If I had £1 for every time I’d written the word value in the title of this post, I’d have enough to buy an EOS 300. We are talking about some seriously bargainous film photography goodness here. Some time ago I wrote about the best value film cameras available today and I concluded that if money was the number one deciding factor and you wanted the most capable film SLR whilst paying almost nothing, then the EOS 300 is it.
The EOS 300 range were the final budget, entry level film SLR’s ever made by Canon. The original 300 was followed by the vastly different 300V and 300X, which are both brilliant cameras in their own right, but sadly sell for far more money now than the plain old 300. Canon had established an almost immovable foothold in the bottom end of the market ever since the introduction of the 1000F in 1990 and they just kept following this up with hit after budget hit. First with the 500, then 500n and finally the 300. Each sold in droves and saw thousands take their first steps into SLR film photography.
Today, I’d argue that their role is as important now as it was then in bringing people in to the world of film photography for the first time. I’ve made bold claims about the 300 and so it seemed only right that I put my money where my mouth is and gave it a proper run out. Let’s see if this really does deserve to be crowned the Budget King.
In this post:
To kit or not to kit?
It’s very easy to get carried away with how cheap certain cameras are, however if you really are just starting out in film photography then you probably don’t have a lens. This can often add considerably to the total cost of getting started. The good news is that the EOS 300 was almost always sold as a kit with a zoom lens (probably a 28-80 or similar). Consequently, you can still often pick them up today as complete boxed kits with a lens. Having just scanned eBay, there are some for sale now in as new condition, in their original kit box for around the £10 mark.
I purchased mine quite some time back whilst looking for other things and paid a penny shy of £10 for camera, strap and Sigma lens. Sigma lenses do not seem to age as well as Canon originals as Sigma used that horrible rubberised coating which over time degrades to a disgusting sticky goo which can only be removed with copious amounts of Isopropyl Alcohol and a lot of patience. This Sigma lens was no different, but it scrubbed up reasonably well with some patience and still worked. Arguably the lens is worth more than the camera at todays market rates.
If you then factor in the price of a film – £5 for black and white or £10 for a roll of colour then you’re ready to shoot for £20. If you shot black and white then you might even squeeze in development too, spending roughly £25 all in for a camera, lens, film and developed negatives. That’s the same price as a single large pizza from Dominos or a very small round of drinks in the pub.
Of course, there are always chancers on eBay who will try and charge £75 for this camera. In a brilliant display of lunacy, the local charity shop have been trying to shift one for £110 for the last six months without any luck. I cannot possibly think why. It goes without saying, don’t be tempted into paying anything like that kind of money for what was and still is an entry level camera. Having kept an eye on some recent auctions, the following happened within a day of looking for potential best buys:
So it’s safe to say the chances of you picking one up for next to nothing is still very, very strong. This begs the question, if these cameras are such good value, then why does it seem like no one wants one? Honestly? I don’t know. I can only guess that a number of factors are at play – buyers are willing to pay higher prices for better models, the EOS 300 may be considered too new for some people looking for the retro feeling when buying a camera and ultimately, entry level was never really cool, was it? Having said all that, the quality of entry level cameras in the 1990’s certainly feels a lot better than the landfill tech that is pumped out to consumers today.
Glass is everything
The EOS 300 is a surprisingly well specified camera and it needed to be. When it came out, film camera technology was very mature and groundbreaking developments were few and far between. Furthermore, competition was really hot between the “big two” of Nikon and Canon, with Minolta and others firing out very decent contenders too. Buyers at the bottom end were being treated to incremental gains from flagship advances in autofocus points, focus speed, metering modes and film advance speed. The only thing the EOS 300 does not have is a continuous shooting speed that will remove your socks for you, at 1.5fps it’s nothing more than OK, but then it never was a sports/action camera and today as I’ve discussed countless times you’d have to be bonkers to use 5, 8 or 10 fps on a film camera unless you particularly like spending large sums of money.
