Camera Reviews Coming

A good piece of advice to writers is “Write what you know”. This poses a problem for me because I ran out of things that I know to put in the blog around 10 years ago. So another piece of advice could be “Write what you like”. I like cameras, and I probably like writing about them. I plan to find out just how much by posting a regular camera review every Monday, starting next week. I’m going to work my way through my collection of classic old cameras with comments and sample photos. Should be fun. If it isn’t, I’ll stop doing it.

I did not buy this camera

This camera was a gift from the the chap at Beverley Camera Centre. He’s not sure it works, and one of the little covers has come unstuck and fallen inside. I’ve kind of stuck it back into place, dropped in some batteries and all the knobs and dials seem to work . So I’ll be popping a film in to see if it can take pictures.

I can’t seem to find out much about the Fujical GER other than it came out in 1972. I think it might be Fujifilm’s answer to the very successful Yashica Electro 35. I like the idea of a tiny rangefinder camera with a built-in light meter and so I’m hopeful that it will work.

I’ve been after a nice one of these for ages

Now I did buy this one. I’ve been after a clean Olympus Trip 35 for ages and one just happened to be on sale. This is a classic camera with an amazing battery free metering system and zone focusing. My Auntie Anne had one and took it all over the world recording her exploits. Her pictures were always sharp and well exposed. I hope the one it produces are too.

Bought yet another camera

I seem to be collecting half frame cameras. Rather than spend loads of money on a brand new one, I’m instead spending loads of money on lots of old ones. My latest purchase is a Fujica Half. I thought it also had the model designation “EXC” but this turned out to be how those folks at West Yorkshire Cameras describe camera condition.

They are right though. It really is in nice nick. I’ve popped a film in it and, what with this being a half-frame, I’ll discover how well it works after 72 or so shots.

Lomomatic 110 Camera with Purple Film

I’m not sure ifyou should buy a camera just becuase of its looks. But then again…

The Lomomatic 110 camera is the first completely new 110 film camera to be made for a while. Lomography (who specialise in interesting cameras) released it a little while back. It’s a rather expensive alternative to a cheap second hand 110 camera, but it does have a ton of style. It also has a proper electronic shutter and a glass lens with adjustable focus - which are not things you usually find on a 110 camera. Of course, I got my hands on one and loaded it up with Lomo Purple film. It’s a fun camera to use. You wind it on by opening and closing the body and you can also attach the cutest little flash gun to the side. It is very plasticy though and I found the shutter button a bit fiddly to press (best to use a fingernail and press it with that). The 110 film has tiny negatives, but I wasn’t too unhappy with the level of detail.

This is not how I remember Dalby forsest looking…

Should have held the camera horizontal

I think the camera shake adds a lot to this one…

The camera didn’t get the colours wrong, that’s down to the awesome film. But it did get the exposure and the focus mostly right. The only times things went wrong were when I forgot to adjust a setting. I took some pictures of people and they came out sharp and snappy, but with weird colours which added a lot to the atmosphere.

It’s a nice enough camera, very stylish and beautifully presented. I’m not sure I’d advise anyone other than a camera nerd to get one though. Probably better to pick up a cheap second-hand 110 camera if you want to try the format, or perhaps a Pentax Auto 110 (which is an awesome tiny SLR camera of which more later).

What I would advise you to do though is pick up some of the funky Lomographic 110 films. They are available at quite appealing prices in 110 format and you can get them developed at around the same cost as a 35mm film. I’m presently trying the “turquoise” film (which seems to turn people cyan). I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

Bought an Olympus Pen EES from Japan

Not bad for a fifty year old camera

It’s number one son’s fault. He told me about the Buyee site which lets you bid in Japanese auctions. I’ve been after an Olympus Pen EES (with manual focus) for a while and so I took a look. They had one on there priced at 27 quids. Very good condition and with a “working” exposure meter. So I bought it. The price is impressive for a camera like this; although I did have to pay another 27 quids for postage and packing.

The service is very good. The Japanese seller of the camera sends it to the Buyee warehouse in Japan where it can be stored for up to a month. If I bought any other bits and bobs they could have been sent there too and then all combined for shipping. As I was just buying the one camera I had it shipped out as soon as possible. It took four or five days to arrive and the whole process was very smooth. I’ve had orders from ebay which have taken longer. The order didn’t attract any import duty and I was able to use the Japan Post website to track the package all the way to being out for deliver by Royal Mail Parcelforce.

