You're going down a mini-wormhole here! There are plenty of opinions out there... There are Olympus people, Canon people, Minolta people, Petri people, Hasselblad people, etc. Depending on year, all of these companies made cameras that excelled in ways and potentially fell short in others.
You just need to figure out what you want in a camera. Don't shy away from a fully manual setup - there's always the "sunny 16" rule. I came across a Minolta kit for sale locally that included two bodies (SRT-102 and x700) and 4 lenses. I thought this would give me an awesome opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty of fully manual shooting with the SRT while still being able to fall back on aperture priority (and even fully-auto) with the x700 if I so desire. Both Minolta bodies, so I can move lenses around as I please. A word of warning: avoid ebay. I had an unpleasant experience dealing with another body that arrived busted. Who knows who's to blame, but it appeared to have been dropped by USPS handler. The prism was messed up AND the light meter didn't work (seller claimed it did). You'll see TONS of 35mm SLRs/rangefinders on there, many with a description mentioning that the body/lens/whatever is *untested*. Forget it. No matter how cheap. I recommend buying off-market, locally. Check out the camera and run through all shutter speeds, wind up the film advance, fire the shutter, check light seals. You're far more likely to deal with someone that actually knows the camera vs. some yard sale scrounger. Have fun! - Teague -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/0b5b8ec1-4f60-4ede-865c-7578e9ec20ad%40googlegroups.com.
