>>4416612unfortunately there are no 'safe' pentax film cameras. From what I've read there are some which don't have the gear issue, they eventually replaced the plastic gear with a brass one, but it's basically impossible to tell which have them without tearing the camera apart.
I have an MZ-S and I like it a lot. So I would recommend that if it's in your budget, the autofocus is pretty good and it has both aperture and shutter priority modes, and the metering has never missed so badly that I can't recover the shot while scanning.
I say just buy something that's in good physical condition, but don't spend so much you can't afford to lose it and just enjoy the camera without worrying about if it'll last forever. Also for what it's worth I really like the 28-80, it was my go-to for travel, it's compact and a good enough aperture to shoot in the day into evening with 400/800 iso film. It's now been replaced by the tamron 28-200. But they both are far from optically perfect, which is what I like.
P.S. There are no 'safe' electronic film cameras, I went through 3 f100s, luckily the first two I was able to return, before giving up and just sticking with my MZ-S, which has survived two years at this point. Point being, don't worry so much about them dying, they all are.
