Originally posted by titrisol Christian, since you are close to Atlanta, I recommend you buy the stuff from KEH directly.
They are nice and since you are close enough you can pick the stuff up and they can help testing the equipment before you buy...
I've bought stuff from them before, but you can't go and pick anything up. They only sell via mail. I've called them about this before.
But I still might get a camera from them, we'll see.
Again, these were all freebies (or came free with lenses). So I shouldn't be complaining. But I'm surprised at the high failure rate. Of the 3 cameras, the P30T is the only one that actually seems like it might be easily fixable - the shutter might be working and this might just be a problem with the winding mechanism. Probably still not worth the cost of fixing (especially considering something else might break right after, with my luck...)
Edit: the plastic moving parts on the ZX-M are on the motor, so that seems to be the common trend here... the courtain doesn't seem to want to go back to its position unlike in my A3000 where I can touch it and it goes back. And the mirror is in a halfway position, which is also weird, but it could point to a shutter mechanism failure. With the A3000, the mirror was either all the way up, or in the correct position.
---------- Post added 05-02-14 at 11:25 AM ----------
Ok, an update on the P30T. I'm able to test it without film now (I don't know why, but when I got it it wouldn't work until I put a film in it...).
It cranks right about 80-90% of the time now. Only every 5-10 windings, does it seem to skip a frame and I have to wind it twice before I can trigger the shutter again.
The shutter sound seems to have gotten louder though (an ugly metal clank!), and the mirror seems to move quite slowly compared to the Minolta and my digital Pentax. If I remember right the K1000 also had a faster moving mirror. Maybe if I keep playing with it, the spiderwebs will eventually fall off and it will work most if not all the time? I'm hopeful