"I want a simple SLR" says my 15y/o son. Err, no you don't!

[David T T]

Rebel with 40mm pancake!

 

[GRHazelton]

Pentax ME Super. Aperture priority but manual shutter speeds. Really good ergonomics. One zillion affordable, quality lenses in the K Mount. Plus...add an affordable winder for the added panache! And the black variant with the winder...... Rad to the Max! If that expression is still au courant.......! I treasure my black Super with winder. With my 50 mm f1.2 it is formidable in appearance, and a fine picture taker. The 1.2 variant is waaaay too expensive for a beginner, get the 1.7, a superlative lens. If and when he tires of the Super, you'll enjoy it.

 

[AgX]

Rebel models all are autofocus and thus have no split-wedge focus assist.

 

[Ste_S]

Rebel with 40mm pancake!

and another vote for this. Just bought an EOS 300X (Rebel T2 for you in the USA) myself for peanuts and put a 40mm pancake on it.
Love it.

Rebel models all are autofocus and thus have no split-wedge focus assist.

Not sure why you want a traditional manual focus camera ? AF cameras seem perfect for him.

 

[AgX]

The OP wants a focus assist in case of manual focusing.

 

[Arbitrarium]

I second the suggestion for a Pentax P30. Costs about the same as a bag of crisps, has program (with auto lenses), aperture priority and full manual. Small and light, great lenses. No brainer.

 

[baachitraka]

OM-2n + 50mm f/1.8

Rebel + 40mm pancake (does not under $100)

 

[Frank53]

As you’re using OM yourself, I think the OM40 is a great idea, the most underrated OM offers eveything you want.
They give them away, almost for free.
Just be sure to carry some spare batteries.
Regards,
Frank

 

[Ces1um]

how about a canon elan 7? cheap. Auto everything but can be put into manual. That being said, I'd go with someone's suggestion above for a k1000 and just tell him to fiddle with the knobs until the needle is in the middle.

 

[rgeorge911]

My advice? Give him the camera that made you fall in love with photography. My 16 yo daughter said what your son said, and I took her at face value. She now has the option of my original K1000 or Pentax MX. Sheks been shooting the MX, going to the darkroom with me, and we’re both loving it.

Only a 50mm f2 so far, but I’m about to add to her kit. Probably a simple flash before a new lens, though.

 

[OlyMan]

Thanks for all the suggestions, some of which made me say "of course why didn't I think of that" while others were new to me, for example I wasn't aware the Nikon FG had a program mode, but clearly that's another one that checks all the boxes.

 

[OlyMan]

My advice? Give him the camera that made you fall in love with photography.

That would be my original '75 OM-1, pre 'ɴ' designation. But he's 32 years younger than me, and it's a different world for today's generation of short-attention-spanned teenagers brought up with high-tech instant gratification.

My experience of cameras at his age was manual focus SLRs with aperture-priority at best. The first cameras I really took notice of at 9/10 years old were my dad's Yashica FR-II and my elder brother's K-1000. Their level of technical (un)sophistication was my norm. Autofocus and program, what are they? I would be nearly 25 years old before I bought my first SLR, the aforementioned OM-1.

My son's experience of taking photos is a smarphone that you point at the subject and tap a virtual button on screen. So if I've any hope at all of securing his long-term interest I need to start him off with a camera that offers the safety-net of being as point-n-shoot as I can muster but with the ability to allow him to work backwards from that when/if he decides he wants to learn more.

 

[guangong]

Cannot understand your explanation of aperture? If he can read ( or a better way of phrasing the question in light of contemporary education...Does he like to read?) there are many introductory books on photography available as used books. Boys at 15 years very easily become absorbed in zeroing in and mastering some subject. Instead of giving a camera to him, let him know that camera and film are available for study. Sometimes too much guidance is not good. The groundwork for my daughter,s interest in photography came about when we hung out at Ken Hansen’s store in NYC while in grammar and high school. She now uses and processes film with Nikon F and Leica M3.

 

[Rocccity]

Pentax cameras are hip now thanks to Stranger Things. I think a K1000 or MX would be a good camera.

As someone else mentioned the Olympus cameras would be great since it's your favorite system. I have an OM2n and it's super easy to use. Combined with a 50 1.8 I think he would be set.

 

[Helinophoto]

how about a canon elan 7? cheap. Auto everything but can be put into manual.

I agree to that, the Elan 7 / eos 30v is a fine camera, a comsumer/prosumer camera of the very final, analog camera-line (as far as I know) from Canon (produced from 2004 to....not sure).
It has everything he needs, from "greenhorn" mode, to full manual and they go for very little money on eBay, most of them has seen very little use as well.

Why do you want him to focus manually by the way?

You don't need manual focus to learn and enjoy photography, in fact, my experience with manual focus and millenials, is that they don't mix well, since it's too hard to focus and they grow tired of it very quickly.

