Yes, I am shilling my own bags here as biz would have said it. Why you might ask? Well I am glad you asked.
>Normies and hipsters don't know about Konica yet
>Copal shutter that works without battery
>Looks cool
>Often bundled with excellent glass (50mm F1.7, 40mm F1.8, 28mm F3.5)
>Readily available
>Sellers don't know how to check for functionality, lots of them on the market as "for parts" bundled with easily serviceable glass that makes it a low risk. Usually it is just a battery change that is needed, perhaps a spray with contact cleaner in the battery compartment.
>Can swap leatherette for bright colors thus making them more appealing for women
I feel like they are underrated for what they are compared to other cameras of the era that are often riddled with common faults such as the Olympus OM-1 for instance with its foam that disintegrates in the viewfinder causing black spots that needs complicated servicing to fix. Then there is the AE-1 which is reliant on the electronics to work in order to fire and lots of those are kicking the bucket as we speak etc.
I may have overlooked something, but I am a retard after all. Feel free to point out flaws in my reasoning.

>>4442695 (OP)
The flaw in your reasoning is that a 15 dollar F65 beats the living shit out of it and all its contemporaries

>>4442695 (OP)
konica cameras do look neat, but i see little point in getting into the system for anyone that already is into canon/nikon etc. visually all silver box SLRs look similar and functionally there isn't really anything found in konica thatt other brands don't have. However i do own the original autoreflex for the unique ability to provide half-frame and full-frame photos on the same roll. it's actually pretty cool. I don't use it much cause the rewind lever is an overengineered mess using gears and cams and in its history someone ground the teeth off the main brass gear. not sure why they didn't just make the post come out all the way and put a knob on that like other cameras do.

>>4442695 (OP)
All film cameras will go up in value. Simple economics. People still buy film and still shoot with it so there is a demand for film cameras. Film cameras aren't made anymore and every year more of them break, get lost or are thrown away meaning the supply is slowly falling.

>>4442701
Although I agree that this and similar cameras (excluding Pentax from this era) is what to get if you want to mess around with film you are still talking about a 2001 plastic autofocus camera vs a 1976 fully manual one. Aesthetics plays a huge part in all of this and also the experience. Doesn't matter that the Naycon is a technically better camera.

>>4442724
Just get a silver one. Only experienced hipsters (so no one important) can tell.

If being authentic enough for hipsters mattered fuji wouldn't sell jack shit.

>>4442695 (OP)
>Then there is the AE-1 which is reliant on the electronics to work in order to fire and lots of those are kicking the bucket as we speak etc.
The reason AE-1's have the positive reputation they have is because they last so well. There are two cameras that are *generally* recommended to students, one is the AE1, the other the Spotmatic. If you want something mechanical to compete with the AE1, the answer is the Spotmatic. There are millions of them, they're basically all the same except for the ES, and most importantly, they're actually really well made with tight tolerances with an extremely long and tested development history that goes back to the original AP. There's heaps of spare parts and they're cheap. These Konicas are none of those things, and you would need some kind of social media psyop to turn public opinion otherwise. Konica made cheap cameras for poor people who didn't really care. They also use a stupid lens mount that's hard to find glass for, compared the M42 which has heaps and heaps of glass, including stuff like the helios. In conclusion, shutup.

>>4442695 (OP)
the issue is that them going up in value relies mostly on current meme trend. reliable SLR is not going to be the thing since technical capabilites are of little value to normies. should've stocked up on digicams 15 years ago

>>4442784
The latest trend with buying digital is only 2-3 years in the making. Nobody wanted these things before that, nobody. Even during covid nobody gave a flying rodents rear end. Film has had an allure longer than that, sure they may have moved slower previously but there was always a supply of autistic boomers who had to have this and that, but it could just be a temporary thing which will delegate them to fancy paperweights again for sure.
>>4442767
Implying the FD mount isn't equally as cumbersome. I think the majority who buys film cameras these days, that is to say younger people wanting to shoot film don't really care about much other than getting a cool looking, functional camera. I don't think they even consider the focal length of whatever lens is attached to the cameras they purchase. The emerging market is a completely different demographic than student photographers.

>>4442695 (OP)
I had a similar thought process.

The same deal with the Contax SLRs. nobody knows about them but they are very much legitimate options and way better than an AE-1.

It's only due to the fact that they weren't widely adopted means there isn't much of a history or story to them. And contax is a dormant brand, too.

>>4442801
>contax is a dormant brand
nah, contax slrs are way expensive on ebay compared to other brands. normies and zoomies may not know but boomers know it and trade in it.

>>4442819
Expensive in what fashion? They are around $100, which I think is perfectly reasonable.

>>4442801
Does have the benefit of being a more known brand too due to the T and G series of cameras, but compared to Konica they are expensive.

>>4442821
>compared to Konica they are expensive
I mean not really. If you want to buy from seller that actually tests their things, than no.

