Your Opinion: Most Over-Priced Film Cameras + Most Undervalued Film Cameras?

Undervalued: Stuff from DDR, Nikon F90, Nikon F4, EOS 5, EOS 50, EOS 3, Contax SLRs and RFs, Yashica SLRs.

Overpriced: Plastic p&s cameras, lots of rangefinders, almost everything Leica.
 
Overvalued; Pentax K1000, get a KX or KM instead, sometimes for less money.
Undervalued; Basic Ricoh KR5 (or Sears KS 500), not many features but a lightweight and very nice in the hands SLR with a common, well represented lens mount.
Just my opinion…worth what you paid for it.
 
Minolta X-300 is undervalued but the question is what prices are we using? I picked up an Olympus XA and flash etc just before last X'mas for two pounds... Anyway, the Olympus OM10 and OM101 are generally ignored and for a good cheap plastic one they can't give away try the Cosmic Symbol: in the right hands it works wonders. And the grossly under valued zoom lens is the Tokina XTM of the film era vintage.

Regards, David
 
I was fan of Cosina L, T, R line.
But none of those cameras lasted long with me. The Nikon FM10 cheap platform has too many corners cut.
And even more corners were cut with RF slapped on it.
My last one was R2M, paid same price after selling M3. It was not the same category of build, design quality.
Good as backup to Leica for the time you send your only M to D.A.G and have to wait for year or so :) .

Where are Leica labeled (not Leica made) P&S. Those are overpriced.

M6, it just laughable, +1K$ more for primitive in camera metering. While body is cheaply made, comparing to rest of Ms.

Kardashian film P&S. I forgot particular cameras names, but those are advanced P&S with prices went crazy because celebrities for masses of idiots are using those.

Contax, Olympus SLRs. Cameras might be not overpriced, but lenses are. I remember buying Oly SLR only to find out what lenses are way too overpriced. And so are c/y lenses.

By now film is not something I could use to be productive. It just takes too much time and money.
I just like to keep few film bodies to feel good.

I like how I could use same high end Canon L lenses on EF film and digital. And low priced, but good quality EF AF lenses. Canon EF film and DSLRs are undervalued, but it is such a good thing. For me as photog, not poser.

For posing and feel good I like my film/digital Leica RF setup. I could use lenses from fifties on digital M. And modern CV VM lenses on M4-2. It is expensive, but nothing else has such high "feel good" factor for me :)
 
Overvalued; Leicas that have a lot of electronics. Undervalued: 4x5 and larger view camera, especially monorails.
 
I agree with most of what’s been said above. To the undervalued list I’d add: Minolta SLRs, particularly the XD series from the late 70s. Great cameras with a superb metering system, quiet and smooth in operation, and the Rokkor lenses are outstanding. Yet no one seems to want them. I have a beautiful and fully operational XD11, and have tried on a couple of occasions to sell it… no takers even though I offered it for $150 USD w/ a clean Rokkor 50/1.7. There seems to be no market for these cameras whereas Leica and Bessa RFs command $$$.
 
Undervalued: Leica R8 (later models), Rolleiflex 6008 Integral and AF

-the R8 was larger and heavier than it ought to have been (remedied a bit with the R9 and its aluminum top and baseplates) but is ergonomically superb--you really won't notice the bulk after a while. From the VF clarity, magnification & layout; cutting-edge matrix metering--the only camera I shoot slide film with and get 36 properly exposed frames--; flash control and the rest, they are still amazing machines 25 years on. Mated to an R lens (or Angenieux R-mount zoom) and the combination remains very relevant. Sells for ~US$500, usually in excellent shape. Had Leica added autofocus to these cameras, the photo landscape would have been flipped on its head.

-the Rolleiflex is all but ignored nowadays, in favor of the Hasselblad. Yes, I know it has electronics that can fail but last time one was sold on KEH, it went for $700 with a back. Zeiss-made glass for the 6000 series were the exact same ones as designed for the Hasselblad 500 series PLUS there was an entire line of Schneider optics, arguably superior to every Zeiss focal length-equivalent and some (PQS models) that have a 1/1000 sec top shutter speed. The built-in metering is excellent and it has an Auto mode that essentially gives you the option of a 6x6 point-and-shoot.

