[ChrisPlatt]

Yeah, those would be my keepers as well if they were cheaper, or lighter. Or both.

The weight difference is negligible in daily use. For the most part the smaller models that followed them were a marketing gimmick. In fact, they are often less ergonomic.

IMO buying what's cheapest is often shortsighted. It's better to spend a bit more to acquire the better, more sustainable - i.e. non-battery dependent and repairable - models.

Chris

[twilhelm]

The weight difference is negligible in daily use. For the most part the smaller models that followed them were a marketing gimmick. In fact, they are often less ergonomic.

IMO buying what's cheapest is often shortsighted. It's better to spend a bit more to acquire the better, more sustainable - i.e. non-battery dependent and repairable - models.

Chris

You make some very good points. I won’t list all the film cameras I own, but being on a two week across the country trip/vacation, my two film cameras in my bag are the LX and K2. I know they’ll work every time I grab them, even when it gets cold here in Montana and North Dakota.

[Mikheil88]

So, let's plug this thread. I've got my hands on two XR-7 cameras. One is a non-working body which is full of spare parts and I can confirm that top and bottom plates are plastic just as shutter speed selector, collar of lens mount, ISO dial and part of rewind crank as well. However, it is also true that there's plenty of metal on behind all that plastic. So all in all it's neither good, nor bad.

Function-wise it's got a lot to offer, AE Lock button is easier to operate than I thought, so is shutter speed dial - I can switch the speeds with single finger without removing my eye from the camera (my primary concern when I was moving away from Olympus OM system). Ergonomics are nice, everything feels in place. LCD is neat, but it'll be dark in low light. Something that I'll have to live with. Shutter sounds like rusty bucket but it's bearable.

There was one "Rikenon P 50 mm f/2" lens included in the pack and I'm surprised how small and good it is. All in all, Ricoh is not Pentax (or at least, was not pentax back then) and build quality leaves me wishing for more, but for 30$ it's not bad at all. I might get XR-P or KR-30P body, slap a "Program" lens onto it and get 15$ profit.

Of course I would like to have K2 or LX or some other major body, but I'd much rather invest in film at this point. Thank you all for your input.

[LesDMess]

Shutter sounds like rusty bucket but it's bearable.

I wonder why that is? This is a short vid of mine . . . Ricoh XR7

[pres589]

My XR-7 maybe sounds a bit more hollow than Les's but it's basically the same.

I've also somehow cracked my rewind lever's knob so be careful with that, somehow, as I don't know how I caused that to happen. At some point I'm going to mod an all metal one from another camera to replace the original one.

The light meter's display is really the biggest drawback to the XR-7, in my opinion. It's worse than the needle display on my old Singlex TLS even though both are non-illuminated. At this point, in really low light, I just guess. Evenings out with the camera, on the street, I just try to grab as much light as I can without showing camera shake.

[Mikheil88]

I wonder why that is? This is a short vid of mine . . . Ricoh XR7

Yep, that's the sound. It's much louder and a bit clunky than Olympus OM-1 or OM-2 which I had in the past. But I think ME Super had roughly the same amount of noise and slap.

I've also somehow cracked my rewind lever's knob so be careful with that, somehow, as I don't know how I caused that to happen. At some point I'm going to mod an all metal one from another camera to replace the original one.

My thought exactly, I'm extra careful while pulling it up to open the film door. I have another one, just in case. And a few other, metal wind levers from other cameras so I should be fine.

The light meter's display is really the biggest drawback to the XR-7, in my opinion. It's worse than the needle display on my old Singlex TLS even though both are non-illuminated. At this point, in really low light, I just guess. Evenings out with the camera, on the street, I just try to grab as much light as I can without showing camera shake.

Definitely a downside, harder to read than a simple matchstick needle of some other cameras. But I'll get used to it. All in all the camera has everything I'd like it to have and I've heard the batteries can last forever in it.

Hm. Interestingly, Rikenon P 50 mm f/2 that came with the bundle is shorter than Pentax's own M series 28 mm f/3.5 and 50 mm f/2 lenses. Almost a pancake.

[LesDMess]

Yep, that's the sound. It's much louder and a bit clunky than Olympus OM-1 or OM-2 which I had in the past. But I think ME Super had roughly the same amount of noise and slap.

That's better then a rusty bucket then . . .