On release, Canon were proud to announce that the EOS 300 had an auto focus system that was as good as, or better than, that found on the much more expensive EOS 50, along with a vastly improved 35 zone metering system. The overall size of the body had reduced and plastic ruled the roost in an effort to save both weight and money. Build quality is good and doesn’t leave anything to be desired unless you’re in the habit of using your camera as a football. Magazine reviewers at the time had come to accept plastic lens mounts, but were still skeptical as to their robustness in the long term. I think we can easily conclude that the fears of plastic cameras longevity were premature to say the least. The only worry I do have in terms of longevity is the battery door, this is very plasticy and has a thin clip which holds a fair bit of tension from the battery terminals.
But does any of this really matter? No of course not. As I’ve repeated time and time again, you will not get better image quality with a top of the range EOS 1 than you will with the EOS 300, it is purely the lens used which dictates how good your final negative looks. As long as you are comfortable with the relatively compact nature of the camera then there is very little else you could wish for in a camera that a photographer really needs. All the modes are here, exposure compensation, full manual should you need it and a range of program settings – it’s a great little package.
The fact that this camera is so absurdly cheap allows you to focus on saving money for what’s really important – lenses. If you commit to a system like the Canon EF range, then you’ve all the options you could ever desire at your disposal. Better yet, since Canon moved on to RF lenses and committed themselves to mirrorless cameras, EF lenses are now very slowly starting to fall in price as people trade in their old gear for new kit. This is fantastic for film and digital photographers alike as you can now have a hope of saving up enough for the professional L grade lenses which will give you the finest image quality available. Just because a lens system is now depreciated certainly does not mean that image quality somehow degrades too. For film photography, an L lens is the dream and with options like the landscape oriented 17-40 F4 L now retailing for around £350 that might, just might be in the realms of reality for the budget photographer.
I do understand that I’m trying to justify buying the cheapest camera in the world and keeping a budget to an absolute minimum, but it does make sense to see what the camera can do given the chance. So, I strapped the most expensive lens I own to the EOS 300 in the shape of a 24-105 F4 L for the majority of shots I took during this test – total overkill for a budget camera, but fun nonetheless. The image quality with ISO 100 film is absolutely astounding, and that is with my crap flatbed scanning set up.
For balance, and to get the true kit experience I did use a very cheap and old EF 35-80 F4-5.6 kit lens and also a 50mm F1.4 for a few shots. Interestingly, auto focus was noticeably and significantly better with the 24-105 lens than any other I used, there was a tangible difference in how quickly and accurately focus was achieved. The only problem with this is that using an L lens with a £3 camera is about as absurd as it gets and completely blows the idea of photography on a budget clean out of the water. Bugger.
Do you really need more?
Down to business, then. Is this really all the camera you could ever need for less than the price of a pint of beer? Yes. I think it really is.
There’s definitely going to be some personal preference which will be a factor in whether you personally agree or not. The compact design is love or hate for many people, personally I think it falls just on the right side of acceptable but I can see why Canon worked on ergonomics for the later 300V and 300X models with their twisty grips. Unlike the much later 350D which has the worst grip of any camera I’ve ever used, the EOS 300 retains a wide enough grip to still feel stable in the hand although it is definitely a two finger grip with your little finger naturally resting underneath the camera body. Coupled with the fact the camera weighs next to nothing, it rarely feels insecure in the hand.
With heavier lenses, the EOS 300 does become something of an accessory to the lens. It’s quite funny when a big lens is bolted to it as the body just hangs off the end of the lens. This isn’t to say that using larger lenses is difficult, it just looks odd, however the camera is definitely more perfectly balanced with a cheap, light zoom or a 50mm prime.
Regardless of lens used, the EOS 300 has decent auto focus performance in the context of a 25 year old bottom of the range SLR, but it does have that one frustration that is shared across cheaper Canon’s of that age and that is a lack of auto focus confirmation inside the AF points in the viewfinder. You do get a little green diagram in the viewfinder which shows the auto focus points the camera has used and this is definitely better than nothing, but less intuitive than the little flashing red dots we became used to in later or better specified cameras of the time.
