Film Fridays: Are premium 35mm compact cameras a waste of money?

There is an obvious hype with modern "premium" compact cameras. Contax T3 are sold today more expensive than when they were relased and I sold recently in eBay a Nikon 35Ti for much more than what I paid 5 years ago. But I sold also a fantastic Konica Auto S3 for just a couple of hundreds.

For me the Konica is an excellent camera, better camera than the Nikon, but not sexy enough for hipster.

Having used an Olympus Mju-ii (as it was called in the UK) when it was current my very strong recommendation to anybody who has not done so is to leave it where it is. I understand why people want to use pretty manual cameras like a Zenit or a Pentax K1000. I honestly can't see why anybody would want to use a 1990s plastic compact which takes much worse photos than a current smartphone and for the most part has worse ergonomics too.

I’m willing to spend the five -15 dollars and grab a stylus epic every time I see one .
I use it and eBay it .
Eventually I’ll run out of them and no longer be readily able to find them .
Same as the yashica t2 - 5
The big mini
Etc etc .
The thing is a cheap thrift store premium compact 35 mm is getting harder and harder to find .
Eventually they will become as rare to find as a roleiflex.
I’m not sure if buying a brand new fullframe camera and shooting it into obsolescence isn’t as expensive as buying thrift store premium compact film cameras and paying for development.
It depends on what you want to do.
Is it a waste of money ? That’s up to you.
I recently purchased my first fullframe camera .
It’s not the top model nor is it a recently released model.
I got the money from selling cameras I bought from thrift stores .
I’m not sure if the full frame digital camera I purchased will ever become “cult niche”

After the WWII the quality of film dropped tremendously. I have scanned thousands of images from 1870-1990's and the quality drops consistently after they started making these cameras for everyone. The professional pictures from the late 1800 to early to mid 1900s are absolutely phenomenal with detail and exposure.
Once they started the compact cameras and lab processing, it just went downhill from there.
Quality with digital has now surpassed pretty much everything with the exception of some of the large format film that I see from 100 years ago.
So, to answer the question in the headline - No, it's not worth it.

I want a smartphone with film roll inside

Yes and no. Yes, if digital has won your heart (and mind). No, if you still want to “feel” that roll, and don’t want to carry a SLR “just for fun”. My take.

I had a Stylus Epic. Entirely comparable image quality to an SLR with 35mm prime lens. Pocket-able and water resistant. Of course, it did sacrifice manual control, external flash, and interchangeable lenses. I think I sold it for $25. Duh!

Buy backups for P&S cameras! At least two, or three if you can afford it.

This goes for all of them, even the high end models.

I owned Minolta Riva zoom, a compact zoom 35mm film camera. It was wonderful camera. The motor was a bit noisy though.

Yes. I have a few premium compact film cameras that I purchased many years ago before the prices got stupid. You can't expect a 30 yr old compact film camera to remain operational for too long beyond that. I no longer shoot film but I still have many film cameras. Digital is just too convenient and good to continue to shoot film.

Nothing is a waste of money in photography. If you have it, spend it.
Could you get a better deal and better results buying a film-era Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Praktica, Topcon, or other SLR? Probably. But it wouldn't be as nifty so what are you going to do?

You could argue all cameras are a waste of money unless they are used by a professional to make a living.

I really loved the Rollei 35 of my mother. It was real fun to operate.

But these times are gone. If I look at my RX-100 today and the pictures it takes - I don't want the old times back.

The Rollei sits comfortably in my camera drawer and sometimes I look at her - I still love her, but I don't use this camera any more.

Are premium 35mm compact cameras a waste of money? Yes.

Eh, give me a pocketable digital camera with PASM that’s splash and dust resistant and we’ll talk. I think part of the problem is that there aren’t many stylish, pocketable, point anD shoots on the market, and film P&S fill a void, even at $300 - a Ricoh GR is twice that, and a Fuji X100 is twice that again (and not pocketable).

If Olympus glued a nice sharp prime on an E-PL sized body, made it look like a Stylus, and charged $450 for it, I have a feeling it would do alright.

Nikon gave up too quickly with the Coolpix A, not playing well enough to the form factor’s strengths. I should have picked one up when they were being fire saled at $289...

Well, I think the first question should be: is 35mm film now a waste of time? I essentially gave up on it 30 years ago. The 120/220 film cameras are sometimes not that much bigger, and the image quality is far, far better.

That's not to say, of course, that the images are better---but that's more an aesthetic question than a technical one. 35mm images to me are like Grunge in music. That can be cool.

I had one of those cameras, a Rollei 35 LED and then an S. I loved them----in the '70's and early '80's.

I'm much happier with digital.

I think it's too broad a question. We need to break it down a little into categories. Before and after autofocus. Maybe Metal and plastic bodied.

