Wallace Koopmans Artlog

I volunteered to assist, as a chaperone, a group of high school photography students.  It was fun and I actually had some time to take pictures of my own when I wasn’t looking out for cars or trying to keep everyone together.  The students really were engaged and often would take great care to create the image they wanted.  I used my Yashica GX and those images can be seen here Yashica Electro 35 GX with Portra 800 but I also had my little Pentax Q7 as well as the Fuji DL mini so here are a mix of digital and film images.

I make no comment on what can and what can not be achieved with the two mediums but here are two snap shots taken from the same location and roughly the same focal length.

I have to admit that when I first started collecting cameras the Olympus Trip was not a camera that I was that interested in.  It has a completely automatic exposure system and zone focusing but are those really disadvantages or things to be embraced?  Maybe a little of both, when the light gets challenging I like to take over and I can’t do that easily with the Trip.  You can take an exposure reading and half press the shutter and then recompose or you can manipulate the ASA setting both of which are not always ideal.

If you look at the brochure from the time you can see that the Olympus Trip has a Tessar lens with 4 elements.  (40mm f2.8)

From about 1980 on the legacy of the original trip was a plastic wasteland of crappy cheap cameras until they released the digital Pen EP-1 in 2009 (technically it’s not in the Trip line but it has a similar look)

Coming from 1968 it still looks good design wise and only asks for a little film once in a while.  And yes I gave it some really poor film (outdated 100ISO generic drug store film)

Back in 1999 this camera would have cost you around $230 while a just emerging 1.5mpixel digital camera would have set you back 2-3 times as much and trust me digital cameras of that time would not win any design awards for their aesthetic beauty.

Thanks for proving my point Sony Mavica FD91.

I really like the design of the camera the rubber material references the use of leatherette from the past without mimicking it and the metal body is sleek and looks great too.  When not deployed the flash is barely visible adding to that minimalist look.

While the lens is able to produce fantastic results in good light it is let down by its slow aperture. So slow in fact that Canon neglected to provide specifications for it in their literature although they were able to tell us that it has ‘Super Spectra’ coating on its 7 elements in 6 groups (Its f4.5-10.9 if your really curious)

One thing about one camera: The Canon Sure Shot Classic 120 uses a hybrid autofocus system.  It initially sends out an IR beam if that isn’t reflected back to the camera it then switches to a passive AF sensor that looks for contrast in vertical or horizontal lines. That may sound familiar in terms of a modern DSLR’s  autofocus but remember this is a film camera it had to have a separate CCD sensor just for this purpose.

Nikon Press release ‘This camera is targeted at those looking for a lens-shutter camera with a wide-angle zoom lens, as well as those who want to be able to take pictures easily virtually anytime, anywhere.’

Thanks Nikon just what I was looking for a camera with a lens and a shutter because the pinhole coffee tin I was using everywhere all the time just wasn’t cutting it.  After all the marketing drivel what you have left is a plastic camera with a 28-70mm f5.6-10 lens.  Its nothing to write home about or Snapchat about as the kids say.  ( If your reading this past 2015, Snapchat was a photo messaging service where the message disappears after a period of time I’m sure something else has come along to replace it by now)  Back to the camera,  as much as I wanted to like this camera because of the 28mm wide end it just isn’t that good and 5.6 as a maximum aperture at 28mm is pretty slow.  It’s because of cameras like this that we shoot digital today.

I will cut the camera a little slack as I always seem to do.  The film I used was 400 speed drugstore film that I got from a sandwich bag at a thrift store so there is always hope for a better tomorrow.

