Quote from John Mitchell on August 3, 2023, 10:33 am

Hello Everyone

A quick note to say hello from someone hopelessly addicted to buying unregarded, and probably forgotten, digital cameras. I'm pleased to find that I'm not alone.

I've lost count of the number in the collection. Possibly, I need counselling. My main addiction is for the apparently unloved Kodak Easyshare range and for any Ricoh compact digitals - (R series, GRD series, GX200, GXR and the original 2013 GR).

Kodaks tend to be tough little cameras but far too easily dismissed as holiday disposables for "beginners". So the second hand prices are ludicrously cheap. A current favourite is the Easyshare Mini M200. I have several and never paid more than £5 for a mint and boxed example. It's the size of a credit card and perfect for street shooting. Late production M series models (appearing just before the Kodak crash) featured Kodak film emulations which can be surprisingly effective. Probably better than some Lightroom plug-ins. The M532 and the M577 Touch are well worth exploring if you can find a good, cheap example. Then you can play with Kodacolor, Ektachrome, Kodachrome, T-Max and Tri-X at very little expense.

For travel, I tend to pack a Ricoh GRDIII or GRDIV when walking any distance. Or a Nikon P7100 if I feel a zoom lens would be useful. I like travelling as light as possible.

Another old favourite is the much maligned Fuji X-S1 bridge camera. Comprehensively trashed in online reviews and forums, due to the notorious "orbs" and "droopy zoom" issues, the X-S1 soon disappeared into history. But poor Fuji had spent a fortune sorting things out before discontinuing this model in the face of continuing poor sales. The rumoured X-S2 never appeared. The trick is to find one with a serial number starting above 23 (second quarter, 2013) when all the issues had been sorted.  Mine is a final production example with a serial starting 43 and has been faultless. It was bought brand new for less than £200 in 2015 when retailers started dumping them out of desperation.

As a lover of Kodak colours since my film camera days, I've managed to track down a clean Olympus E300 with a Zuiko 25mm pancake lens. I need to get out with this one and start taking some snaps.

A very solid Camedia C-5060 turned up recently in a local charity shop. This 5.1Mp camera was £599 ($700) when new in 2003 but can now be found for less than the cost of a pizza. A strangely appealing brick of a device and great fun to use.

Then there's the Canon 5D, Canon S110, Sony Mavica, Sony NEX-3, Pentax K50, Pentax MX-1, Nikon P50 and so on, etc. etc............

I shall look forward to sharing knowledge and enthusiasm with the guys on this forum.

Best wishes to all

 

John