Good film slr for under, say... 300 dollars

[tswem]

I currently have a fujica st705 that i love, and a nikon fm from the 70's. I am relatively new to photography but i absolutely love it. I would like to have a new camera and cant really spend over 400 dollars (im a college student). Any ideas? All manual also, thankyou very much!

[s9810588]

Maybe I'm wrong but apart from Nikon FM10 and FM3A, there has not been all mechanical new SLR released for a few years.

If you want new, all manual camera with economical price then you have to jump to rangefinder land: Cosina Voigtländer. Camera Quest (I have no affiliation with) has Bessa R with 35mm/2.5 lens for around US$400.

PS: That Nikon FM of yours, it's a very capable camera. You don't really need anything new unless you do lots of photography with telephoto, moving objects and shallow DOF e.g. sport and bird. But then, as you said, you want full-mechanical camera anyway.

[ukexpat]

Maybe I'm wrong but apart from Nikon FM10 and FM3A, there has not been all mechanical new SLR released for a few years.

If you want new, all manual camera with economical price then you have to jump to rangefinder land: Cosina Voigtländer. Camera Quest (I have no affiliation with) has Bessa R with 35mm/2.5 lens for around US$400.

PS: That Nikon FM of yours, it's a very capable camera. You don't really need anything new unless you do lots of photography with telephoto, moving objects and shallow DOF e.g. sport and bird. But then, as you said, you want full-mechanical camera anyway.

"Manual" does not necessarily mean "mechanical"...

[s9810588]

Doesn't "all manual" means manual focusing, manual exposure setting, manual film advance/rewind and manual ISO setting?

All these you get from mechanical camera. Electronic camera won't rewind/advance the film if the battery is flat (maybe there are some exceptions but I know little about cameras).

[jim_panzee]

tswem. If your Nikon is working well and clean, my advice would be to spend your money on a nice fast Nikor (f1.4) 80mm or even a wide angle lens (if you haven't already got one), and then possibly a good tripod, and use the Nikon. You wont do much better than this combination, and for the sort of money you are talking about, spending it on a more modern S/hand camera, you may end up with a load of technological crap.