Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Much like the Canon Elph the Pentax efina T is a tiny little metal wonder. The Pentax has slightly more zoom range but gives up some light gathering ability with a slower lens. The image quality through the lens is surprisingly good but of course in the end it is APS film and it is quite grainy.

A nice feature of this camera is the large mode dial around the shutter, rather than poking at tiny little rubber buttons you can know with certainty how the camera is set.

Well more than a year after it’s initial release I bought a Pentax Q.  Partly because of the drop in price and partly because with the release of the Q10 Pentax has shown that they intend to support this lens mount further.  This is an interesting camera and many of the reviews of it focus heavily on it’s sensor size.  My initial testing of it when it was released and early use of  my own has shown that it out performs 35mm film in almost all cases except achieving shallow depth of field.  That’s the yard stick I’m comparing it to and I shoot plenty of film and am not unhappy with that.  If cameras are tools, and they are, then having the right tool for a job is important.  If the job is to have a fast adjustable tiny unobtrusive camera than this is that hammer.  The other thing that I plan to use this camera for that would otherwise be difficult and expensive is as a super telephoto.  To achieve this I plan to use a K to Q mount adapter with my 100mm macro giving me a 550mm equivalent focal length.  For now though I am enjoying using the 8.5mm 1:1.9 lens (47mm equivalent in terms of 35mm film) that came with it.  I am playing around learning the camera and the files it creates so these are a mix from Lightroom and an iPad.  The ones from the  iPad don’t have any lens corrections and are perhaps over done, Lightroom is far better for getting natural results.

I have more images ready but I will post them separately.

A long post title but discriptive which makes me wonder if I really need to say anymore.

Back to the USSR, specifically the Lubitel 2 that was made in the U.S.S.R. This is the TLR with what I have described as the worlds worst viewfinder.

After finishing the pack of Fuji Fp100C in my Polaroid pack film camera I loaded it with Fuji FP3000B and I am smitten. While I enjoyed the results from the colour film I haven’t been completely sold on it. There is a coolness to the colour and the image clarity is not spectacular. With this faster black and white film (3000 ISO) though the camera is stopped down considerably allowing the lens to perform better. It just seems to be the right film for the camera and the era, you expect a black and white print to come out of this camera.

Placing distortion inducing optical elements in front of expensive cameras is all the rage these days and all the hipsters are doing it so I didn’t want to miss out. There is a line of products called Lensbaby that allows for selective focus by essentially tilting the front element. My setup is a little different I’ve taken a wide angle adapter intended for video and mounted it on the front of the lens. This isn’t so much selective focus as the worlds worst astigmatism. The camera I’ve victimized is an interesting one. It’s actually a point and shoot SLR with a prism finder and a fixed 41mm 1:2.8 lens. Take a moment to think about that as I wind the next frame with the thumb wheel. Yes SLR, Yes thumb-wheel, fixed lens, No the mirror actually performs as the shutter, so many questions. The mirror/shutter has a single speed and you select the aperature via a ring around the base of the lens. To use the meter you press the little green button on the top plate near the shutter button. Three LED’s let you know if you are under, over exposed or just right(ish).

Back to the wide angle adapter it has a magnification of .55 which multiplied against the lenses 41mm yields 22.5mm of wide-angle badness. Of course I didn’t use it for all the shots see if you can tell which ones.

The Minolta Himatic 7s is another light tight box with a lens. It’s a bit heavy and quite noisy compared to similar cameras but the Rokkor 45mm 1:1.8 lens is a good performer. It does have the option of completely automatic exposure but I like to use it in manual mode performing the light metering with a digital camera. You might be wondering if I’m already using a camera to take light measurements why not be done with it and give up film. The simple answer is I like using these camera and framing and composing with the optical finder. I also don’t meter every scene but get a good estimate of the light and adjust from there which isn’t so different from using an external light meter I’m just getting a test shot too. I mentioned at the start about how noisy it is and it’s true of almost every operation of the camera from cocking the shutter to the release of it. It has a very sharp metalic sound, everyone and thing around you is going to know you just took a picture.

I have no idea where I’m at with my Polaroid a week series.

With all the film posts I do you might think I don’t shoot digital, but I do and here are a few recent ones from my Nikon P7000.

When taking pictures you should always keep your mind open to new ideas and possibilities. When I saw just how much contrast there was here (A dark hallway with a bright south facing windowed doorway),  I knew there was no way to balance the light but that I also wanted to create an image. My response was to go for a silhouette, taking it further I switched to manual focus defocusing completely, giving soft Indistinct edges. Finally I did a bit of editing in Snapseed to add the blue cast and textures.

The point is that no matter the circumstance if your intent on creating images when presented with what appear to be problems, it’s actually an opportunity to try something different without expectations.