Forget disposable cameras!

[antsy]

This picture was taken with the very cheap and very tiny Olympus Stylus Epic.

This for many maybe the best reason for buying a (or keeping an existing) film compact is that it is worth very little you can take it out to a dogy area or out on the town with out much danger of it being stolen and even if it is, it won’t have cost very much so there will be no need to panic. Gone are the days when you had to use a disposable camera for such a purpose, this is not necessary now as DECENT film compacts can be bought in second hand shops or on eBay for about the same price.

One you have the camera all you have to do is pay for the film, which is cheaper than constantly buying rubbish cameras, and the film compacts will produce much better quality pictures than a disposable camera.

When disposable camera has ‘focus free’ written on it, that doesn’t mean its magic it means that it has no focus, it cannot focus in any way, its set in such away so that anything over 3 meters away should look in focus, but it will look acceptable sharp and not actually sharp. Also with a disposable camera the Aperture (how much light the lens can let into the camera) Is set at about F/6.3 that means that it lets in about 4-6x less light than a normal film compacts lens, that means that the camera needs 4-6x more light so the film has to be 4x6x faster. Also a disposable cameras also have a fixed shutter speed of 1/90th of a second this means if there is not enough or too much light, then tuff the camera can’t/wont use a slower or faster shutter speed and if there is too much light then the camera can’t use a faster shutter speed.

What camera?

I would say the best to get are, the Olympus Stylus (MJU), Olympus XA2 and best of all the Olympus Stylus Epic, (the Epic is better than my ?200 Digtal) All I have seen go for less than a ?10, the Stylus is cheapest of all often going for less than ?5 including postage, but if you shop around you will probably be able to get a Stylus Epic for about ?10 or possibly less! I know they are all Olympus, so please let me know if you have any other suggestions to add to the list.

[Axel]

Good bit of advice there!

[instant.human]

as we all know almost every film-compact beats almost every digital-compact in matters of color, color-dynamics and stuff.

i prefare shooting film most of the time. and so do many others. not only for the reasons you mentioned, although these are some goodones.

[CDog]

...oh get a decent film SLR body on eBay for less and if you're smart, get a good enough lens for next to nothing too. Much better results in general use than my compact digital...