pentax Spotmatic.
The Flange Focal Distance is the space between a camera lens mount and the film plane or image sensor.
The short distance on mirrorless cameras is why it is easy to adapt film lenses to those mounts. Space taken up by the mirror is replaced with a lens adapter.
Flange distance is also referred to as:
flange focal depth flange back distance flange focal length back focus flange-to-film distance register Film Plane Indicator / Focal Plane Mark Film Plane Indicator on a Canon AE-1 Each manufacturer uses a different mark to show the film or sensor plane location.
Launched in 1964 by Asahi Optical Co. Ltd., the Pentax Spotmatic series sold well thanks to its innovative spot metering technology. The “spot” in Spotmatic was a reference to the built-in light meter.
There were 10 major versions of the Pentax Spotmatic.
If you are not overly familiar with vintage cameras, TTL metering was a huge quality of life improvement. It reduced the price and complexity of photography. Prior to the Spotmatic, an extenal light meter light, like the Pentax Spotmeter V would have been needed.
