Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Old cameras like this are never going to produce images that look like those from high-resolution digital cameras and that is okay.  What they do produce is a unique look and a thoughtful photographic experience.  This begins with the exposure, without any light meter it is up to the photographer to use some other tool or experience to determine the proper shutter and aperture.  One check towards slowing down and thinking.  The next is focusing, the camera does have a rangefinder but it isn’t coupled to the lens so after using the rangefinder to determine the distance the photographer then needs to transfer that to the lens.  Two checks towards thinking about what you’re doing.  Finally there is the framing through the square viewfinder, while the viewfinder itself is not particularly great the need to think about the image in terms of a square is and is a third reason to slow down and think.  The last half reason is the limited range of shutter speeds available.   I think it all makes for an enjoyable experience.

It’s hard to say exactly what happened with this film because I have no idea what kind of film it was. Sure it was in a Konica roll but it was pretty evident that it had been re-rolled into it. The clues were that it appeared to be black and white film in a c41 process canister and that the leader looked like it was hand cut with pinking shears. So Right from the start it was an iffy proposition. I believe I shot it as if it were ISO 400 but it could easily have been a ISO 100 film who knows. There is some under exposure in that. I also shot it mostly at night under artificial light that’s not going to help things. And finally not knowing what film it was my friend took an educated guess at the developing but it looks like it might be under developed. All this resulted in such faint images on the film that you couldn’t discern if there was an image or not. Thanks to my Epson V700 though I was able to at least get enough of a few images to jog my memory of shooting that night.  I seem to remember using a Pentax Spotmatic or K1000 but they are innocent in all this, its my willingness to try to take a picture with anything that is to blame.

It was a last-minute decision to go inside a thrift store as I drove by on my way home from the library my front seat so laden with photography books the airbag system  probably registered there was an adult sitting there.  I had been in that store before never finding any cameras that I really wanted or felt I needed.  This time though I came across a great looking Olympus Stylus Epic.  My new find in hand I went over to the glass counter to see if there were any more  to be had.  As I waited for someone to assist me a gentleman walked up nearby I could see he too had a camera he was going to purchase.  It had that champagne colour that screams ‘this is from another decade past’  I thought poor fellow he has a Minolta Big Finder or something similar while I have an Epic. I guess he saw my camera too because he came over to say hello and we exchanged the secret handshake that only camera collectors know.  I could see besides his nice jacket and carefully chosen glasses he had a well-worn canvas camera bag and it was then that I also saw that it wasn’t some 1990’s cast away camera he had but a Yashica T4 super. A desirable model of camera which I had never seen in person before.  I must have been extremely excited because after we determined that we knew of each others blogs and shared an interest in cameras he handed me the Yashica with a ‘I want you to have this’  I think I was beaming  the entire way home. And that is why cameras and photography make you a good person.  (Okay I don’t actually have proof of that but it does prove that JJ Lee is a nice person)

JJ Lee is a writer and radio host his photography related blog can be seen here The Shutter Goes Click

So now I have a Yashica T, T2 and T3 and to finish it off the Yashica T4 Super Weatherproof all fitted with their fantastic Carl Zeiss lenses.  I can hardly wait to start shooting with my new camera.

What happens when you accidentally leave that little switch on the P on that cheap point and shoot film camera?

It wasn’t until I received my developed film that I realized that the little 28mm f3.5 lensed Nikon AF600 I had been using was set to panoramic mode for most of the roll.  Through sheer luck or questionable compositions of putting the main subject in the center of the frame some of the images actually looked alright.

When the camera wasn’t set to panoramic mode it actually equated itself well photographically at least in the center of the frame.  But like a room that hasn’t been vacuumed in a while it’s probably best not to look in the corners.