The camera arrived today and (of course) doesn’t quite work properly. The exposure meter isn’t working and the aperture is stuck at F22. But I don’t mind. It will take pictures (although I’ve yet to develop them). Even if I have to spend a few quids to get it fixed or brave going inside and fixing it myself I’ve still got a camera in extremely good condition. The site sells a huge variety of stuff, some of it at very interesting prices. I don’t think I’ll be buying things every week, but it is nice to have the option if I want to get something which is a bit out of the ordinary.

Enter Player 3...

you can get a Dial Lapel pin too

I’ve found a third Canon Dial 35 on sale in the UK. This one comes with the promise of a working mechanism and a faulty meter. Much excitement has ensued.

And, I’ve worked out why I like the camera so much. Unlike most cameras, the dial has its viewfinder on the left when viewed from the front. This means that when you put the camera to your eye, you are using your left eye. Which is really good news for me as my right eye really doesn’t do much.

I’m now back to waiting for the postman.

20 Camera Man

..all photographed with a phone…

It turns out I’ve not bought 19 broken cameras. I’ve actually received 20. I’ve tested each one and they are all broken. I’ve given them all names.

• Mr Sticky Shutter

• No Rewind Boy

• Just Dead

• Weird battery guy

• Stuckee

• The Battery Flattener

• The Dangly Back Kid

• Sir NoClick

• The one that winds forever

• The one with the stuck frame counter

• Flash but no trousers

• Missing buttons

• Shiny but bust

• Only clicks, never whirrs

• Nothing moves

• Chinon less wonder

• Is this the end of Ricoh?

• T’would be nice if this worked

• Shiny but that’s it

• Mr. Dial

The Canon Dial that I really wanted does more than my previous purchase, but there is still something broken about it. I’ve been looking at the repair manuals for these cameras and they are packed full of parts which are easy to break and hard to mend. So for now the quest continues….

Accidental Art

I was at Hull University again today so I snapped a bunch of pictures with my new (to me) half frame Russian camera. It is now one of my favourite devices. But not because it works. The drive mechanism for the film is faulty. Some of the pins on the film advance sprockets are worn down a bit, probably by a previous owner rewinding the film without disengaging the drive. A lot can happen to a camera over fifty years. This means that the film doesn’t always wind on properly. So you get one frame overlaid on top of another. And you get pictures like these:

the lens is very sharp and the exposure seems to work fine

No two pictures the same…

Close to working properly…

I had a lot of good times here..

The things you get right are interesting. But sometimes the things that you get wrong are even more interesting. I liked the idea of making images that had two pictures in the frame, but what I’ve ended up with is even more than this. I’ve kind of figured out how to make the film move properly most of the time, but I think every now and then I’ll get this camera out just to see what kind of pictures it creates for me.

Bought a Chaika II

Chaika means “seagul” It was the callsign of the first woman in space

I’m still buying cameras. Fortunately they are not very expensive. The latest purchase is a Chaika 2. This was produced in Russia and is interesting because it is a “half-frame” device. This means that it takes pictures half the size of the usual 35mm negative. You get twice as many shots on a roll of film, although the pictures will be smaller and therefore slightly lower quality.

The camera is entirely manual and the lens is removable so that it can be used in an enlarger to make prints (although the enlarger was never made). I’m looking forward to popping a film in and seeing what the results look like.

Super Pentax ME Super

Should really have cleared up the marks on the negative

Today I developed the first film from my “super cheap broken Pentax”. The pictures game out great, including some of the family.

The camera even managed to pull some detail out of the foreground

If you are thinking of doing some film photography you could do a lot worse than pick up a cheap old Pentax like the ME super and run a film through it. These things were made a long time ago, but they are pretty hard to break. Some film SLRs (for example the Pentax K1000) sell for silly high prices, but you can pick up a Pentax ME Super for less than the price of a video game. Not because it is a particularly bad camera, but because it is less fashionable to be seen with. You get automatic exposure and a nice pocketable form factor. And if it breaks you can sell the bits.

Pentax ME Super arrives

It actually looks qute tidy

The broken Pentax ME Super that I bought by mistake arrived today, as did the replacement winder arm. They were a perfect fit, once I worked out that the fixings were all “left-hand thread”. Most screws and bolts are tightened by turning them clockwise, but sometimes this is reversed. The way that the winder lever on the camera works, each time you wind the film on the mechanism turns in a direction that would tend to loosen a clockwise tightened bolt. So they made the winder lever tighten the other way.

The camera itself seems to work fine, although it looks as if it has been sat on or wacked hard on the top (or both) at some time in its life. I’m going to put a film through it to see how it goes.

Pentax ME Super

I think I may be in the grip of a camera buying addiction. Ebay don’t help. They keep sending me emails telling me about things that have dropped in price that I might be interested in. As a result of one such message I seem to have bought a Pentax ME Super for fifteen pounds. It’s in the post at the moment.

