Help getting started with a old film camera (Minolta XG)

[Xeoncross]

Well, I have been trying to find an upgrade to our sony point-and-shoot for a while now, but the only DSLR cameras that seem to be worth upgrading to are over $500 - which is something that I can't justify just for fun.

I was over at a friends house when they showed me this old ancient camera that turned out to be a Minolta XG 1 with several lenses. Most of the lenses had their caps off so they are all pretty dusty now and need to be cleaned. Anyway, they have no use for the camera so they are letting me borrow it. Which means that I can goof off with f-stop, aperture, ISO and all the other fun settings that you don't get with a point-and-shoot - and without paying several hundred dollars too!

So I really am at a loss as to where to start. I have never used a film camera before and out here in the country I'm not sure how easy it will be to find people that know about these cameras or can clean them. I didn't even know there were two types of film (ASA/DIN). Can anyone point me in the right direction on some beginning tutorials or things I should know before I just start taking pictures? I feel like I just found an old rifle and I don't know how to clean or take care of it.

[Franglais]

You have to pay for the film and processing, and you don't see the result immediately. Shoot 50 films and you've spent the $500 that you would/should have spent on a DSLR. And 50 films is not much when you're learning.

Shooting with a film SLR is about the same as shooting with a digital SLR. Any SLR tutorial would do, as long as you remember that once the film is in the camera, you can't change the ISO.

ASA and DIN are just two different standards for expressing film speed, the ASA standard won and has now become the ISO standard i.e. 400 ISO = 400 ASA.

[freygr]

Film costs money even if you develop it your self. If you have daylight tanks and a dark room to load the film from the film cartridge to the developing reel, after you close up the tank you can process the film in daylight.

The price of B&W film has increased faster than color film and all kinds of film is becoming hard to find.

Just remember you can't change the ISO of film until you put a new roll into your camera.

[Xeoncross]

Just remember you can't change the ISO of film until you put a new roll into your camera.

I never would have thought of that. I keep seeing different ISO rated film speeds but I wasn't sure how that worked with the cameras ISO. Thanks for saving my film!

Shoot 50 films and you've spent the $500 that you would/should have spent on a DSLR

Yes, a really good point to keep in mind. I only plan on buying one or two roles so that I can fully examine all the features I keep reading about before I buy a DSLR. I also don't want to process all of them - just get them put on a CD. Does walmart or any other store just allow you to get your pictures on CD so that you don't have to spend $5 or whatever on each roll?

[freygr]

The film processing is not that costly but the printing adds to the cost. Just remember that the images on the CD will mostly be low resolution scans. To get the best results you have the have the film scanned (on a film scanner) at 4000 dpi or more, not as a JPG but as a TIFF file. Note the file size will be 30 meg or more.