>>4442787
>Implying the FD mount isn't equally as cumbersome
No it isn't, the AE1 was one of the best selling SLR's of all time. And even though FD lenses are abundant than F mount or m42, they're still way more abundant than Konica's lenses, and more importantly, they're a lot better.

>>4442827
>they're a lot better.
Even if that was true the target audience does not give a damn about pixelpeeping in the corners wide open or whatever the internet has decided constitutes good bokeh etc. You make the mistake of thinking a first time "hey this film camera thing looks cool" buyer is as autistic as you.

>>4442767
>They also use a stupid lens mount that's hard to find glass for, compared the M42.

you can find plenty of AR Mount lenses, both from Konica and off-brands. there is also an adaptor from M42 to AR, which means you can use whatever lens you want. You can't the other way around because of the flange distance. I actually started photography with a cheap Konica C35 and quickly bought the Autoreflex T. They are sturdy pieces of equipment. The Autoreflex TC seems more plastic and it doesn't help that it only goes down to 1/8 before bulb, but it feels great in the hand since it's lighter than the T.
pic related is shot with the TC and the 40mm lens and fuji 400.

>>4442951
with the T, 52mm lens and Lomo Metropolis

>>4442952
and the C35 (I think it has a 38mm lens) with Lomo Color Negative 100 film

>>4442953
and lastly this was shot with the T, with a russian MIR 37mm lens + 2X Teleconvertor (M42 mount with adaptor) and Agfa APX 100. I developed it at home so some dust is present

I recently repaired a T3n; I also quite like the lineup from Konica. The glass is cheap (except for the 85mm and 57mm), and there are even adaptors for other lens mounts due to the short flange focal distance. Good luck finding those though, I had to search forever to get a Nikon F adaptor at a reasonable price. Another annoyance is needing to modify the electronics to work with modern silver oxide batteries, since you need a way to drop the voltage by precisely 0.4v. I used two diodes in series.

Here is a middling shot on said T3n, 57mm f1.2, Harman Phoenix 200 push processed two stops. Exposure was for 500 ISO TTL metering, don’t recall what that worked out to.

>>4444007
>Another annoyance is needing to modify the electronics to work with modern silver oxide batteries, since you need a way to drop the voltage by precisely 0.4v.
i find this concern to be largely overblown. just adjust accordingly and the discharge curve will keep you around where you need to be, unless you're heavily using the camera like daily or putting many rolls through it. Not to say the voltage doesn't vary or affect the meters, but there's so much lattitude in modern film stocks that you can easily compensate a stop above or below. preferably above though.

>>4444007
>I recently repaired a T3n
How do you go about repairing these?

>>4444027
This isn’t an unfair take - you can also adjust the meter to be relatively close across the metering range at silver oxide battery voltages. That said, it’s also a really easy modification, pic related. Those are the diodes soldered on with a tiny bit of kapton tape to protect them.

>>4444030
An ungodly amount of digging for manuals and reports of other people repairing them. I wouldn’t recommend it, and I dread doing it because these cameras are hellish inside. I mean, there are multiple pulley systems inside the T3 that route throughout the camera, and you have to take an obscene amount of it apart to get to anything. The full list of fixes I did to mine was:
1. Repair a lever that was disconnected related to closing the aperture.
2. Swap the ground glass focal plane for a split image.
3. Swap the prism for a nicer one since the original was desilvering.
4. Add diodes for dropping the voltage of silver oxide batteries.
5. Replace all the light seals and mirror buffers.

>>4444033
I have a Minolta SRT that jammed and I tried to fix it, but I lack the understanding of how these cameras work to be able to do so.

I feel like it would be an easy fix, like a mechanical linkage somehow didn't function like it was supposed to when winding and now it is jammed.

>>4444034
There are still shops that will work on film cameras, you might be able to get it repaired?

If you need a battery to use it why does it matter if the shutter doesn't use it

>>4444037
TTL metering.

>>4442952
I like this shot

>>4444033
>An ungodly amount of digging for manuals and reports of other people repairing them.
i always eventually stumble across some thai/vietnamese or something who disassembled the whole thing 12 years ago, shot it on a potato phone, and either has no sound or constant irritating sound in their workshop lol. Had to find an obscure video of a guy tearing down an autorex/auto-reflex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZINh9AhfE) to find out how to take it apart. only to find out my rewind gears are fucked. Once you see the hidden fasteners and such its much easier, but hard tto find them all the firstt time, ya know?
>>4444034
it's very tricky at first but once you see it a few times it startts to make sense, mechanical curtain shutters and such generally follow the same principle.

>>4444042
Tempted to watch this just to find out how that full frame to half frame toggle works…

>>4444035
I don't think it's worth while desu. I will probably buy a new one if I want to shoot with an SLR of this vintage again.

>>4444042
this is an interesting channel. never seen it before.