Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Q: Are the images sharp? 

A: Like a razor left in the rain for two years

Q: Are they free of camera shake? 

A: No I drink a lot of coffee

Q. Is the lens distortion free?

A: Like a Salvidor Dali painting

Q: Why do you use it then?

A: Because it was there, it’s a beautiful camera, it requires thought to use and I like the look of the results.

A significant difference with this camera is that the shutter release is operated with your left hand. That may sound awkward if your right-handed like me but it’s so good where it is that it’s hard to imagine it on the other, more common, side.

I’ve written about this camera on occasion so a search of my blog will provide some more examples and writings  Voigtlander Bessa 46

This pretty much describes a rainy winter day in the Lower Mainland.  Everything floats although I’m not sure why there is a pillow in the pool.

This is also the final image from my Polaroid 330 it’s taken me an entire year to shoot this pack of film.

I shot quite a bit of film during 2013 and so I did a quick accounting to see how it broke down.

35mm Film                   70 Rolls

APS Film                       8 Rolls

Medium Format Film 3 Rolls

I also wanted to see if there was a type of camera that I had favoured over the course of the year.

Point and Shoots         28

SLR                                27

Rangefinder                 15

TLR/Zone/Misc          11

The one surprise for me was that I had used SLR’s as much as I did, but it was mostly my Pentax Z1p a very good and consistent camera so that does make sense to me.

I have every expectation that 2014 will find me using my film cameras every bit as much but maybe with even more experimentation.  I look forward to it.

The Olympus Trip AF mini is the third Amigo amoung my Leica Mini and the Minolta Freedom Escort. As I outlined before the three cameras share a lot of internal components Fraternal Twins. In fact when you look at the three with there backs open they are nearly idestinguishable. The Olympus and the Minolta appear to share the same 34mm lens while the Leica has a 35mm lens that has a different coating (Leica fairy dust)

Now more specifically this camera, the Olympus Trip AF mini has a 34mm f3.5 lens. I found it to produce vignetting on the order of one stop limited to the extreme corners. The lens is quite sharp though and without much distortion. The camera is incredibly light weight but easy to hold with its molded grip area. It has the same flash override as the others and suffers from the same slow startup where the lens extends out in a noisy slow motion mating display. Like the others though it produces results that are much beyond what their plastic shells would have you think.

I once again used my go to Pentax Z1p camera loading it with Fuji Superia film.  I’ve included the picture of the lift truck despite the fact that I miss focused it, I was using the Vivitar 28mm close focus f2.0 lens.  That just goes to show how difficult it is to focus manually in low light with a camera built for autofocus I thought I had it but clearly I did not.

Just this week the Canadian government has transferred the responsibility of evaluating the impact a pipeline would have on fish and habitat from the department of fisheries to the National Energy Board. In addition Kinder Morgan has made application to the NEB ,on the same day, to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline. It seems to me they were waiting for this change before submitting their application.

The full size of this image is 60cm x 60cm. It’s a confusing mix of information as is the entire fossil fuel chain from extraction to consumption. There is also a very complicated relationship between Washington, Alaska, British Columbia and Alberta when it comes to energy.  Many people drive across the Canada U.S. border to buy gas that may have originated in Alberta and crossed the border at Sumas via pipeline or in one of the 700 giant tankers that plied the BC coast from Alaska.  Oil from Alberta is refined in Washington state and trucked back into Canada to fuel jets at YVR.  Many things can be said for and against fossil fuels one thing I don’t understand though is the apparent drive to burn it all in one generation for profit.

You get twelve shots on a roll of 120 film with the Rolleiflex and here they are.

That last one with the grass and the sun was actually a mistake I meant to take that with my Olympus OM-1 for some double exposures I am doing but forgot for a moment and took it with the Rolleiflex.

I performed a little impromptu test between my new Pentax K-3 APSc DSLR and my Rolleiflex 2.8 Medium Format TLR.  I used the DA 35 macro LTD on the K-3 to match the field of view of the 80mm Schneider Xenotar lens on the Rollei.

I wasn’t surprised by the results having used the K-3 for nearly a month now but it is interesting to see that I was able to capture more detail with the K-3 than with the Rollie despite taking great care with both.  It does leave me wondering what more could be wanted from a camera and reaffirms for me that my attention should move away from the camera gear itself and back to making images, although I’m sure I will do a little more as I work with my new camera.

In each of the following images the Pentax K-3 image is on the left and the Rolleiflex on the right

To be fair with the image above the plane of focus is clearly different making the Rolleiflex shot the prefered one in my eyes.  That is not the cameras though that is all me.

I scanned the film at 3200 DPI which created 5200 x 5200 27Mpixel files against the K-3’s 6000 x 4000 24Mpixels but even cropping the K-3 down to a square 4000 x 4000 16Mpixel it still was a more detailed image although shooting square format natively has its advantages with some compositions.

When all is said and done though I still have an affinity for the look of film and often find that I prefer those images over the digital.

If you want a stripped down photographic experience the Minolta A5 gives it. The aperture, shutter and focus are all controlled at the lens using finely machined dials. The Citizen shutter has speeds from 1 second to 1/500 as well as bulb, each one selected with a satisfying click. The focus is silky smooth and easy to see in the viewfinder with its sharp edged focus patch. As with most rangefinders it is excellent for focusing in dim light. The lens is a 45mm 1:2.8 Rokkor built from 4 elements. While a simple design it works very well. With no exposure meter you need to use some other method of determining what settings to use but with that done you can just concentrate on taking pictures.