Wallace Koopmans Artlog

There are several reasons that the Fujica 35SE is a favorite of mine. The primary one is how you focus. As it is a rangefinder you determine focus using a focus patch in the center of the viewfinder as you would expect but the focus movement is done via a thumb-wheel on the back. This is both quicker and easier than using the left hand around the lens as is more common. and has the added benefit of freeing the left hand to just steady the camera in a comfortable grip, this can not be overstated.

The other is the results from the 45mm 1:2.8 lens. Other things that make this camera different are the film advance lever location on the bottom and the exposure system where a change in shutter speed changes the aperture correspondingly. There are other little touches that help to add up to make it more than the sum of those parts.

I used the camera attached to a long sliding strap where I allowed the camera to just hang upside down. This is actually the perfect camera to use like this because you can advance the film with one hand and then bring the camera up and focus with the same hand.

While I was out shooting on this day I had a Sony CS1 GPS attached to my camera bag tracking my movements.  There is a mix of my walking and some of my driving including when I forgot that it was still on and drove over the Cambie Street Bridge.

I spent a few hours last week meandering around the area of Vancouver know as Chinatown taking photos with what cameras I could fit in my pockets. On the digital side I had a Sigma dp1s for its wide 28mm equivalent focal length lens and a Pentax Q with its 47mm equivalent lens. You can see my feelings about the Sigma here. I only had a couple of hours so I perhaps spent more time walking around than I might have otherwise. I think slowing down and spending more time in a spot produces better results but moving around also let’s you see more. The 28 & 47mm focal lengths make a good paring however the addition of a longer lens would have been welcome for many instances, in fact the 28-200mm equivalent of the my Nikon P7000 would have been ideal.  Ultimately though I will have some unique lenses for the Pentax Q that will compliment the P7000 rather than replace it.  With my concentration on these two cameras I didn’t finish the film I was shooting so that will have to come later, however here are the images

Well more than a year after it’s initial release I bought a Pentax Q.  Partly because of the drop in price and partly because with the release of the Q10 Pentax has shown that they intend to support this lens mount further.  This is an interesting camera and many of the reviews of it focus heavily on it’s sensor size.  My initial testing of it when it was released and early use of  my own has shown that it out performs 35mm film in almost all cases except achieving shallow depth of field.  That’s the yard stick I’m comparing it to and I shoot plenty of film and am not unhappy with that.  If cameras are tools, and they are, then having the right tool for a job is important.  If the job is to have a fast adjustable tiny unobtrusive camera than this is that hammer.  The other thing that I plan to use this camera for that would otherwise be difficult and expensive is as a super telephoto.  To achieve this I plan to use a K to Q mount adapter with my 100mm macro giving me a 550mm equivalent focal length.  For now though I am enjoying using the 8.5mm 1:1.9 lens (47mm equivalent in terms of 35mm film) that came with it.  I am playing around learning the camera and the files it creates so these are a mix from Lightroom and an iPad.  The ones from the  iPad don’t have any lens corrections and are perhaps over done, Lightroom is far better for getting natural results.

I have more images ready but I will post them separately.

A long post title but discriptive which makes me wonder if I really need to say anymore.

Back to the USSR, specifically the Lubitel 2 that was made in the U.S.S.R. This is the TLR with what I have described as the worlds worst viewfinder.

Placing distortion inducing optical elements in front of expensive cameras is all the rage these days and all the hipsters are doing it so I didn’t want to miss out. There is a line of products called Lensbaby that allows for selective focus by essentially tilting the front element. My setup is a little different I’ve taken a wide angle adapter intended for video and mounted it on the front of the lens. This isn’t so much selective focus as the worlds worst astigmatism. The camera I’ve victimized is an interesting one. It’s actually a point and shoot SLR with a prism finder and a fixed 41mm 1:2.8 lens. Take a moment to think about that as I wind the next frame with the thumb wheel. Yes SLR, Yes thumb-wheel, fixed lens, No the mirror actually performs as the shutter, so many questions. The mirror/shutter has a single speed and you select the aperature via a ring around the base of the lens. To use the meter you press the little green button on the top plate near the shutter button. Three LED’s let you know if you are under, over exposed or just right(ish).