Other than ergonomic preference and the lack of little flashing red dots I really cannot level any other criticism at this camera. The metering is brilliant in a variety of situations and for times when you might not trust it, there’s a built in bracketing function should you need it. I shot a roll of film using a mixture of aperture priority when I wanted more control and program mode for everything else and it produced one single frame which hadn’t metered as I’d expected. In the frame above, shot in program mode, you can see it coped with a range of shadows and highlights whilst still exposing correctly for the subject in the centre. I have no complaints here.
The EOS 300 gives you enough control when you need it. In some lower end cameras things like DX coding override were left out, which is frustrating when you want to push a film or that it simply doesn’t have a DX code (which was the case with a batch of Foma Pan I bought recently). Fortunately, Canon fitted an ISO option to the control dial and you can change it from the automatic setting whenever you like. If you feel like being creative there’s also a readily accessible multiple exposure setting which will let you take up to 9 exposures on the same frame. Why you’d want to do that is beyond my abilities as a photographer, however!
Finally, there’s the little things that are nice to have such as a dedicated depth of field preview button. This is something that photography magazines used to blow a fuse over in the 80’s and 90’s, it was seen as an absolutely essential and basic tool. I think it speaks volumes as to my experience as a photographer that I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve made use of DOF preview – but it’s there if you need it. There’s also another Canon standard in the exposure and focus lock buttons on the rear of the camera. The only thing missing that some Canon users might miss is the second “quick control dial” on the film door, but honestly on a film camera I use this so little that I didn’t miss it at all. It makes sense on a digital camera, less so on film cameras.
Conclusions
There can be no arguments, the Canon EOS 300 is stunning value for money.
Compared to earlier models, the AF is improved, the metering is brilliant and the compact design makes it a great camera for photo walks. It’s the absolute sweet spot of entry level film SLR cameras and I honestly do not know what else a photographer could possibly need in a camera that the EOS 300 does not provide.
I claimed previously that this is the ultimate budget film camera and I stand by that wholeheartedly after spending an extended period of time taking one out and about. Of course, you might get lucky and land an EOS 1 for a fiver, but if your goal is to try out film photography or you are student for example, trying to get into film for the first time then I think your search is over – this is it. Buy one.
Lenses are always going to be your problem when trying to keep the price down but the performance and image quality high. There’s no escaping the fact that lenses retain their value and often do so far better than the bodies they are attached to. This is for a good reason – nearly all of your image quality comes from the quality of glass you use. Certainly, the film and scanner you use all come in to the mix, but a poor negative will always be a poor negative regardless of whether you use an iPhone on a light box or a professional negative scanner.
There are ways of keeping costs down when it comes to buying lenses. Accepting blemishes, scratches and so forth will definitely keep the cost down and whilst not desirable, it is surprising how bad a lens can be before you notice it in the final image. I recently bought an EF 50mm F1.8 Mark 1 which had absolutely horrific fungus on the rear element. This was beyond repair but you’d be hard pushed to notice in the pictures taken that there was anything wrong with it unless you knew what you were looking for. Images taken with this fungal mess are just ever so slightly softer and have less saturation than those taken with a perfect copy. Quite remarkable, really.
If you buy an EOS 300 with any of the various kit lenses then you’ve got a great set up which will be adaptable to a variety of situations. The frustration will be that the wide end is never quite wide enough and the long end doesn’t have the reach you’d wish for. Having said that, a short zoom lens gives you great flexibility and will help you to discover focal lengths that work for you should you decide to invest more heavily in the future. One thing remains true, though, and that is the EOS 300 will still be a good enough camera for you when you do upgrade lenses and unless you’re really unhappy with it for some reason or need super fast auto focus, you’re not going to need a new body any time soon.
What a brilliant, brilliant camera this is.
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