Wallace Koopmans Artlog

These are from a mix of digital cameras (Pentax K7, Pentax Q, Sigma DP1s)

Introducing the Quirk

Yes it’s uniQue.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned from building my own K-mount lenses and am applying it to the Q-mount.  In fact this is the main reason I bought the Pentax Q so that I could build tiny little lenses and ultimately have a whole bag of them or pockets which ever.  The primary optical element of the lens is a coated convex lens of about 12mm focal length.  It once comprised part of the optical system of either a video camera or a super zoom (I have Quite a few lens elements of indeterminate lineage).   For mounting it on the camera I am using an Q to C-mount adapter that I have taken apart.  To improve the image Quality a little I also have created a fixed mechanical aperture that stops the lens down from f2.0 to f4.5.  The focus is technically set to 30cm but can be adjusted by sQueezing the front of the lens, I know that sound odd but it allows for amazingly smooth focus during video recording.  As you can see the lens is incredibly small even when compared to the diminutive SMC Pentax 1:1.9 8.5mm AL[IF]

With the lens mounted the camera can easily be slipped into a pocket and remains protected, much like a body cap would.

Looking at the sample images you might wonder if I also used the blur control feature of the Pentax Q but I did not.  Any distortion of the image is done entirely by the optics. I have done some levels and colour adjustments in Lightroom.  There are commercial products for larger sensor mount cameras that generate similar distortions but nothing that I am aware of for the Q yet.

When I got this instax mini it still had some film in it. Not being one to waste film I decided to shoot with it despite how obviously out of date the film was. So like leaves in the fall these pictures should be raked up and composted.

While not quite pocketable the combination of the Pentax Super Program and the M40 Pancake lens does make a relatively small package. I used some off brand film that was outdated by 6 years but it seems to be fine for this use and I made some extreme adjustments to the digital files anyway.

Other cameras in this small SLR class would be the Nikon FG and the Olympus OM-1 both alternatives having better direct exposure controls.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a camera with less online information about it. It’s as if there was a cover up. Like Sigma wanted this camera and any information about it wiped off the face of the earth. I don’t blame them. When I first came across this camera the rubbery plastic it’s made from was all sticky I thought maybe that was a one-off but I’ve since found an even stickier Sigma Zoom 50 (that’s the almost identical camera with a 50 to 100mm lens) Once I rendered the camera holdable I needed to put a battery in it. Backing up just a little the camera appears rugged and perhaps weather resistant but far from it the battery door is the flimsiest loose plastic that is jammed by the carrying strap. Once you manage to get the battery in you can start the adventure. The lens is of the zoom variety covering 28 to 50mm with an undetermined aperture. It does have a nicely placed shutter button and an actual hotshoe, I needed to say something nice. I had a notion in my mind that as a lens manufacturer that this camera might have some promise as a wide-angle film option but the lens really isn’t designed to cover the entire frame of 35mm film. I can’t recall any camera having worse vingetting, not even the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim with its 22mm lens. You don’t believe me well look at this……

No point crying I gave you ample warning. We tend to applaud and celebrate out of the box thinking but maybe just maybe sometimes you should keep a few ideas inside or ever to yourself. I challenge anyone reading this blog post to come up with the specifications for this camera, you will win my coveted admiration. and a mention in the update.

If you find a few of these images vaguely familiar it may be that you have previously seen my post about the Sigma DP1s which I used at the same time.

I’ve been thinking about how to demonstrate the difference between these two 3d “cameras” but it’s not really possible in this 2d format. So it comes down to words I guess. Starting with the screens , despite the fact that both units display a 3d image without the need of glasses the Fuji screen is far superior. The 3.5″ Fuji screen has 1.15Mpixels doubling the HTC’s 4.3″ touchscreen with 540 x 960 resolution.  The images displayed on the Fuji are clearer and more colourful. The difference continues with the lenses and sensors,  The Fuji has two 10Mpixel 1/2.3″ CCD behind 3x zoom lenses that provides 35mm equivalent focal lengths of 35 to 105mm.  The HTC lens and sensor are a bit of a mystery to me but they are a pair of 5Mpixel units and that is halved again when shooting 3D.  The fact is it isn’t much of a contest, the Fuji is better all around but then it doesn’t make phone calls or post to Instagram. The surprise reaction of people who see the 3d image suggests to me that it is still a bit of a gimmick, this is also true because of the difficulty of doing anything with the 3d image. I don’t own any other device to display 3d images so they really are only of interest on the camera itself for now. In a sense when I’m taking 3d pictures I’m hedging that they will be of greater interest in the future.  This is almost a truism of all photography as they represent a moment in time that won’t be repeated. I’m just doing it in an extra dimension.