There were some outstanding rangefinders in the pre-autofocus days. Autofocus in a pocketable camera was often auto-zone-focus. Slow and crude.

The plastic bodied cameras brought on the exotic shapes. and light weights. From the smooth Olympus cameras, to the very light Minox cameras.

The greater problem for many of these premium compacts is batteries - or the lack of. Without their discontinued batteries they may not function.

Minox 35 was an amazing little camera, but had one fault, and that was that the focusing ring easily fell off, and there was no way of telling which position it had been!

An outstanding 'FF' with a crisp 35/2.8 mm lens, weighing less than 200 grams, with the battery, the size of a pack of cigarettes!

We had a few of those 35mm (lens) pocket film (35mm) cameras. Perhaps all of us did. Fantastic tools. Great quality pictures (as film goes).

An excellent, intelligently written article. Personally I would much rather have my Nikon F90X despite it's weight and size due to it's features and flexibility. Not least the ability to change lenses. If you are a point and shoot type of photographer you can still shoot a camera like the F90X in that way (on full auto) if you want. The prices of premium compacts have become very silly!

I love (and use, a lot) my Yashica EZ Zoom!

How come my glorious little Canon Esprit I loved using in the 90's never gets mentioned in these discussions?

The best thing to do is keep it if you have it and use it!

The article should be called “I don’t think Contax T2 worths it”, and the whole point is basically - it will not be a miracle that will change everything in your photography, but if you really want it and can afford it, ok, you can buy it. Ok, yeah

I'd say no, but at the same time, it sort of kills the "spirit" of going back and doing film, since many of these cameras pretty much did everything for you, unlike many SLRs of the time (where an advanced one might have had a light meter or AF system but not much else in terms of automation). I probably wouldn't buy one myself and would opt for the true film experience with a mostly-manual or fully manual SLR and a nice set of primes.

I didn't know about rangefinder and SLR cameras when I got some awful Nikon P&S back in the early 90s. Everything was automatic. Only override was for the flash and you had to keep a finger on one of the tiny buttons next to the lens to force it to flash or not flash.

I'd sooner try to resurrect a CD burning Sony Mavica than one of those relics of mediocrity.

Back in 1996 these cameras served a purpose. Nowadays they're just plastic hipster future ocean trash.

I wish I still had my Ricoh GR1... I could sell it now for a million bucks.

Even when I was shooting several hundred rolls of 35mm every year, I only had one or two compacts at any given time. I never kept any of them very long, and I generally disliked using them. The problem is that I truly despise the 35mm fixed focal length most of these employ. There were numerous rangefinders in the generations before these plastic wonders that utilized 48mm and up focal lengths. They were a joy to use, and I had quite a few of them at one time.

As an avid collector of old cameras, I never buy the popular and overpriced it doesn't matter that they become popular and overpriced "after" you've made your purchase.

Are opinions really like assholes?

These cameras were very useful when film ruled the day. I was partial to the Olympus Stylus Epic (Mju II):
https://jimtardiophotography.blogspot.com/p/olympus-stylus-epic.html

If you can't get them repaired, then FREE plus shipping is too much to pay.

I'd feel like a *fool* if my $1,000 purchase died half way through the first roll—YMMV.

After using a few of these, my worthless opinion is that the most advanced compact is a fully manual scale focus or rangefinder with no dx reader

Janky 90s autofocus, fighting the dx reader, trying to force the camera to use a shutter speed you want for a shot, trying to second guess the meter pattern in bright side lighting or indoors with a window somewhere in shot (i never had one with a spotmeter) etc etc - just a complete pain.

Awesome lenses, awesome size, build quality and engineering but the 'advances' were just complete hinderances vs the all manual cameras of the past. Waste of cash.

This article just seems like trollbait in general. Maybe get better ideas for articles than click bait. Show us some film photographers, review some scanning workflows. What does whether high end cameras are overpriced have to do with film photography really?

The stylus epic and the yashica T's are definitely wastes of money, others aren't.

Their numbers are finite and film photography is hugely popular and has had a resurgence. Its not a difficult concept.

Heh heh heh, back in the 70's and then the 80's to 90's I sold a lot of those compact cameras when I worked in Photo retail. Back then they were some pretty decent compacts. The Olympus Stylus and XA's come to mind. Even Leica had a compact although it wasn't anything spectacular, I still have one.... The reality is my Huawei P30 blows away those film cameras as did my T-90's and F-1's and later my EOS 1's.

But if you are into film and process/roll your own I can see the utility in packing a good compact. Though I might want to avoid one that uses one of those hard to find and fairly expensive lithium batteries.....

Sure, now. Didn't used to be.

I saw another plug here for the Canonet I'd like to second, particularly the GIII QL17. God, what a sweet little shooter it was. Luminous and sharp lens in a quiet, handsome little body.