Opinions on a camera.

I've just been offered a 35mm film SLR from a friend of the family,
completely free (except for the cost of postage of course).

I have no experience with film SLR's. Only DSLR's.
My only experience with film is in point and shoot cameras, so I'm hoping
this will present me with a challenging learning curve.

Now, I know that this SLR is quite an old model. It doesn't feature any sort
of automation. Even the film wind is manual, although I understand I can buy
a power-pack to remedy that.
The camera in question is a Praktica BCA with 3 lenses.
From what I've read online, it seems a pretty good camera, but I'd be
interested in hearing the opinions of some folks who have experience in 35mm
SLR's.

Also, does anybody know of any good resources online that will give me a
good understanding of how to calculate exposure times etc on a camera that
doesn't have all the whiz-bang light metering tools that a modern DSLR user
takes for granted?

Many thanks guys.
Fat Sam.


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Future of Film
    ... Thinking back over the past year, I am unable to come up with any manufacturer introducing a new 35mm film camera, Zeiss Ikon excepted. ... Nikon has discontinued all but two models of film SLR ... B&W that you can do at home, or color slides where you have the original for projection, REQUIRE film and demonstrate its superiority to the current digital scene. ...
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  • Re: Manual photography versus digital
    ... Will the digital camera ever make the manual camera ... I use a fully automatic compact digicam, a fully automatic film SLR, a partially automatic film SLR, a fully manual film SLR which uses batteries for it's exposure reading only, and a fully manual rangefinder which doesn't even take batteries. ...
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  • Future of Film
    ... I spent the past couple of hours looking at a few of the digital camera ... Nikon has discontinued all but two models of film SLR ... Minolta has exited the market, and Sony has no plans to market any film ...
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