A camera that’s more about style than function. I had hoped that its having a 35mm lens would put it on par with the lens of the Stylus Epic but that camera has an f2.8 maximum aperture vs the 3.5 of the LT-1. The epic is all around a better camera it just isn’t wrapped in a nice fake brown leather. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Unfortunately my copy of the Pentax Spotmatic F has an issue with the 1/500 and 1/1000 shutter speeds. The timing of the shutter is such that it is captured on the film as a black band across part of the frame. In among the images that turned out I have thrown in some Nikon P7000 images that represent the failed images. This is possible because I was using the Nikon as my exposure meter. You can’t beat a digital camera for the immediate feedback they give so why not use that to advantage when shooting film. I hope to find the time this winter to adjust the shutter as this is an otherwise excellent camera. For now though I will use a different camera with my screw mount lenses.
Another film bites the dust and scratches, as of October 1, 2012 Kodak has discontinued P3200 T-max. I have to admit I never really liked this film and when I did use it I got mixed results. This particular roll was severely out of date so I overexposed it by two stops. I set my camera for 800 ISO and let it be processed as if it were 3200. The result was as good as I’ve been able to achieve with this film so maybe I was on to something right before it was too late.
What makes digital photography so great also is the source of a problem. When the barriers to taking pictures are so low you can create a difficult situation sorting through them to find the ones to keep. Keeping them all is no answer either it just delays the selection to some later time. With film there are fixed limits to how many frames of film you might have and how much you might want for later, digital blows through that barrier allowing thousands of pictures on a memory card. There is an easily determined cost to film that goes something like (Film $6 + Developing $3.00 = $9.00 /36) = about 25 cents per shot. Once you have a digital camera the per shot cost is virtually nil.
So it becomes very tempting to just keep shooting and taking a multitude of pictures with digital but it’s when you have to pick out the worthy ones while being careful to not delete something that might have a distinct value later that you might wish you had used more restraint. The upside of course is that you increase your chances of capturing an interesting moment but that can be done with film too it just requires more active participation on the part of the photographer. Instead of snapping you should be looking and thinking.
Of course I am guilty of this myself this digital “contact sheet” may illustrate my point. I spent nearly as much time going through these images as I did taking them and that is not the way I want to spend my time.
Post Script: Between the time I wrote this post and am posting it online I’ve done this again, ending up deleting more than half the pictures I took from a single day.
I was going to include this image with a pile of others but then I decided to pull it out and give it it’s own mention. Yes I’m that pleased with it. I really like the apparent interaction of the two individuals and the fact that the young man is smoking while the no smoking sign appears like a thought bubble from above the older mans head. Even the way they are sitting and leaning adds to the narrative.
Some film shots from my Yashica GX in October 2012. Amoung the images is one of Copp’s shoes which will be closing at the end of December after 87 years.
Just a few images from September and October 2012 pertaining to the sun and sunlight.
I can’t help myself, I absolutely love the colours of autumn, and enjoy taking and looking at photo’s of the changing leaves. Here are some of my picks from this autumn and here are last years Autumn Colours 2011
A few images from my Pentax Spotmatic II and a variety of screw mount lenses. The Spotmatic line of cameras ran from 1964 to 1976 with what we would now think of as only minor upgrades. After that it essentially became the K-mount series of cameras that ran until 1997 with the K1000. The biggest drawback of this camera today is the fact that it takes a mercury battery (Px-400) however as I often do with these manual cameras I use an external light meter and set the exposure without the built in metering.
So why might you want to choose a Spotmatic camera today? The ability to use the multitude of inexpensicve M42 screwmount lenses that are available make this a great film camera to use. The top shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second may be a bit limiting with faster film and bright sunlight but is faster than most older rangefinders that top out at 1/500 sec
