Originally I had a Yashica Zoomate 140 SE but that was stolen out of my vehicle with a number of other nearly worthless cameras, jokes on you loser. What the SE offered over this plane 140 I’m not sure maybe ‘Summer Edition’ or ‘Sucks Emulsion’ I can’t actually complain too much about this camera because it produces decent images though a little soft and with some coma distortion in the corners as well as some pin cushion to boot. That does sound like complaining doesn’t it? You have to compare it against its rivals though and in that case as a compact telephoto point and shoot its decent. You can find some more details about the camera in the link I posted above and some images from this roll down bellow.
The Minolta V2 doesn’t have a light meter and that’s probably just as well because a 60 year old meter isn’t likely to be that accurate if it works at all. Setting the aperture and shutter for a certain light level then is up to you. There are a couple restrictions when you go over 1/500 of a second. At 1/1000 second the maximum aperture you can use is f4 and at 1/2000 it is f8 but if there is enough light for the film your using no other camera from the time comes close to as fast a shutter speed.
Of course they fail to offer any ideas as to how you are going to get close enough to a ‘jet air plane’ to take a picture of it in flight with a 45mm lens. (P.S. that’s a Lockheed 104 which was a supersonic jet from around 1958)
In addition to having a high shutter speed available the lens on the Minolta V2 is excellent not just for the time but even today. The maximum aperture of f2 is decently fast and the lens has very good correction of aberrations. In particular chromatic aberrations such as colour fringing around high contrast areas. Combing through the various rolls of film I have shot with this camera I cant really find an example of it.
What can I say about the Yashica T4 super that hasn’t already been said somewhere? I would like to say that the certain fashion photographer that it is often associated with should be relegated to the dustbin of history and the camera restored to its rightful cult status based on its great Carl Zeiss lens. If you don’t know who I am speaking about do yourself a favor and don’t bother searching it (hint he’s accused of a multitude of sexual assaults). But the camera its great and was the last of the Yashica T* series. The first two the T* and the T2 are forgettable cameras while the Yashica T3 is a great camera that provides a particular look (vignetting) from its 35mm f2.8 lens.
I should mention that the film I used was expired Portra 100T (The T is for Tungsten) so you may be wondering why everything isn’t all blueish. Well during the scanning I must have corrected it out. It was far more subtle than I expected and I don’t really mind. It’s one of the perks of a film/digital workflow you can make a multitude of adjustments for whatever look you want.
One thing about one camera: The “Super Scope” on the top of the T4 is a good way to take pictures over the top of obstacles although composing with the camera held over your head with a reversed image takes some getting use to.
More about the Fuji DL Mini (Tiara) can be found in these links Verticals,Sardine Tin, Super Mini, Super Mini, Super Mini I’m starting to think that maybe I like this camera. It finds its way into a bag on almost every trip I take.
The primary reason is the fantastic 28mm f3.5 4 element lens and the controllability of the camera. For instance if you press the focus mode button to snap and then hold it in until snap stops flashing the camera is then set for snap focus from 1.3 to 3 meters and doesn’t reset after each frame. You can also set the camera to manual focus and then select a distance, how many point and shoots allow that? The shutter has a nice fast 1/800 sec. top speed and an adequate 1/2 sec slow speed. It has backlight compensation of +2EV and my favorite feature is its pocketability, its not as slim as the Olympus Stylus Epic but for cameras with 28mm lenses its one of the best.
The gallery of images were taken on a trip through Eastern Washington State using Agfa Vista 200 film.
Dubious camera with dubious film = random results. When I reflect on it I’m constantly in a #shittycamerachallenge with myself. Of course I want to get something back or what is the point of taking a picture but I accept that by using cameras of suspect quality and film of unknown history I’m likely to get something unexpected. In this case its a weird pee colour cast and some strange stripes that bare some correlation to the sprocket holes but I’m not quite sure how or why. This camera is so coveted that now I cant seem to locate it in order to take its portrait for the blog post so in stead here is my incredibly accurate representation of it.