The Pentax Q has a tiny little mouse dropping of a sensor, 1/2.3″ (a measurement as clear in information as liters/100km would be to a horse that just found out he had one horespower)   What it means though is that it only has about 1/30 of the surface area of a 35mm film frame.  If you want to equate the field of views between those two disparate sizes while using the same lens you need to multiply the focal length by 5.6 on the Q.  In this case the DA 40 XS would wind up being the equivalent of a 224mm f2.8 lens on 35mm film.    And that is what makes this a neat little combination, it functions like a close focus telephoto and because the lens is so thin it fits the little camera nicely.  Another benefit of the small sensor is that it provides greater depth of field for a given aperture.  I know that sounds counter intuitive in this ‘thin is in’ shallow depth of field mad world but when you’re measuring it in millimeters having a little extra in focus without the need to stop the lens down can be a real advantage.  So not only is the DA40 XS a great lens on an APSc DSLR with an adapter  it fits nicely on the Pentax Q and here is another hint ‘it fits on a 35mm SLR’ too  Pentax-DA 40mm F2.8 XS on film.

Most cameras have a mechanism to ensure that the film is advanced to the next frame before you can release the shutter again, what a shame.  Yes that helps to make sure you don’t get a double exposure of a squirrel on your favourite aunt’s head but it prevents experimentation of multiple images stretched across the film.  Enter the Konica 1 to save the day and put that squirrel right where it belongs and provide the ability to trip that shutter as many times as you want, film advance or not.  My favourite thing to do with the Konica 1 is to take a picture then advance the film only partially and then take another each time panning from left to right.  Going from left to right is important because the image is recorded upside down and backwards on the film (That’s how lenses work).  The result is something like this.

And the other thing I like to do is take multiple exposures therefore collecting the light from different times all onto the same image.  Like this one which represent a short drive.

More experimentations with the Konica 1 can be seen here  Multiple Exposures and Multiclick

The Canon z180u was my long lens film choice on my trip to Niagara Falls.  180mm is a very long focal length for a point and shoot and the trade-off is a very slow lens aperture of 12.9 at the long end.  This requires using fast film. I compromised with Kodak Portra 400 because I haven’t met an 800 ISO film I liked.  Canon also wants you to be sure, of what I’m not certain.

I’m pretty sure though that the images from the Canon z180u are a little on the soft side so for anything under about 120mm I would choose a different discontinued camera to waste film in.

I didn’t end up finishing the roll of film in my Ricoh R1 so it did go through the security check at the airport and seems to have survived none the worse for all the radiation.  As I’ve said before the Ricoh R1 has an incredibly sharp lens particularly in the center when set to 30mm not the 24mm wide angle seen in the picture above.  It’s also small and pocketable.  As it is one of the direct forerunners of the latest Ricoh GR digital camera its making me take a serious look at that camera too.  We have reached a point in digital photography where there are many great cameras to choose from with each one having certain advantages that set them apart but they are for the most part all yielding quality images.  So what would be the reason to use the R1 with film over buying a Ricoh GR?  Well at around $800 for the GR that works out to around 80 rolls of film developed or 2880 frames so clearly in the long run digital would be an advantage but I’m not really likely to want to use this camera exclusively and 2880 frames might take me 5 years to shoot in that manner.   You can see my dilemma, wanting something and needing it are two different things entirely.

With intentions fine

you are lens cap

but upon my film exists a gap

what was seen I can not say

for on my camera you did stay

The Pentax smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS Lens is an impossibly thin pancake lens that was originally designed to go with the digital APS-c Pentax K-01 but as some people have noted it also covers a full 35mm film frame.   I needed to find out for myself so I mounted it to my Pentax MZ-6 a camera that I had given away but received back and am very happy about that.  I had really under rated the camera, while not built to take a beating like a professional camera, it has all the functionality of one.  Back to the lens though. While the lens is very thin it shouldn’t be all that surprising as many 35mm film point and shoot cameras have similar sized lenses that are often even closer to the film plane.  As a lens used with 35mm film I can say that it does an excellent job with very little vignetting which is the one thing you might expect to see when using an APS-c lens.  The fact that it takes up next to no room in a camera bag and that it can be used on both film and digital really makes this a must carry lens for me.