The first image is down-sampled from the 7Mpixel Fuji file and the second from the HTC’s 2Mpixel file.  At full resolution the difference is much more apparent.

This mix of samples from the two “cameras” are being displayed as animated GIF’s or wigglegrams.  The two images are toggling back and forth giving a view as if you stopped time and moved your head from side to side, you can stop time can’t you?

The sigma dp1s is the closest i have come with a digital camera to the experience of shooting film. Not because of the files created but because you really don’t know if you got the shot until much later, in this case when you get it on a computer screen. The LCD, if that’s what you want to call it, isn’t any help, it’s a glorified viewfinder/frame counter. As far as colour or exposure forget it, it is more likely to lead you astray than give you accurate information. It is woefully slow to write RAW files to memory and the shutter lag isn’t great either. If you’re expecting me to now say but the images are so great that it makes it all worth while you will be waiting the same length of time it takes to write to the card. I want to like this camera for its sensor but the rest of the photography experience is so poor that it just can’t climb over that hill. Did I mention the vignetting? No, well it’s bad too and has a colour cast. So the bright spot, no not the highlights it blows out, would be that the larger sensor in a compact can give a shallow depth of field look that you otherwise only get from a DSLR. And despite the low resolution of the files they are sharp. (See it took awhile for me to get to that, the file has been saved). I just re-read my first impression from using the DP1s and it’s pretty much the same.
And now for the images, unfortunately they aren’t full resolution so you can see the clarity of the originals, the down-sampled web images are somewhat softer.

Thanks to Duncan Turner of DLT Photographic for lending me the Sigma

In the end the Sigma dp1s is difficult to compare to other cameras so I’ve created this handy visual aid, just say “The Sigma dp1s is” before each line you’ll get the idea.

There are several reasons that the Fujica 35SE is a favorite of mine. The primary one is how you focus. As it is a rangefinder you determine focus using a focus patch in the center of the viewfinder as you would expect but the focus movement is done via a thumb-wheel on the back. This is both quicker and easier than using the left hand around the lens as is more common. and has the added benefit of freeing the left hand to just steady the camera in a comfortable grip, this can not be overstated.

The other is the results from the 45mm 1:2.8 lens. Other things that make this camera different are the film advance lever location on the bottom and the exposure system where a change in shutter speed changes the aperture correspondingly. There are other little touches that help to add up to make it more than the sum of those parts.

I used the camera attached to a long sliding strap where I allowed the camera to just hang upside down. This is actually the perfect camera to use like this because you can advance the film with one hand and then bring the camera up and focus with the same hand.

While I was out shooting on this day I had a Sony CS1 GPS attached to my camera bag tracking my movements.  There is a mix of my walking and some of my driving including when I forgot that it was still on and drove over the Cambie Street Bridge.

I spent a few hours last week meandering around the area of Vancouver know as Chinatown taking photos with what cameras I could fit in my pockets. On the digital side I had a Sigma dp1s for its wide 28mm equivalent focal length lens and a Pentax Q with its 47mm equivalent lens. You can see my feelings about the Sigma here. I only had a couple of hours so I perhaps spent more time walking around than I might have otherwise. I think slowing down and spending more time in a spot produces better results but moving around also let’s you see more. The 28 & 47mm focal lengths make a good paring however the addition of a longer lens would have been welcome for many instances, in fact the 28-200mm equivalent of the my Nikon P7000 would have been ideal.  Ultimately though I will have some unique lenses for the Pentax Q that will compliment the P7000 rather than replace it.  With my concentration on these two cameras I didn’t finish the film I was shooting so that will have to come later, however here are the images