A couple of days ago a customer of mine came along with his camera kit and offered it to me for the "derisory" offer that he had received for it as a part exchange. So, for £20 he offered me a Yashica FRI, FRII, 50mm lens, 135mm lens, ring flash, filters, Yashica winder and all the bits and pieces that went with it. Obviously I couldn't refuse, but the relevant point here is manufacturing quality. The kit is very well made, but actually not a patch on the Pentax standards.
Think of Pentax and the superb finish, the silky smooth controls, the superb focusing movement on the (manual) lenses, even the relative consistency of the filter sizes for various lenses.
The Yashica has 52mm filters for the 50mm and 55mm for the 135mm - very inconvenient - and the lens construction is stiff and more on a par with independent lenses of the day. The bodies are heavy, bulky and have a very laborious method for switching on the metering. Still, a good £20 worth.
So for those who have experience of other makes than Pentax, how do you think the quality compares?
I'd be very interested to see some opinions.

The only reason is where the visualised picture suits a panoramic format - it saves masking down a slide with aluminium foil!

I agree with Stephen - the MZ5n does almost everything the MZ3 does.
As you are taking slides, the panoramic feature of both these models could be very useful. I am not sure that the MZ-S continues with this feature. I also like the conventional shutter speed dials of the 5n/3 models and I can confirm that both of these cameras operate smoothly and efficiently.
Finally, the SLRs mentioned are so small and light I can't see any advantage to using any "compact". SLR viewing for transparencies has to win every time!
A general advantage of all Pentax SLRs is that you can use all lenses going back as far as the screw-thread Spotmatic, and there are some terrific bargains to be had in the second hand lens market. I use quite a few of the M series lenses, and they are superb.

(Edited by johnriley at 3:02 pm on April 6, 2002)

If you mean by repeating lens a multi-image attachment, this is a filter type that can be found in the Cokin range and others. The fish eye effect can be reproduced relatively cheaply with one of the fish eye attachments that screw into the filter thread - they give an ultra-wide effect with a standard lens and a fish-eye effect with a wide angle. A 24mm lens is a faily wide wide angle, but not usually a macro lens - macro lenses would typically be 50mm or 100mm - the latter is better in many ways because it gives more working room.
If you think joining a Photo Society would help your learning curve why not have a look at our web site
www.adaps.org.uk and if you want more info contact me
[email protected] Our society is in Atherton, Manchester.
Finally, it might be useful for you to attand a camera fair where you could find a lot of the items you need at lower prices. AP carries adverts for most of the fairs.