Over-priced: Hasselblad 500, Contax G1/G2, any Contax P&S, Plaubel Makina, Fuji GF670/Bessa 667

-The Hasselblad 500 iterations were made in the tens-of-thousands over 50 years and once the legions of unused that are collecting dust on shelves hit the market, prices will follow.

-The Contax paradox already discussed elsewhere (ad infinitum). Stupid money wasted by millennials.

-The Plaubel, along with the Cosina-made Fuji and Bessa (the Wide-angle version excepted) are fragile folders with bellows that can developed pinholes or tears and good luck getting them replaced. Spoke to Igor Resnick (Igor Camera) about the Fuji and he said he's seen numerous examples where the lens wasn't perfectly aligned with the focal plane once the bellows were extended. At US$3500-4000+ they are out of reach for most and not a great value given their inherent fragility. The same applies to the Plaubel.


I must take issue with the the mention of the XPan/Fuji TX as one of the 'over-priced'; it is completely unique in the universe of film cameras and will continue to rise in price as time passes and fewer samples remain operable. A one-of-a-kind creation.
 
Just to follow on from some of the great observations above:

The P&S price spikes had me puzzled, but a younger person explained to me that some of the kids these days want a film camera that operates more or less like their phones: point and shoot. It is not so much that any of these kids are looking for Leica Summicron performance, they are just having fun and experimenting with an old format. The problem is that most p&s cameras are garbage. Rich kids go for the Contaxes and Yashica T4s and the Olympus Styluses because that is the direction to which online influencers are pointing them.

Regarding undervalued older SLRs. I think that maybe for those of us who grew up during the film era, when advanced film cameras were still ridiculously expensive for average people (re: the 1990s), there was some conventional wisdom about having a "starter" camera. To go-to models were cameras like the K1000 or older Nikkormats, etc. I hated my mid-to-late 90s starter camera (an Autoreflex TC) and never really bonded with it as it is a crappy camera (comparatively). I would have loved to have a Nikon F4 or Nikon F100 or something like that. Today, there is really no need to suggest to anyone to try a "starter" camera as really good advanced cameras are out there for cheap, where that was not the case in the 1990s and early 2000s. IMHO, I think it is more important to bond with a camera and be able to grow into it as you learn more about photography. To me, the significant undervalued cameras are ones that were top of the line or near during their era. Advanced amateur cameras of the 1960s and 1970s don't do it for me, as they are mostly heavy, have dark viewfinders, and low top shutter speeds (the era of 400 speed film really made the 1/1000 top shutter speed obsolete), and I would not recommend them to a beginner who has $100-200 to spend. Once you use a camera with a professionally bright viewfinder, it is hard to go back. :). Also not a fan of mid-range or lower-end AF Nikons and Canons of the 1980s and 1990s for similar reasons -- too many compromises with those and today a few dollars more gets you a much better SLR.

Finally, I think that the influencer community has done both a good and bad job of promoting certain camera products. Heck, many of these people do not look like they were even alive when film cameras were being sold. During the 1990s and early 2000s, I spent hours and hours reading every webpage on cameras I could find written by the old pros and repairpeople whose insights were absolutely invaluable. As we've moved as a society to prefer video over the printed word as a method of learning, it would be a terrible shame to lose all of that collective wisdom folks created back then.
 
Most film cameras are undervalued.
All Leica digital cameras are overpriced.
Cameras made in West Europe are overpriced.
 
Hmmmm, I'd say the single most undervalued film camera might be the Nikon FE. All-metal, quality construction; great and accurate match-needle metering system; aperture priority mode with exposure lock; takes most lenses (including non-AI) that Nikon ever produced; can take a motor drive; swappable focusing screens (I pimped mine out with a later, brighter FM3a screen); small but not excessively so form factor; two LR44 batteries last practically forever with them. And because they're older than the FE2 and lack a few features of that camera, they're viewed as being "less capable," which they only barely are.

