The A1 is great if you have a fair bit of photographic knowledge & want to get more experience in traditional 35mm film photography. It's not the easiest camera to get to know if you're just starting - although, as long as you can deal with the manual focussing, you can just put it on "auto" & fire away.
Had an A1 for nearly 20 years & put (literally) thousands of film through it. Dragged it all over Europe & bits of the US. Utterly reliable and, with Canon or Vivitar Series 1 lenses, excellent image quality. I Don't use Canon flash - I prefer off-camera units.Multi mode:
Full auto
Shutter priority
Aperture priority
Flash
Aperture override
I've used this camera with 3200 ASA colour film & 2 minute exposures (4 x 30 seconds using multi-exposure!), with the bellows, the 5FPS motor drive (not to be confused with the power winder), 2x converter etc and it always just works perfectly. Using it in extreme cold (20 deg C), keep it under your jacket otherwise the battery stops working... Most accessories are available at good prices now so building up a kit is not too expensive.
Many A1's have been used by Pro's & Semi-Pro's so, when buying secondhand, check that the shutter fires at both low & high speeds & doesn't "buzz" at high speeds - if it does, it's badly worn. Check the lens comes off/goes on cleanly & look for signs of wear on the lens mount. Most A1's were black & it's common for some of that to be worn - don't let it put you off.
Best lens I've used on it - Canon 20mm F2. If you're going where there are mountains, it's fabulous :-)
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) Fold out LCD screen, Image Stabilization, Zuiko lens quality, Picture quality, Flash options (-) Noise in low light, Too many buttons, Badly laid out, Too many gimmicks
Advantages: Big enough for the average user, strong, comfortable to carry, flexible in use. Disadvantages: More than one very long super-telephoto lens would be more difficult to accommodate.
very helpful by (33%):
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