Minox GT-E
I picked this little Minox up at the 2013 Vancouver camera show. It does have an issue with the needle in the viewfinder that should indicate the shutter speed but doesn’t. However the actual shutter is working properly so it’s not the worst problem to have. There are many perfectly good cameras that I use where I have no idea what shutter speed the camera chose, at least with the Minox GT-E and it’s aperture priority I am selecting the aperture.
As for batteries it requires 5.6V to operate and some of these batteries can be hard to source. Fortunately 4 zinc air hearing aid batteries give 5.6v and fit perfectly so that’s what I’ve used. In keeping with the miniature nature of this 35mm camera the film advance requires two strokes per frame.
The camera is focused at the front of the lens where you also set the aperture, this allows you to easily select a range of focus based on the depth of field for a given aperture. This type of zone focusing is ideal for quick shooting where any other type of focusing is just too slow. For example when I took the image of the bronze horse I was on a moving escalator I saw the horse ahead and set my focus for about 10 feet and when I reached that distance I just snapped.
If you look at the picture of the camera bellow you can see that with the aperture set for f5.6 that the depth of field would give acceptable focus from about 12 feet to infinity focus.
Even with its case it is a very small camera but feels quite solid. I like that the viewfinder is located right above the lens, this doesn’t seem to get much mention but it limits the parallax error to up and down when framing a shot. I dislike framing a shot of a nearby object with a rangefinder only to find that I’ve included something I didn’t want in the frame. That’s one reason I love the 100% viewfinder on my DSLR and is also an attribute of cameras that use an LCD screen. But back to the little Minox, don’t let its cuteness fool you its a great camera and offers just that extra bit of control that is missing from another comparably great little camera the Olympus Stylus Epic.
And of course here come the images