The Leica Mini cost about $300 when it was new while the Minolta Freedom Escort cost about $85 I’ve written previously about how these are for all intents and purposes the same camera.  Fraternal twins? Leica and Minolta

Despite this knowledge the gravitational pull of the Leica still seems to draw me in as it obviously has others.  It’s true Leica have created some incredible photographic equipment and I guess this halo allowed them to charge more for the same thing such as the Leica Digilux 4.3 which was essentially a Fujifilm 4700 or the Leica Digilux 3 which was the same as a Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 and there were and are more examples.  There is always just enough modification to at least create the plausibility of justification whether it’s the lens or firmware.  In the case of the Leica Mini its the lens that is different but from what I can see there is little or no gain over the Minolta.  See what I just did there?  Even I hedged my bet that there could be a difference, what am I afraid of, the not so secret society the Leicati?   If having a Leica is something that matters to you then this is a good one to have it’s cheap and decent and has a red dot but if you can’t find one you could always just put a red dot on the Minolta.

There is a ‘feature’ of the Contax RTS that has now bitten me twice.  On many SLR’s of its vintage with manual film advance the film rewind level turns to indicate that the film is actually advancing.  Not so with the RTS it has a fancy system that allows the rewind lever to remain stationary even when the film advances but that is also exactly what it also looks like when the film isn’t advancing at all.  To be fair I should have double and triple checked that it was working but in my excitement to continue taking pictures I guess I forgot.  So after quite some time and 36 blank frames of missed opportunity I discovered my error.  That put a damper on what was otherwise a great day where I also saw and bought some fantastic art cards from a fellow photographer. Here is the GPS track of my photographic excursion so I will actually re-cover the ground at some point where I have no images.

It’s tough because I can remember several pictures that I thought I took and was quite pleased with.  I really hope the other camera I was using for the first half of my tour worked.

A little bit of information for thought:  A 35mm 36 exposure roll of film is about 1.4meters long, a 32Gbyte card will store about 600 RAW images from my Pentax K-3 DSLR which if it where film would be about 23.3meters long.  That amount of film canisters would also weigh around 375g not that I would shoot that much film in a day.

Provided the first 24 exposure roll from the RTS turns out I will have a little mini review and further rant at that time.

Lets see…good film (check) great camera (check) interesting place (check)  it all adds up to a great time taking pictures.  I helped chaperone a group of highschool photography students downtown Vancouver and true to form I had a couple different cameras with me.  One of them was the Yashica Electro GX only recently knocked from its pedestal of favourite rangefinder in my collection by the equally good Olympus SP35

I really like the look I get from Portra 800 as well and am amazed at how fine the grain is considering the speed of the film.  Here is a crop from one of the images.

More about the Yashica GX through searching my blog here Yashica Electro 35 GX

Yes its pretty bad at close focus distances but improves when the subject is further away  it also doesn’t hurt to put what you want to see clearly, in the center of the frame because the corners are full of distortion. This is my second go around with a Lexio 70 the first one was even a little worse producing gems like this  Which is perfectly valid if your intention is to make the viewer feel slightly uneasy even if their not sure why.   On the positive side of things the Lexio 70 has a nice LCD panel that clearly shows what your settings are it’s small and looks nice and it does 28mm.  Given the opportunity I would choose the Canon Z90W which has a 28-90mm lens and is an all around better camera.  Having now tested two examples of this camera I can say that the 28-70mm f/3.4-7.9 lens performs poorly which is a shame because its an otherwise nice camera.

I’m going to try to have a look at this camera in a more objective fashion and separate its performance from its somewhat cult status.  My first objective though was to test that it worked and for that I used some dubious outdated film.  That may not have been the greatest decision I ever made.  While the images turned out it left me with the question of whether or not the camera meters accurately because both rolls of film I used ended up being very contrasty. For both rolls I shot under dark rainy conditions as well.  It’s not all doom and gloom though the camera worked well and earned the right to have some decent film next time.

One thing about one camera: The T4 Super was available in 1993 for $129.90 today it sells on Ebay for around twice that much.  One of the few point ans shoot cameras that actually went up in value. I have no intention of ever selling it though as I consider it a gift.  Why Photography Makes you a nice person