Does anyone know where I can get hold of a camera 35mm SLR. Starting a photography course and need to get my hands on one asap! Any help greatly appreciated!!

There are always loads on ebay...tend to go cheaply too as most folks want digital versions

I am intrigued. Why do you want to learn photography with a 35mm film camera? That's like learning to make cutlery by knapping flints!

Because learning with digital is like taking the top/cream from a whole 'pint' of milk....

Because learning with digital is like taking the top/cream from a whole 'pint' of milk....

Digital is in no way a shortcut, particularly if you shoot RAW and 'develop' in post-processing. I don't see that you miss out on any of the fundamentals by starting with digital and the speed of feedback is much quicker. Digital also encourages more experimentation, which is generally a good thing.

What in particular have I missed out on by never having used a film camera for anything other than casual snapshots?

Thanks for the advice. I was keen to learn photography as a hobby and tried to enrol on the digital night class at Norton but it was full by the time I got there Instead I did the film course. What is the best way of learing digital. Are these home study courses any good?

Thanks

The fundamentals are the same for film and digital, so most things that you learn for film will be perfectly valid for digital. Many people say that learning with film makes them much more thoughtful about their photography (cost and time of development), which is also useful. However, I love digital because you can go out and shoot, make a load of mistakes, learn a little, erase 99.9% of the images and start again the next day!

You can pick up a lot of information from camera chat sites for free so I have not taken any courses. It would probably be a good idea for me to do this now, as I know my way around the camera and know what sort of images that I would like to make.

If you want to get a digital camera that is as easily manually controllable as a classic film camera, try an Olympus E1. These are available for a couple of hundred quid now but cost thousands when they first came out....cheap luxury!

Good luck,
Pete