A nice FE will hit you for around a hundred bucks--often less--which is a screaming bargain for such a well-built, capable film camera. Whenever students go enquiring about a film camera and start talking about K1000s or A-1s or whatever, I'm like forget those things, get an FE: it'll be cheaper (than a K1000, given their inflated prices; and than an A-1 if you decide to fork out to get the squealing shutter properly repaired), take a huge range of great lenses, you can shoot it in full manual, *but* it will also have a bit of automation. A no-brainer, really.

I keep a pair of FEs, one in chrome and one in black; they're great toss in a bag and carry around all day cameras. And I call them my "riot cameras"--if I'm ever going to shoot something where I want the best images I can get, but there's a chance the camera will get lost/destroyed in the process, they'd be easily and cheaply replaced.
 
Hmmm
Underpriced
Nikon FEs are really cheap compared to F and FM Series, and they are excellent cameras
Leica Rs were dirt cheap some years ago, the most expensive was the R6, but you could have a R7 for 300 Euro and a working RE needing foams for as low as 150 euro. R8s could be had for less than 500 USD
Contaxes some were really low price such as 139Qs, while they are superb cameras.
Hassies 500/501 could be had really cheap in 2006
1990s multi auto SLRs are quite cheap, but they were horribly expensive when new

Overpriced
Others than Leica M6s
FM3a prices have risen abruptly in the last years. In2006 you could have a factory refurbished FM3a for 360 USD
Other contaxes as the T2 have gone absolutely crazy, and others as the titanium clad Yashica FX3 command really high prices (and I own one from new)
TLRs Rolleiflexes 2,8 GX have increased priced 2 fold
Zenits and the like have increased prices 3-5 fold in the last 2 years. Working Zenits could be found in Spain for 20-25 Euro in 2014-2015. Now it's a thing of the past. Smena 8, even though having a good lens could be bought for 8 USD, and FED 5, both have had prices multiplied several fold in the last years
Yashicas FX series have also increased prices significantly.
Best regards
 
Everything that I sell is underrated and underpriced, and I'd encourage everyone to bid often and lavishly on my auctions - no bid is too high.
 
Thinking on it, I’d add the FM3a to my list of over-priced. It’s a very interesting camera from an engineering perspective. But that interestingness doesn’t translate to anything particularly unique in use, and yet its 3-4x the price of comparable quality 35mm SLRs.
 
robertofollia said:
Hmmm
Overpriced
FM3a prices have risen abruptly in the last years. In 2006 you could have a factory refurbished FM3a for 360 USD
Click to expand...

It's the last of its breed and arguably, the finest (and final) expression of 50 years of Nikon film SLR engineering. It had a brief run from 2001-2006, concurrent with the intro of the F6 and no FM-series film camera ever succeeded it. The heady pricing reflects this.
 
I agree with a number of posts regarding Canon and Nikon SLRS. Personally I think that Pentax cameras in M42 are undervalued. Some really good cameras, but a number of spectacular Takumar lenses. I had an Pentax S1a with big clunky add-on meter for many years, and really liked the results from the Takumars; the M42 mount had the added advantage of allowing the use of good post-WW2 CZJ lenses for Practica, East German Contax SLRs, etc.
 
All the pre-124G Yashica TLR models, particularly the crank wind models, but even the various Rolleicord copies they made if one can endure the lack of convenience features. Their last model, the quasi modern 124G is getting pricey on the used market, but most of the earlier models perform indistinguishably as well (IMO), were better made in my view, and cost less. They produce stunning results with modern 120 films. They also look great are a lot of fun to use!
 
As much as I love my M6, it’s ridiculously overpriced these days. On the flip side, the Nikon F3 has to be about the best bargain going now. In todays market I wouldn’t even look at an M6 with the f3 selling at 250-300. In many ways it’s a better camera, built like a tank, shutter winder is one of the smoothest around. Ironically I’ve been seeing Fm2n selling for more than the F3, which to me makes no sense. The F3 makes my Fm2n feel like a toy. So, needless to say, despite loving my Leicas I have to vote for the F3 as the most undervalued 35mm camera around.
 
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