Help me start my film journey

[sharkylittleton]

Let me be frank, digital photography leaves much to be desired. I find myself post processing certain photos to mimic the warmth of higher ISO monochromatic films. I think it's a good time to start shooting with film.

I need to figure out a film format and decide what camera to go with it. I plan on shooting mainly B&W, with the occasional color. I'd be happy with a fixed 50mm f/1.8 type of lens to do 90% of my film works, and maybe a zoom for the future. I do alot of wide open aperture digital shooting to isolate my subjects... that is extremely important that I have that ability with a film camera. I'd like the ability to enlarge my prints clearly past an 8x10 if possible. I'm thinking about taking a dark room class eventually, but the nearest pro lab might be sufficient, for a while atleast. My budget might be about 150-200. Hope I listed all of the important stuff and hope I'm not asking too much. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks guys!

[cameron665]

Welcome Sharky. For that amount of money you a probably limited to 35mm format. You could probably get a reasonably good Canon, Nikon, Olympus or Minolta with 50mm lens for that sum. I'm only familiar with the Olympus OM series, the single digit ones are the better ones OM1, OM2, OM3 & OM4. The last two are probably out of your price range. Beware the OM1 takes the now discontinued 1.35V battery. However, they can be modified to run on the the 1.5V silver oxide batteries. I noticed KEH had a couple already modified. The OM1 is purely mechanical, no electronics, the battery only used to power the light meter. The OM 2 can be manual or auto with aperture priority, plus it doesn't have the battery issue. The Olympus Zuiko lenses are fantastically sharp. I have both the 50mm f1.8 and 50mm f1.4. The 1.4 is my go to lens but really the 1.8 is pretty good too. I have used an OM1 for many years and they are a great camera, you make all the exposure decisions. Good luck and let us know what you get.