Quoted By:
I am hopelessly addicted to shitty old gear
My current collection:
Olympus Evolt E500 with 14-45 and 40-150 Kit Lens, 50mm f2 Macro - $150
Notes: gorgeous colors, minimal editing when converting from raw, does look like film to a extent. However it struggles with any low light, even cloudy days make for tough shooting. AF is horrible too even compared to the other cameras of the era. Olympus glass is beautiful and the only reason I would consider being a 4/3rds tranny. It's fun to shoot but really worthless once it gets dark. Bodies go for $50-70 all day long on eBay too.
Sony Alpha A390 and 18-55 Sony Kit Lens - $90
-Have Minolta 50mm f1.7, 28mm f2.8, 135mm f2.8, 100-200mm f4.5, 70-210mm f4, and 100-300mm APO (waiting for this to come in the mail)
-A Mount lenses are CHEAP, my lenses were all $20-40 with the most expensive being the APO at $60. The primes are great, but the beercan 70-210mm is overrated with lots of chromatic aberrations. Autofocus is better than my Olympus, but the colors arent nearly as nice. They're rather cool toned/blue and definitely need to shoot in raw and edit a bit to get it where you want. However it's a 14mp APSC CCD vs a 8mp 4/3 CCD, so it'll do decent on cloudy days and lower light (but unusable past ISO 800, despite being rated for 3200). Gets noisy at 800 and it's not a pleasant noise like the Olympus. The Olympus in comparison needs no NR while the Sony NEEDS it. Uses SDs which is nice, fuck CF cards.
Some observations in general:
Old cameras are speed running me into a better photographer. I'm forced to work around the camera's limitations. I can't shoot auto because the auto setting sucks often. I have to get my white balance right unless I want artistic effect. I have to make the most out of shitty lighting.
There's a lot of sample variation in lenses. Some lenses that people love for their sharpness I have gotten soft. Old lenses are generally built like shit and I've gotten 2-3 with fungus/oily blades i had to repair.
