I still have my first Praktica - A Nova 1B, still got it, as it still works, Got it in 1972, the lens a 50mm 2.8 Domiplan as use it in High School - City College, and Then Got myself a Nikkormat and the rest is History with Nikon Gear, My Nova Ib now sits next to my Dad's Contax IIa as a Memorial in a display case, as for the Nova 1b that the person that sold it to me began to be my Co-worker til he passed away in 1991. Both Camera Bodies Made in Germany a Truly Quality Craftsmanship to Photography Both made by Zeiss, and Zeiss Jena. Good Video...

I would like to mention the Yashica tl electro x its a mechanical slr with M42 mount. Thank you for covering the real budget options. I'm pretty sure it's helping a lot of people who are trying to get into film photography.

I like manual and mechanical cameras best. Some favorites. Nikomat/Nikkormat FTn (poor man's F), Nikon FE/FM, Minolta SR-T 101, Minolta XG series, Pentax KM, KX, in K-Mount. I like Pentax Spotmatic and Spotmatic F for Pentax-Praktica screwmount.

Nice line up! Great to know that there are many options out there for when I grow past my ae1 for whatever reason. Until then, finding cool, good condition glass is the tricky bit. Great vid!

Having grown up though the era when these cameras were sold new, I'll report my agreement with all except the Mamiya Sekor 100DL. Mamiya at that time was in the business of building middle-cheap cameras for other businesses to rebrand as their own models. This and it's cheaper "500" version were Mamiya's effort to launch itself as a major brand. These are not the robust cameras like the Spotmatics. Most of them are already long gone. However, they do have an attractive feature which was the selling point when new: the have a dual coverage TTL meter, offering both center-weighted full area coverage plus a spot metering option. Only SLR cameras of their day with that feature. On build quality, some years ago a client gave me her deceased husband's 1000DL. I cut open my finger on the back edge when I opened it .Practically unfinished, just raw edge metal. If you are heading for Nikon (my experience), buy a nice little FG with 50mm (real Nikkor, not the SEries E version). Not the EM or FG-20. Not the later 2000/3000 models, which were all made by "Not-Nikon" in some SE Asia jungle.

Minolta X-300 is in M42 mount? 😱 Ok, ok, I'll believe it's been a typo... I still have the Minolta srT303, a bit more advanced camera than the 101 variant, that my father bought in 1974, and I watched him unbox that thing. No CLE or any other service in all those times, but it still runs like a clock. Just the replacement battery for the light meter are hard to find these days. Still, highly recommended. Pentax K1000 is a good camera, and it had crazy production run (so there's a lot of them) course it was made predominantly for the students and schools, but it wasn't the Pentax's best, in fact, it was a dumbed down version of the Pentax KX I believe... I had the Nikon F-301. And as idiot as I am, I sold it. But note, it uses AAA, not the AA batteries.

thank you, but im having a hard time finding these cameras for the price ranges you listed

I was thinking of spotmatic or SRT101 also SP1000 and SP is the only difference the self timer?