The sweet spot for home turntable enthusiasts on a budget seems to be the $200 mark. This might be the best of the bunch.
One can only imagine the sake-fueled club hopping that led to the development of the Seiko Frequency drum machine watch.
Bell & Howell Filmosonic XL Super 8 Camera
By bohus
We love talking about super 8 film cameras here on Retro Thing, and usually we talk about the now rare high end cameras that were expensive even in their day. There were a number of mid-level movie cameras too, and these are a heck of a lot easier to find these days!
Bell & Howell issued this Filmosonic XL camera in 1974. Inside the box is a camera that's ready for a plug-in microphone to record audio along with sound on special Super 8 carts. Super 8 sound cartridges are long gone, but the camera is still a good affordable basic unit even today. The "XL" is short for "existing light" - it's shutter is suited to filming indoors without photofloods. It also uses regular batteries - sometimes cameras use exotic batteries that have been unavailable for years to power the light meter.
I got this setup for under ten dollars - truthfully I was attracted to the highly 70's art on the front cover, but I wouldn't hesitate to run some film through this cam. It may not have the image quality and control that a sweet Canon 1014 XL-S offers, but with this camera you'll have a few hundred dollars left over for film!
