Hello! I recently got into photography, and purchased a Minolta x700, with several MD lenses. I’m very happy with it, but I didn’t realize how expensive film photography can be. I am considering to switching to DSLR once I develop my skills, and I was wondering what some good options are for entry level DSLR cameras would be.

Ideally the DSLR should or can accept my current Minolta MD lenses.

Thanks!

Edit: I’m not even sure that DSLR photography will be more cost effective, so if I’m wrong, please fill me in! I paid 24 dollars for a 3 pack of Fujifilm 200, and it is 17 dollars to develop a single roll at CVS (there are no other photo labs in the area, and they send it away, anyway).

  • @fhqwgads
    4•3 months ago

    As someone who did this within the last couple years, my suggestion would be to just buy whatever new kit appeals to you and don’t worry about adapting your lenses. If you had Minolta autofocus lenses it might be worth getting into older Sony A Mount system, but if I remember right the adapter Minolta made for the manual focus lenses is rare and expensive.

    I had a bunch of manual zuiko lenses and kit for my Olympus OMs, and adapted them on a Canon apsc DSLR and now a Sony a7s full frame. The fact of the matter is that other than a few times that I need a specialty lens the one modern lens that I bought basically lives on it.

    Focusing a manual focus lens on an autofocus body is really hard. The focusing screens aren’t really made for it. On the mirror less a7s it’s better, but that’s largely because you can zoom way in on the screen and it has focus peaking like a video camera.

    If you don’t care about video (which is worth considering) an older Sony is worth considering. An a6000 with the kit lens should run about 350-400 USD for the body used and about 50-150 for a used kit lens. Even the fancy g master standard zoom runs about 4-500 USD used. That’s looking at keh.com anyway, you could probably get a better deal on marketplace or eBay - they were very popular and pop up locally pretty much everywhere. If you want video moving to a new body like the 6400 gives you 4k which is a nice to have.