An all electronic camera disguised as a manual SLR
Written: Nov 20 '02
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Pros: Great Features
Great Ergonomics
Nice Selection of Lenses
Quiet and Lightweight
Attractive Styling
Cons: Letters rub off over time!!!
Plastic Lens Mount
No Spot Meter
Expensive Electronic Cable Release
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for a compact, easy to use manual focus camera with a host of modern electronic features for photography class or just to learn this is it
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| machinehien's Full Review: Pentax ZX-M Body Only 35mm Film Camera |
This is one of my favorite cameras ever. Needing a back to basics camera for a photography class I fell in love instantly with the ZX-M. It was one the lightest SLR I've ever held in my hand and the knobs and dials are so much more intuitive than punching little tiny buttons to scroll through features when taking pictures.
Not knowing anything about photography the first three or so rolls of film I ran through this camera were horrible. Every possible photographic mistake one could make I made. However you learn from your mistakes, and that is what this camera does, allows you to make mistakes since you are in control of the picture taking.
A camera like the rebel 2000 I admit is a technological marvel for its price range and would guarantee any photographer who purchased it perfectly exposed picture but from my experience as a student who took photography to fill up on credits and borrowed a friend's rebel for a semester, I learned nothing about photography from this camera, point and shoot and the camera did the rest. I managed to slide by with a C- with the pictures I took with the rebel.
With the Pentax ZX-M I was forced for the first time to consider all of the variables that goes into creating a photographic image, light, motion, distance, filmspeed, depth of field. Stuff that the Canon Rebel never asked me to consider.
Although it looks like a manual camera it comes with a lot of automated features such as autorewind, auto film advance, Automatic Exposure, Auto Indexing.
The center weighted meter gives reasonably good exposures but I always bracketed my exposures anyway.
Apeture Priority is a great feature and I use it almost exclusively. Exposure compensation is useful in a lot of situations. Depth of Field preview is another useful feature.
My only complaint is that the camera cuts corners on certain areas. The Pentax and ZX-M name on the camera body is painted on and after three years of use the letters are starting to rub off. Also I'm not too sure how long the plastic lense mount will last. Other than that this is a near perfect camera, if they were to correct the above mentioned problems and add a spotmeter I would definitely purchase a second body.
For a little bit more you could definitely get the Rebel 2000, but if you are beginning in photography I
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 236
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Epinions.com ID:
machinehien
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Location: Houston, Texas, USA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Graphic Designer, tech junkie
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