It uses Pentax K mount, which mean there are many reasonable priced lenses available. I got this camera for £12 and described as spare or repair. It was in poor state, but the shutter fired after fitting new batteries. Some of the leatherette were missing. I gave it a good clean up, replaced the light seals, mirror bumper. Also replaced the leatherette with the red vinyl. It looks like a completely different camera. Also managed to get hold of a power winder on eBay bundled with another purchase. You could say it was for free. In the 80s', I always wanted a power winder. It was so cool and professional. Of course, I would not carry one now, it is just too heavy and need another four AA batteries.
The CE5 is quite conventional and innovative at the same time. It can shoot in manual or aperture priority and has a maximum shutter speed of 1/2000s Self timer can be set to 5s or 10s. There is a window on top of the viewfinder to see the aperture selected on the lens. That is a wonderful idea and wondered why not many camera have this feature. The camera does need batteries to operate. It uses tow LR44 batteries inserted from the bottom. The innovation of this camera is the ability to fit auto focus lens on the camera. The three electrical contacts on the top left of the lens mount are for the auto focus lens to connect to the camera. I have never seen any of these lenses anywhere and must be very rare. I have no idea how good they were or how fast.
The handling of the camera is very conventional for SLRs from the 80/90s. Nothing unusual or different. I am a sucker for the under dog and often wondered why no one remembers Chinon. The cameras they made are quite good and quite a lot cheaper than the 1st tier companies like Canon, Nikon and Pentax, etc. What ever the reason, Chinon cameras are very good value now. I would highly recommend picking up one of these cameras for film photography.
I loaded the camera with Kodak ColorPlus 200 film for some street portraits.
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