A couple of other shutter sounds for comparison - OM1 and ME Super
These are all auto level sound capture as I haven't quite standardized on the method yet as there are still many factors to address.

---------- Post added 11-24-18 at 12:13 PM ----------

All in all, Ricoh is not Pentax (or at least, was not pentax back then) and build quality leaves me wishing for more, but for 30$ it's not bad at all.

It is interesting to see the Ricoh progression at least in terms of material . . .

[Mikheil88]

It is interesting to see the Ricoh progression at least in terms of material . . .

I've seen those old generation bodies. I guess new times dictated new rules and in order to have competitive price, one had to sacrifice some things. Also, you know how the eighties were, plastic and all.

P.S. You are quite resourceful in terms of photographic, video and audio materials for comparison, which is extraordinary.

[Xmas]

The weight difference is negligible in daily use. For the most part the smaller models that followed them were a marketing gimmick. In fact, they are often less ergonomic.

IMO buying what's cheapest is often shortsighted. It's better to spend a bit more to acquire the better, more sustainable - i.e. non-battery dependent and repairable - models.

Chris

The more things on a camera the less to fail is a reasonable criteria, I don’t need the meter on a K1000...
An S1a or a SV is ok cept for lens change time!

[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

[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.

[Mikheil88]

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.

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.

[pres589]

For night shots I've been working off of what works for me; pushing film to somewhere between EI 1600 and 3200 (results vary) and working off of f1.7 and 1/30th of a second for where to set exposure and f-stop. I can hand-hold pretty well at 1/30th of a second with a 55mm or wider lens so this works for me and I can safely ignore the fact that I cannot actually see the light meter's display.

I paid $51 to have my CE-5 and rattly example of the 50mm f1.9 Chinon lens shipped via ebay (although the seller complained to me that he mis-listed it and I should have been charged more for shipping after having won the auction) I don't feel like he put much effort into packaging the camera for shipment which may have caused one of the cracks in the plastic above the lens mount. I paid something like $65 for my XR7 which came with an Access 28-70 zoom lens, a Ricoh 28-105 "macro" zoom lens, a couple of cheap flashes,and a big camera bag that smelled bad. The XR7 also needed new light seals and mirror damper pad replaced while the CE-5 needed nothing.

I'm hoping to shoot a lot of film in the coming month as part of my latest silly project, "Foma 400 February" and having three film cameras all loaded with Foma 400 should be a hoot.

[Mikheil88]

For night shots I've been working off of what works for me; pushing film to somewhere between EI 1600 and 3200 (results vary) and working off of f1.7 and 1/30th of a second for where to set exposure and f-stop. I can hand-hold pretty well at 1/30th of a second with a 55mm or wider lens so this works for me and I can safely ignore the fact that I cannot actually see the light meter's display.

I paid $51 to have my CE-5 and rattly example of the 50mm f1.9 Chinon lens shipped via ebay (although the seller complained to me that he mis-listed it and I should have been charged more for shipping after having won the auction) I don't feel like he put much effort into packaging the camera for shipment which may have caused one of the cracks in the plastic above the lens mount. I paid something like $65 for my XR7 which came with an Access 28-70 zoom lens, a Ricoh 28-105 "macro" zoom lens, a couple of cheap flashes,and a big camera bag that smelled bad. The XR7 also needed new light seals and mirror damper pad replaced while the CE-5 needed nothing.

I'm hoping to shoot a lot of film in the coming month as part of my latest silly project, "Foma 400 February" and having three film cameras all loaded with Foma 400 should be a hoot.

Happy shooting! I won't be able to try Foma. However, I found a local shop which sells Ilford film at prices lower than online so I'm basically stuck with it (no complains though, FP4+ and Delta 3200 are perfect films for me).

My XR7 cost 30$ with its own Rikenon 50 mm f/2 and a strap. The seller wasn't specialized in photographic gear so I got lucky they had it for cheap. I would have gone for Pentax P30n/t if it had manually selectable ISO and a shutter speed a little slower than 1 second. Those cameras are dirt cheap.

[Astro-Baby]

Mikheil...the price must be something local. I bagged mine off a charity shop and she was very cheap. I have seen a few go theough ebay recentky that looked nice a CM4 went off ebay uk recently at £13 and that was with the motor drive and lens...think it had an extra lens as well. Web pricing does seem country specific and I do see people offering dreadful kit at stupid prices....and getting it.