The lens on the 24EW is a smc PENTAX power zoom 24mm – 105mm F4.9-F12.5 lens; 7 elements in 5 groups. At this point in time many of the point and shoot digital cameras remaining on the market start at an equivalent focal length of 24mm but one has to remember that this camera does it across an entire 35mm film frame, well sort of its not exactly a stellar image quality performance in the corners or sides or away from the center but the mere fact that it exists is special.
Although I didn’t take advantage of it with this roll it will also focus down to just under 12inches at the 24mm setting so you should be able to get some unique macro shots not possible with other point and shoots.
As for the expired Kodacolor 200 and its long ago best before date this is the sort of grain it gave when taking an image of a hazy sunset.
More posts that reference this camera can be seen here Pentax 24EW
One thing about one camera: When you turn the Pentax 24EW on, it briefly displays the last date that a picture was taken before displaying the current date.
As I was writing this I was trying to remember is this film is from Rollei or Agfa because it seemed to me I had written about it as both. And sure enough the little canister has a small Agfa logo towards the bottom so its both. Agfa makes it, or more accurately made it and Rollei sold it.
The Open Seadragon gallery is best viewed full screen. You can see the effect of the unwanted light striking the film diminishing as you progress through the roll.
It’s often fun to go a little wider than 28mm and the Ricoh R1 has it, although in the form of a Panoramic aspect ratio.
The R1 falls into a small category of point and shoots that have a secondary lens that swings into the optical path in order to provide a second focal length. Most of them are for the purpose of offering a little bit of telephoto capability and most of them also predate the placing of zoom lenses in compact cameras. The R1 bucks both these trends offering up a substantially wider view and being introduced in 1995 which is well into the era of compact zoom cameras.
You can see from the lens diagram showing the additional elements in place that at 30mm it is 4 elements in 4 groups and then the two additional small elements just in front of the last element on the film side provide the 24mm view.
The autofocus of the R1 is also claimed to be very sophisticated for the time with 128 steps in 7 zones. The effectiveness of this is somewhat hard to test with the slow feedback loop of film but I haven’t had any issues where I though the camera miss focused.
One thing about one camera: The Ricoh R1 spools all the film out when you load it so that as you take pictures it pulls the exposed frames back into the canister. This does two things it counts down the film so you don’t need to try to remember how many frames are on that roll and it protects the images you’ve already taken from inadvertent exposure in the event of the camera back being opened.
I really like the postage stamp edges the Braun Super Paxette creates on the film, so much so that most of the time I don’s crop them off.
I first tried this roll of expired Ferrania Solaris in my Ricoh R1 which first spools the film out and then brings it back in with each exposure but something about it caused the R1 to have a fit likely because it had been in the canister for so long that it didn’t want to come out (That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it) So the two frames are from the R1 and then its all Super Paxette.
The downside was that I had to pack around the Solaris on my trip until I could get back home and pull the film leader out of the cartridge to give it another try in a much more mechanical camera.
The Solaris gives a particular expired film look that could be mistaken for cross processing if it were a little more prominent, however it still retained contrast and relatively fine grain which hasn’t always been the case for cheap films I’ve shot long after their expiration date.
The Seadragon gallery is best view in full screen mode.
Over time I’ve managed to put together what I think is a nice little Olympus OM1 kit with a 28mm, 50mm f1.8 (Of course), a 35-70 zoom and a 200mm f4 telephoto. Not comprehensive but small enough yet versatile. I loaded up the OM1 with some Kodak Portra 160 and pointed it at some stuff. Back in the early 1980’s this kit would have cost around $700 but now they can be found at just a fraction of that. As an all mechanical camera I don’t bother with a battery and shoot it without a meter, using a digital camera instead as a pre-exposure test if necessary. More about the OM1 in this post OM1 Metering in case you want to use the meter though you’ll need to find a 1.35V PX625 battery if you want it to be accurate.
