I have several working cameras from the 40's and 50's and two fantastic Pentax cameras from the 60's and 70's respectively. The newer Pentax is a K1000 that I've had completely refurbished and it works like it just came out of the box.

Yup. My Cannon AE-1 from the mid-70s still works great, including the (relatively primitive) electronics. And the lenses are outstanding (I still haven't forgiven Cannon for obsoleting the FD mount pre-digital...lots of money went into that lens collection). It could probably use a light refurb, but all the camera repair shops I know closed years ago.

Unfortunately, I got out of the 'habit' of taking pictures with it because it's so much less convenient and the alternatives are 'good enough' for this rank amateur. I do occasionally look at photos I took with it and realize how much I've replaced quality with quantity. The Cannon required a certain amount of thought for each picture, whereas now we just take 50 pix with the cell phone and share out the one we think looks best.

I really like the "slowness" of the old way of taking pictures. The results are better. Really I stopped because film is so anachronistic and expensive / inconvenient to deal with. I have a DSLR that's decent but it's still not the same.