pcfranchina said:
Are there no high-end P&S cams in my price range? I was even looking on Evil-Bay. Not much in the classifieds on rff.
I just have to ask, what do you mean by high-end?
Is it:
- extremely good lens? for $100, XA has *the* best 6-element lens, it's older brothers like the 35SPn have better lenses, but it's *not* pocketable. Another route is to get Olympus 35 EC or EC2 or ECR (the first two are zone focus, and the last one has a patch rangefinder). The lens has 5-elements, but the result is unique and they handle handheld low-light even better than the XA
😉
or
- fun to shoot? get Olympus Pen half-frames, they are fun to shoot, no thinking needed, just point and shoot, if you don't like half-frames, get a cheapo Olympus Trip 35, the results will astound you and you'll just spend 10% of your budget, use the rest of it for different types of film and processing (then you'll cover more parameters for 'artistic/creative' results
🙂 )
or
- everyone says they're good? but overpriced (in my opinion)? for $400 and up you have some choices, the Contax T3, the Minolta TC-1, and the Leica Minilux. But why? I've seen their results, nothing spectacular that merits paying 5x the XA.
<rant>
Also, eBay is not evil, it's some of its inhabitants (both sellers *and* buyers) that gave it a bad name. Most of us won't even have things to talk about here if it were not for eBay and the new global economy that it has created.
</rant>