While Ive owned the DA12-24 f4 lens for some time and have often used it when travelling it tends to feel too large at times, so when the opportunity came up to purchase an excellent used copy of the HD Pentax DA 1:4 15mm ED AL Limited locally from another Pentax photographer, I jumped at the chance. The name may be long but the size and weight savings are 189grams vs 430grams and a length of 39.5mm vs 87.5mm. After taking it on several trips I feel I have a pretty good sense of its strengths and weaknesses. I will start of with what is its weakest point and that is chromatic aberrations. Despite having an Extra-low dispersion and a hybrid aspherical lens element it does suffer from chromatic aberrations away from the center of the image.
Fortunately they can be greatly mitigated in software such as Adobe Lightroom which I use extensively.
The same can not be said however for the coma distortion in the extreme corners. If you can imaging a comet with its tail this is what is happening to the image in the corners which tends to look ‘smeary’ across the effected area.
When compared to the DA12-24 or the DA*16-50 at 15mm or 16mm respectively its a very similar result for the CA but slightly worse for the coma so there is a marginal trade off of image quality for size.
These distortion issues away from the center aside the lens renders a sharp image and a nice smooth background when focused on something close. This is enhanced by the use of rounded aperture blades that are the most useful and effective around f5.6.
Like the other Limited series lenses from Pentax this is a wonderfully constructed lens made from high grade aluminum without a hint of play anywhere while still being silky smooth to manually focus.
As for its image circle it is definitively a lens for use with APSc cameras as you can see from this test shot on 35mm film.
In summary the HD Pentax DA 1:4 15mm ED AL Limited is a good lens optically and a great choice as a wide angle when small size is paramount.
The Mamiya Ruby is a nice looking rangefinder but it does not have a particularly well specified lens . It is a 48mm f2.8 Mamiya-Sekor comprised of 3 elements which is pretty much the minimum to offer any kind of correction but despite that it performs better than what the numbers suggest. The focus is incredibly smooth without a hint of play with a nice bright circular focus patch. The full range of focus is achieved through just under 180 degrees of turn at the front of the lens. All these characteristics together make a great focusing camera. The film advance is also a nice smooth motion with little resistance, just an agreeable continuous ratcheting sound that ends with a click. While it does have an uncoupled selenium light meter on the top plate I find its use unnecessary because the camera is completely manual and mechanical, you just select the shutter speed and aperture you want. I tend to take general measurements with a digital camera and use them as the basis for setting any manual film camera. Why not you really cant beat what is effectively a light meter with thousands of sampled points presented in a histogram. You should however take into account the difference between film and digital. With film it isn’t so necessary to protect highlights as it can be with digital. so a little over exposure is okay in fact underexposed colour negative film results in a ‘thin’ negative lacking in detail. Thin in this case refers to that characteristic of a negative looking transparent without an easy to see or use capture not its physical thickness. Back to the camera, Its fortunate that the front element of the lens is set quite deep because being from 1959 whatever lens coating it may have does little to help when unwanted light reaches the lens. If light from the side does hit the lens it flares like a rainbow or negatively effects the contrast or both. There is another updated version of this camera that has an f1.9 lens with 6 elements which I haven’t had a chance to try but does sound like a better match for the quality of the Ruby.
The film I used was an out of date roll of Kodak BW400CN which has been discontinued as of August 2014. The nice thing about this film was that you developed it in C41 colour chemistry. A person could always convert their colour scans to B&W after the fact if they felt they must but just couldn’t be bothered to actually shoot black and white film.
The Minolta AF-E was fitted with a 35mm f3.5 lens constructed with 4 elements. The lens looks ridiculously tiny in comparison to the rest of the camera which appears to have expanded in width from previous models to accommodated the flash and the automatic film winder. The Minolta AF-C is a similar camera and a better choice with its faster lens and smaller size Minolta AF-c. But for simplicity of use this camera is great and the fact that it is powered by inexpensive AA batteries is a real plus. With the auto focus, auto exposure and auto flash you need to be in the mindset of just pointing and shooting when using this camera but if that works for you then this is an inexpensive option.
I imagine that disposable film cameras will eventually disappear from the market but for now they are available new and…well you cant really say used, but found at thrift stores with unexposed film. Kodak was very proud of its camera recycling program claiming that 76-100% of the camera components were reused or recycled. I’m not sure where that stands now with the bankruptcy and restructuring and the comparative collapse of the film market. I can’t see that the volume of disposable cameras still being used warrant a full separate recycling program.
You could say that as a photography tool a disposable camera is limiting but maybe that’s the appeal. You can let go about worrying about the camera or any false notion that your going to produce some technically superior image and just enjoy the act of photography. A disposable camera gives you permission to have fun.
