Quest for beginner RF: Not rich.

[Major Tom]

You can pretty much bet you can get back what you paid for if you get a Leica. You can resell it and maybe be out the shipping. They hold their value. You might even make a little. I found a deal on a Mamiya 7. I shot it for a year and sold it for more than I had in it film and all.

By the time I am old and retired I imagine the value of a working M3 or a Barnack/Barnack copy in good condition will be rather ridiculous, just as collector items, not cameras.

It begs the question of whether film will still be around, besides old stock.

 

[Spicy]

Black and white film tech is pretty basic. As long as there are some people shooting it, I would be surprised if it went the way of the dinosaurs. The question is rather how bad are you willing to put up with to keep feeding your beasts with 35mm, as there are some Chinese film companies that are questionable, but passable, certainly if the alternatives disappear.

 

[hepcat]

Hepcat, you are, again correct. Mystique sounds better though. There is a lot of subjective stuff in photography, though. It pretty much guides our gear choice and tastes, and prices. Even in the market, you hear this. Reading up on Leica's some people almost sound religious about them, like they are magical beasts from a far-off land of Fantasy, and not just made in Germany (which as far as I've heard might be entirely lacking in unicorns) or Canada (which may indeed have unicorns, but they are all now frozen). Some of this might be because they are indeed good, and well engineered, but I have a feeling that in some cases this language arises from pure subjective "mystique". Probably a shade of confirmation bias as well, which exists with purchasers/fans of any product. Cameras, especially, seem to have mystique (or subjective whatnot), more so than most objects. They kind of transcendent being the mere tools that they actually are.

Indeed, 'zilla... Leicas are actually made of unicorn horns. 😀

In defense of Leica, they are solid performers. The M film cameras' big advantage is that repair services are available. They're not inexpensive to repair, but parts and service are still available for most of them. I chose them for a system camera because I could shoot both film and digital and only need one set of lenses and accessories for both.

For me (and this is MY subjective view) the Canonets, Konicas, Yashica RFs etc. from that era all are image-makers, but from the perspective of 'feel,' they feel like what they were... cheap fixed lens copies of Leica and Canon (which of course were Leica copies of their own) from the '60s. They're cheap and they work, but they don't have the satisfying 'feel' of the more expensive cameras. No great secrets there.

There's nothing at all wrong with the Bessa bodies, and in fact 2/3rds of my lenses are VC lenses which are amazing in their own right.

You've chosen well, Grasshopper. 😉