Originally posted by Astro-Baby Bit late into this thread but Chinon did K mount cameras starting with the CM-4 (watch out as the CM-4s - and any Chinon post the '3' with an S filling its number is screw thread).
Back when they were making them I never even looked at them as in the UK they were sold exclusively by a box shifting shop that had horrible service and almost anything they sold was guaranteed to break down 10 minutes after you left the shop. I just acquired an old CM-3 and find it remarkably solid - its certainly all metal as far as I can tell and built like a tank. Mines an M42 thread but the 3 was the last model they did with that thread before switching to the K mount. Mine has very basic metering but I believe the later models started to get with it and get full display data in the VF.
Downsides - its VERY heavy at 800+grams with a 50mm lens but without the motor drive. Its far from a perfect bit of kit but it does have a charm about it - it feels like a real camera - lots of clunk click, chunky controls, not much (if any) plastic about it. CE4s seem to turn up on eBay at pretty low prices as the retro brigade don't seem to have started bagging them up yet - still too busy paying over the odds for ropey K1000s and knocked out AE-1s I think
The reason why I passed Chinons entirely and went straight for Ricoh is primarily their price - since the only way for me to source the gear is via Internet, I have to accept Internet prices and sellers drive hard bargain.
Originally posted by pres589 I'm working through my first roll of film in my new-to-me Chinon CE-5 and so far I really like how this camera feels. Feel at the film wind lever is nice and smooth, with lighter pull than my Ricoh Simplex TLS and smoother/less ratcheting feeling than my Ricoh XR7. The size is very nice, almost identical to the XR7, and maybe a tiny amount lighter. Viewfinder is very good and I really like the LED's for light meter output (vs. the worst thing about the XR7 and its LCD dots). The shutter is pretty quiet and the mirror slap seems more damped by far than either of my Ricoh's.
The biggest drawback is the plastic top deck which is cracked in multiple places on my camera. I may try to buy a dead CE-5 for cheap and swap decks but I imagine a lot of them are cracked like mine is. Oddly I think Chinon did a better job painting the camera than Ricoh did with my XR7 and its missing paint from logos and such.
XR7 has a plastick plating as well and I dropped it twice already, thankfully without scratches/bruises and I have another pair of plating just in case. I'm also working my way to wear the neck strap after all that's happened
I agree on annoying LCD indication, can't shoot at night. But it takes some getting used to and I can safely say that I feel "at home" using XR7 after 8-9 rolls of film. It is extremely lightweight, especially with Russian Industar 50 lens snapped on via K-M42 adapter. Mirror/shutter slap is right there, but hey, I moved to K-mount from Olympus OM and pretty much everything sounds loud after cloth shutter and dampened mirror, so no real complains from me, most of the things are good and whichever aren't, are easy to get used to.