Wallace Koopmans Artlog

It would seem the only way to get a focused sharp image from the Fuji Zoom Date 60W is to use it in blindingly bright sunlight so that it if forced to choose a smaller aperture.  Too bad because 28-60 is a nice focal range in a point in shoot (I am on a quest to locate every 28mm or wider film point and shoot camera ever made)  Under the ideal conditions the results are pretty good but under marginal conditions the results are awful.   Some of the cameras limiting factors are that it has a slow lens of f5.0-f10 and a maximum shutter speed of 1/125 second.  Now that is a ‘slow’ top speed! at least that means it is more likely to stop down the lens than increase the shutter speed.  Good thing it only weighs 200grams.  It’s other plusses are: you can change flash settings set macro and infinity focus.  Another thing of note is that it came out in 2004 which makes it one of the last new film cameras released.

And just look at that awesome film date imprint now I will never forget when I took this picture.

An interesting little adjunct to this is that while looking through the images for this blog post my wife exclaimed ‘My grandma lived in that house!’ and a quick browse through an album yielded a picture she had taken of it about twenty five years ago.

With notes saying they lived there for 1 year in 1939. And here it is now.

One of the cutest little rangefinder camera out there the Olympus RC also stands out for its easy manual operation.  The Shutter speed can be easily selected with the dedicated top dial and the aperture set around the lens barrel or if you prefer it can be used as a shutter priority mode by selecting A (Automatic) on the aperture ring.  Ignoring the fact that I have recently acquired a quantity of terrible film that I am burning my way through the Olympus RC’s 5 element  lens is very good.  I will be trying it again with better film very shortly.   The fact that is camera is smaller than many point and shoots that came later and yet has full manual control with settings indicated in the viewfinder make this a terrific little camera.

This is one of those film delay posts. I shot this roll of film back in April of 2015 and am writing this in August.  I have written about the Yashica GX numerous times so will refrain from repeating myself but more posts can be seen by searching my blog Yashica GX

In previous posts I have covered Cinestill 800T extensively but I wanted to touch on why I have settled on the Canon A1 as my go to night photography film camera. Firstly there are many lenses available for this system and little demand for them as the don’t fit modern Canon cameras. The amount of shutter speeds directly selectable through the dial is fantastic, I can’t think of another film camera that has 30 seconds as a physically selectable option. Then there are the two self timer modes. 2 or 10’seconds, I find that 2 is often enough as it allows the camera to settle after pressing the shutter but not such a long wait that conditions change. The final two nocturnal features are the ability to turn off the Viewfinder LEDs and block light from the viewfinder eyepiece with a small internal shade. Putting all these together makes the Canon A1 a fantastic camera for working off a tripod at night. It’s primary weakness in this area is it’s lack of mirror lockup and that it apparently eats batteries during long bulb exposures, my experiences usually fall within the 30 second range so that hasn’t been an issue.

Photography can be about a lot of things and when it comes to carrying gear it can be about compromises.  How much space do I have for lenses and how much weight am I willing to carry?  When it comes to the wide angle end of things you can’t really beat having a really nice lens that captures an expansive view.  Often though for reasons of weight it can be easier to just carry a lighter kit lens that maybe goes down to 18mm on APS-c or  maybe a better lens that goes to 16mm but if your willing to carry the extra weight of an additional lens there is something special about going all the way to 12mm on APS-c.  This would be equivalent to 18mm on a ‘full frame’ camera.  The horizontal angle of view of a 12mm lens on APS-c equates to 88.5 degrees  while an 18mm lens is 66 degrees this is a signifigant difference illustrated bellow.  (Note I am referring to horizontal angle not diagonal, human vision with two eyes is nearly 180 degrees horizontally but a good portion of that is peripheral)

Done well a wide angle image helps to make the viewer feel more like they are right there looking at the scene for themselves. You can back up of course to take in more of the scene but that isn’t always an option as in the illustration image taken from a logging road bridge deck.  Another option is to stitch together several images but that can have issues and isn’t suited to anything with motion.  So sometimes there really is no substitute for a good wide-angle lens.  Personally as I shoot with a Pentax APS-c DSLR I use the smc PENTAX-DA 12-24mmF4ED AL[IF] but there are  different options for it and other camera systems.  Additionally these images are combed from 4 different cameras (Pentax K10D,K7,K-01,K3) proving my assertion that spending money on a lens is a better long term investment than on a camera.

Here are sample images with this lens all taken at the widest setting of 12mm

I was amazed to see that the last time I use the Minolta V2 was back in 2012 Minolta V2 Part 1 the surprise primarily comes from the fact that this is a fantastic camera and is one of my favourite camera designs of all time.  It’s also a very good camera and has the amazingly fast 1/2000 of a second shutter speed as well as a fantastic 45mm f2.0 lens of 6 elements.  Here is a larger sample scan of a fairly grainy Agfa 200 film shot.

The Ricoh EFS looks like a rangefinder but is in fact a zone focus camera which is too bad but this allowed it to be very inexpensive back in the early 1980’s which doesn’t matter now as time has been a great equalizer for film cameras. Another way they kept the cost down was that it only has one fixed shutter speed of 1/125 second.  The aperture varies from f2.8 to f22 and anything outside of that will result in under or over exposure.  All that aside it’s a fun camera for what it is and easy to use.  The lens is 4 elements in three groups and every once and awhile conditions conspire to create a sharp image but mostly the zone focus just gets you in the ball park.

I punished this little camera with some bad film, not for anything it did but I just needed to make an example out of it for my other cameras.  “See what will happen to you if you don’t do as I wish”  I suppose the admonition ‘This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” holds true.  I can’t actually make any kind of real determination about this camera based on expired Kodak Gold 200.  The fact that it was necessary to mention on the front of the camera that it has a glass lens gives you a sense of its cheap plastic nature.  As I like using the 28mm focal length I may give this camera another chance but it’s pretty clear that it’s not going to beat many other options optically, just use your imagination.

I enjoy using my diminutive Pentax Q7 and find that it lends itself well to creating images that have a film look in particular black and white conversions. In this case though I wanted to envoke the look of film shot in bright summer light. Perhaps film that is now a little out of date too.  As with all Lightroom presets they should be thought of as starting points.

This was created with Lightroom 5.7 and can be downloaded here Q summer film