Back to the wide angle adapter it has a magnification of .55 which multiplied against the lenses 41mm yields 22.5mm of wide-angle badness. Of course I didn’t use it for all the shots see if you can tell which ones.

The Minolta Himatic 7s is another light tight box with a lens. It’s a bit heavy and quite noisy compared to similar cameras but the Rokkor 45mm 1:1.8 lens is a good performer. It does have the option of completely automatic exposure but I like to use it in manual mode performing the light metering with a digital camera. You might be wondering if I’m already using a camera to take light measurements why not be done with it and give up film. The simple answer is I like using these camera and framing and composing with the optical finder. I also don’t meter every scene but get a good estimate of the light and adjust from there which isn’t so different from using an external light meter I’m just getting a test shot too. I mentioned at the start about how noisy it is and it’s true of almost every operation of the camera from cocking the shutter to the release of it. It has a very sharp metalic sound, everyone and thing around you is going to know you just took a picture.

I have a mix of outdated APS film that must have been stored in the desert, the results are horrendous producing “thin” (see note) negatives that have horrible colour casts mostly a sickly green with red shadows. Oh well isn’t that what Instagram does? I’m embracing this and just shooting it anyway.

Speaking of Instagram this little roll of APS has an interesting social media life. The local camera shop where I have my film developed had an issue with their film developer so they sent this roll out to be processed at another store where they have custom work done. Now we’ll say the film was lost track of, not actually lost just a lack of certainly of where it was. It’s at this point that the person doing the developing takes an Instagram shot of the APS roll to show the old school 1990’s. If your still following me, the person at the first store sees this and asks if the name on the package is for Koopmans (that’s me) and it turns out it is. Film found, the moral of the story is that Instagram is good and APS is old school.

These images were shot with the Pentax Efina T which I will give another try because it really isn’t the cameras fault I loaded it with crappy film.

* A thin negative in this case is one with low amounts of silver halide forming the image resulting in a negative that has low density and contrast, not a lot of information captured. There really is no digital analogue but if you can imagine the histogram it would be a very narrow spike. (yes I just did that, using the noun analogue in reference to the adjective digital)

It’s pretty much universally accepted that digital photography today provides a better outcome than film as well as a better user experience. Now with more than a decade of digital being mainstream I’m having a look back to see just when that barrier was crossed for the average user. For this comparison (there may be more) I selected two cameras that were available in 2001. The Olympus D-370 is a 1.3Mpixel (1280×960) camera with a 4.5mm F4 lens with 5 elements that gives a 35mm equivalent field of view. And weighing in for film is the Minolta Freedom Escort with it’s 34mm F3.5 four element lens and it’s filmyness. To be fair the Minolta is about ten years older than the Olympus but the film is new.

Seeing as most people get prints that are 4×6 I thought I would see if at this size snapshots from the two cameras would be comparable. At that size the (1280×960) of the Olympus should give nearly 220 pixels per inch. I scanned the negatives at higher resolutions but downsized to a comparable 240 PPI for printing. Both cameras actually produced decent 4×6 prints but the film camera took the edge with it’s better lens and films superior dynamic range.

The Olympus prints were only sharp in the center and the sensor couldn’t record much detail in the dark areas of high contrast images. The Minolta with Fuji Superia film was able to record much of the range of any of the scenes and a lot more detail.

So what exactly does this prove? Well for one thing the output quality of pretty much every camera for the last 10 years has been adequate for making 4×6 prints and web sized images. It wasn’t all flowers and butterflies though if anyone cares to remember the difficulties with getting your images off of a camera and into the computer around that time. The other thing it proves is that this was not the time where digital exceded film for the average user not using an SLR or DSLR.

Here are two comparisons the last one zoomed in to one to one, leaving no doubt about films 2001 superiority.

From here I will pick a different camera combination with higher megapixels and see if I can find that cross over point.