what would be a better buy

Pentax K-1000. Completely manual, and excepts K Mount lenses. We use them in out camera club at the university.

Cheers,

X-370 is nice. Affordable but has nice features like easy shutter dial and LED display in the viewfinder. I'd stick with a 50mm lens though.

Look around at some pawnshops in your area. Sometimes they will have camera kits for very cheap.

If you're only going to get one lens, I'd have to go with the Canon you mentioned. A prime lens will be sharper and telephotos in the 80 range make good general purpose/portrait lenses.

The Pentax will have many used and new lenses out there made by several manufacturers and if you decide to buy a better body later on, your lenses will still work.

As for canon, they use a different mount than the current autofocus lenses and as such old canon manual focus lenses will not work on new AF bodies.

AE-1. My dad's been using the same one for more than 15 years, reliable as HELL.

i am still looking around...

i will probably be making a list...thanks for any input on any of these cameras:

is the Chinon CM-4 a DECENT camera for a beginner?

MINOLTA X-370 ?

canon EOS rebel 2000 EF?

I'd stay away from the Rebel. You're not getting much over a manual focus camera, for a little bit more you can get a good AF body like the Elan II, if you want to start with an auto focus setup. The Minolta X series is good. Cheap too.

ok, after long debate- here is what i settled for:

Minolta X-370 35mm Camera. 50mm Minolta lens. 80-205mm Beston lens with Hoya filter. 28mm Beston lens

thanks for all your help!