Don’t be fooled by its cute little face this camera hates me. Somehow it managed to botch up a quarter of the roll…there is no way it could be user error.
The Holga Tim is a cute concept but with some issues. Even if your okay with the cheap plastic camera look the Tim takes it to a whole other level. Each of the two lenses has its own little eyelid that you can use to cover up one lens at a time so that you can use it to squeeze out twice as many shots from a roll but keeping track of which lens you last used and remembering to switch between them and cock the shutter before advancing the film requires the level of attention this camera doesn’t elicit. Probably half the pictures I took had some unexpected problem and for some both are completely blank.
If you do manage to take a picture though get ready for some plastic fantastic soft images. The one from the roll that does appear sharp I must have stopped down the lens all the way in the bright sunlight. That aperture is said to be f11 while the cloudy setting is f8. The shutter fires at 1/100sec and the focus is also fixed. A previous post about the TIM can be found here
I haven’t had the greatest of luck with Konica Big Mini cameras. Most recently this cameras predecessor the Konica A4 let me down. Not easily deterred I loaded this Big Mini with the worst film I had, a roll of expired Konica VX400 a film that does not age well. And this is aged, at least if the camera didn’t function I wouldn’t be out a nice roll of Portra or similar.
The camera worked well and the film was as expected, bad. The Big Mini is truly a point and shoot with little user control but when that is what you want it delivers through its sharp 4 element lens (5 if you count the built in skylight filter which you should not).
One thing about one camera the Konica Big Mini can hold its shutter open for up to 7.5 seconds
I’ve posted about this camera previously The one that knows where your looking and have been impressed with the performance and results. The 7 in the name comes from the 7 focus points it can use. The interesting aspect of that being the selection of them through the detection of where you are looking in a scene. (I wrote more about that in the link above) What the NE stands for I don’t know but it was called the 7s in Japan.
Some notable features for a film camera are:
Shutter speeds of 1/4000 to 30 second
35 zone evaluative metering
incorporating a transport system that features a state-of-the-art noise-reduction design to ensure exceptionally quiet performance
Predictive AF (When subjects moving towards/away at a constant rate)
Up to 9 multiple exposures
The top and bottom aluminum plates have a alumite surface treatment. (tougher surface structure ?)
Continuous shooting of 4fps
It coexisted at the same time as 10-16 Mpixel cameras that cost 10-20 times as much. (Canon 1Ds Mark II, Nikon D2X)
The nicest feature though is that it uses Canon EF lenses which are abundant. If I were the owner of a Canon DSLR and I wanted a film camera to use along side of it this would be my choice.