The Elan/eos 30 easily hold up to the modern dslr's and it also has eye-controlled focus something that only exist on the elan/eos 30 and the EOS-3, you can't find a thing like that on dslr's and it's way cool for a newbie millenial.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Another option would be a Canon A2/A2e. Quite advanced for their day, very robust, but still has green-box mode for when he just wants to point and shoot. They're old enough (1990s) that they're cheap. Or hell, even an EOS 1 or 1n might be obtainable on your budget, although it would be cosmetically rough most likely. The 1/1n and I think the A2 (but not the A2e) have split prisms and/or interchangeable focus screens so you could get one that has a split prism.

 

[Cholentpot]

This.

Better option than an AE-1 series.

He can put it in green mode and take it from there.

the 40mm pancake is a good lens too.

Another reason is that it's nice to get some photos back off your first few rolls. Floofing around with a full manual camera will get you back a few photos off a roll, but at 15 years old this can be very off putting. Put some film in an auto machine for the first few rolls and you'll get some pictures. After that move on to a full manual body.

 

[hsandler]

In the Nikon family, the later model plastic bodies are incredibly cheap--The F65, F75, F80--although they need somewhat expensive lithium batteries. They are autofocus, but you can turn that off, and all offer full manual exposure too as an option. The thing with those is, your son will not learn the wonderful feel of manually winding the film, and initial set up of the custom functions via numeric codes, is fiddly. So, in more manual affordable Nikons that still offer something closer to program exposure automation, you could look at the EM, FG or, for a bit more money, the wonderful FE or FE2 which can go full manual too. These are all aperture priority. The series E lenses are inexpensive and fine.

 

[blockend]

When we were teenagers all SLRs had three controls, shutter, aperture and film speed. Plus you had to focus. The consequences of changing one or the other can be learned in the first few films. If that's too complicated, a compact camera might be better.

 

[Wallendo]

My first recommendation would be to take your son out and let him shoot with your camera. If he takes to it, then pick a camera similar to yours. If he gets flustered, then a more modern, more automatic camera is in order.
Consider getting a camera in the same family as yours. The upside is that lenses and accessories can be shared. The downside is that lenses and accessories can be shared.
I would also consider going a little more primitive and selecting a Nikkormat with working meter or Minolta SRT-201 with meter adjusted for modern batteries. Although they don't have autoexposure, they both have needles that can easily be aligned. By doing this, your son will learn about shutter speeds and apertures by hands-on experience while still getting reasonably well-exposed images. I tend to be somewhat leery about the early aperture- or shutter-priority cameras, as the technology took some time to perfect, and not infrequently, the exposures are off. With experience, these issues can be worked-around, but can be frustrating to beginners.

 

[cramej]

Canon Rebel with a 50mm. OM-G or Pentax ME Super.

Get him a Lomo.

Pentax P30T.

Nikon FG .

Just get him a Nikon F3.

OM-4,

How about the Nikon N2020? Pentax Super Program.

Nikon N75, Nikon F-100.

giv e him a pentax k1000

Nikon FA , FG or Canon AE1.Nikon F3 and F4 FM, FM2, FM3.

How about your OM-2sp?

GIVE HIM ALL CAMERAS!!!!!



Pentax ZX-M (MZ-M). I have a bunch and if you were in the US, I'd send you one.

 

[OlyMan]

Consider getting a camera in the same family as yours. The upside is that lenses and accessories can be shared. The downside is that lenses and accessories can be shared.

I know 100% exactly where you're coming from with that...

 

[OlyMan]

GIVE HIM ALL CAMERAS!!!!!



Pentax ZX-M (MZ-M). I have a bunch and if you were in the US, I'd send you one.

LOL!! Cheers cramej, I've even been looking at a few Stateside on eBay.com, but the quoted shipping cost on eBay from US to UK is suddenly jaw-dropping for some reason; it never used to be. $40 or more in some cases just to post a camera body. It's half the price to have stuff posted to here from Japan, which is either not much further away or not much closer, depending on which way you look at it.

 

[faberryman]

Are you going to be teaching him to process his own film and make his own prints? Do you have a darkroom? If not, a dSLR and a subscription to Adobe LR/PS might be the way to go. You could let him use the D5000.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Are you going to be teaching him to process his own film and make his own prints? Do you have a darkroom? If not, a dSLR and a subscription to Adobe LR/PS might be the way to go. You could let him use your D5000.

One does not have to have a darkroom to learn to use film. Doing ones own darkroom work is educating, useful and for filing, but I would not discourage someone to go into photography just because they do not have a darkroom now. One can develop film with a tank, a darkroom bag and a sink. If I held off getting into photography until I could get a darkroom, I would have never gotten into photography.