You may be thinking to yourself this is impossible, or that you'd be buying a bunch of junk at that price. However it is actually very easy to get into shooting film at very low cost. Since decades of development went into film photography and the technology was almost completely abandoned, there is an abundance of high quality equipment selling for an affordable amount of money. Now I know many people will be thinking of Leica and Hasselblad when they hear film photography and these are very expensive, but you have to remember, that there were many more manufacturers producing cameras in the 70's and 80's than there are today. Many cameras where designed with amateurs in mind and they can be had for very little money nowadays.

What to look out for

The most important thing to look out for with any camera purchase -be it digital or analogue- is what ecosystem you are buying into. Every camera manufacturer has their own set of lenses and accessories, that are usually hard or impossible to transfer from one brand to another. This is why it is crucial to research how scalable and diverse the particular ecosystem is. It's is important to make sure, that the high-end products are compatible with the low-end and that there is a wide selection, particularly of lenses, in all price categories. Further, it's important to remember that this equipment has been around for decades and will have seen some wear and tear. If you are buying your equipment in person, ensure that the light seal is in good order. This is a small strip of foam above the mirror and around the backplate of the camera, that will degrade after about 10 years and turn sticky, resulting in the mirror sticking to the body and light creeping in through the gap destroying your photos. Additionally, you should ensure the camera's action is snappy and responsive and the dials work correctly.
As far as lenses are concerned you should make sure they are clean, free of scratches and have no signs of fungus. If buying online it's important the seller has posted high-quality images of these critical areas and assures that the camera is in proper working order. The seller should also respond promptly to any enquiries about the state of the camera and be willing to provide extra information and pictures.

Typical light seal areas. This image is not my original content. The source can be found here!

Some recommendations

Nikon or Pentax users can easily pick up an old 35mm body and use F-mount or K-mount lenses respectively, as the lens mount hasn't changed and remains compatible. This gives people who own those specific brands of digital cameras an easy entry into film photography. The other side of the coin would be brands such as Canon, who abandoned the FD-mount when they switched the entire ecosystem to EF-mount. The advantage of this is that a lot of FD-equipment can be had for a song, but the tradeoff is no upwards scalability. This doesn't necessarily have to a problem though, as the FD ecosystem is so massive, that pretty much every need can be fulfilled within it. Finally the same applies to the Contax/Yashica ecosystem. This is my personal choice (I am biased here), as it allows both for an easy entry with the cheaper Yashica equipment (which can be had for peanuts) and massive scalability, as the top of the range lenses were made by Carl Zeiss, who have proven to make some of the best optical equipment in the history of photography.
For this reason, my personal pick for a cheap and easy entry would be a Yashica FX-3, which can be had for less than 50$. A solid second choice would probably be the Canon AE-1 at just under 100$ and coming in third would be the Pentax K1000, which sells slightly above 100$, but can be found at bargain prices from time to time.

The Yashica FX-3. Nothing particularly spectacular, but it get's the job done and doesn't rely on batteries. It's also very lightweight. This makes it an ideal little companion in rougher conditions and should it get lost or damaged it's cheap to replace.

35mm Film

Film can be ordered online and there are many developing services that allow you to send in your exposed rolls of film by post. Ideally, you should find a local store that both sells film and does their processing locally, to ensure you have somebody to give you advice as you get started and reduce the time it takes to receive your negatives. As far as a breakdown of different types of film goes, I will have to leave that for another post. For now, you should focus on either Colour or B&W film with an ISO value between 100 and 400. Personally, I would be looking at things along the lines of Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 (Colour) and Ilford HP5 Plus ISO 400 (B&W).

I would consider this the low end of my film collection. I like to have a wide selection at all times and will need to stock up some more colour and slide film soon. This is part of the beauty of analogue photography, you get to switch things up and play around with different types of film.

Measuring light

Finally, you will require a light meter. Some cameras have integrated light meters, but I highly recommend buying an external light meter and learning how to use it properly. They start at about 20$ and are vastly superior to integrated solutions.
Light meters are essential to analogue photography, as you cannot take test shots to see if your settings are correct. An accurate light meter will save you a lot of money and the painful experience of discovering your entire roll was over- or underexposed and those photos are lost forever. The light meter helps you identify the optimal settings for your camera with your chosen film, thus giving you a baseline to work with.

My personal collection

90% of my collection is made up of C/Y equipment and Carl Zeiss glass. I firmly believe the C/Y system is one of the most undervalued ecosystems in photography, as Contax effectively ceased to exist in the digital age and has largely been forgotten. However, the combination of high-quality Japanese camera bodies and exquisite German lens making come together to produce some outstanding equipment, with a wide variety of accessories to fulfill every need possible. Additionally, I have used my Carl Zeiss lenses on a number digital cameras with appropriate adapters, including Canon, Olympus and now Fujifilm.

Currently in a state of reorganization. The basic cameras and lenses have all been more or less organized. The next step is sorting through boxes of filters.

Click this if you missed the Introduction to Film Photography!

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