The camera is cheap because it lacks a winding lever - making it hard to test. So I’ve also spent ten pounds on a winding lever. My reasoning is that the winding lever works I might have a functioning camera. If it doesn’t I can simply take the camera to pieces and sell the bits. Looking at the price of the parts, this might even be a profitable enterprise. I’m just hoping that these are not the rationalisations of an addict.

Camera Battery Complications

They’ve covered every wrong way to do it

If you, like me, have been wondering why your Olympus OM2n camera (you know - the one you bought yourself for Christmas despite having promised not to get any more cameras this year) doesn’t seem to be measuring light very accurately you might be interested in this snippet.

You often find people using LR44 alkaline batteries to power cameras like this. After all, they fit in the hole, the meter needle moves about a bit and the batteries are easy and cheap to get hold of. But they are also a bad idea because these batteries only put out around 1.5 volts when they are brand new. Their output voltage steadily drops over their life, which makes the meter progressively less accurate over time. The fix is to get proper SR44 batteries which are exactly the same size but use a different technology which lasts a bit longer and holds its voltage right to the end.

Microcord up town

Princes Quay looking good

We got some good weather today so I took the Microcord up town today and grabbed some shots.

There’s a bit of camera shake on this one because I keep catching the camera shutter lever on my fingers.

I really like this old camera. It forces you to move slowly when taking a picture (which can be annoying for people you are with) but I think the results are worth it.

Fun with a Microcord

It has the most amazing lens caps……

Yes, I’ve bought another camera. And yes, it is very old. Actually around the same age as me. It was made by a company called “Micro Precision Products” which started making cameras in the 1940’s and gave up in the 1980’s. They made a range of different types of cameras for press and technical use, and in the 1950s they made a couple of “twin lens reflex” cameras, of which the MicroCord was one. It is based (as in “Here’s one - see if you can copy it”) on Rolleiflex cameras which were popular at the time.

A twin lens reflex camera has two lenses. The top one is used for viewing and the bottom for photographing. You compose and focus by looking down into the top of the camera at a ground glass showing an image reflected from the viewing lens. Both lenses are mounted on a plate which is moved backwards and forwards to adjust the focus. The idea is that if the view in the viewfinder is sharp, the photograph being taken will be too. This was back in the day when you actually had to focus your photographs.

I took this shot on the university campus

I’m still getting used to it, but I’m having fun at the moment.

Everyone should get a Minox Camera

The pen and the dust on the camera are there for scale….

The Minox camera is very interesting. A while back; if you were caught carrying one you were assumed to be a spy. Because you probably were. The camera model above even made an appearance in a Bond film. In “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” James is seen using one to take clandestine shots to a background of suitably tense music. The chain attached to the camera has little lumps in it (you can see them above) which correspond to distance settings on the super sharp lens. One of the lumps is pre-set to take perfectly focused pictures of A4 documents if you hold the camera that distance from the page. However, you can also use the camera to take pictures of less secret things and they come out surprisingly well. I’ve just added a Minox to my camera collection because I’ve always fancied one and I look great in a tuxedo.

Minox cameras first appeared in the 1930s and continued to be made up until just after the turn of the century. The Minox B (the one above) has a mechanical shutter and a little light meter you can use to set the exposure. Later ones had battery powered meters and shutters. It might look a very exclusive and expensive thing, but you can pick the cameras up quite cheaply because they were made over many years and there are lots about. Taking pictures is fun, you open and close the camera to wind the film on, and the shutter makes a very satisfying whirring sound when you press the tiny release button.

The camera takes tiny pictures onto film loaded into a cartridge that fits inside. My camera came with a roll of 20 year old film which I took out on Sunday to take some shots. Every single one came out completely black, which I hope is a comment on the age of the film and not on the camera or my technique. To process the pictures I printed a spiral film holder for use in my developing tank at home.

I also printed a piece of “test film” that I could use to practice loading the spiral

Minox film isn’t made any more. But there are folks out there who are refilling cartridges and selling them. I’ve ordered a bunch of films from here. They also do processing and scanning if you just want to live out your spy dreams and not spend any time in the darkroom.

I really like the camera. I find the whole design ethic and the way it is used very pleasing. You get the impression that the designer (a chap with the wonderful name of Walter Zapp) thought extremely hard about the best way of doing everything when he set out to make it. I know that the pictures it makes will not be super high quality (even when I manage to get some that come out) and I’ll have to set the exposure and focus myself. But that adds to the appeal to me. The shots will be plenty good enough for small prints and screen viewing. There is a huge range of accessories available, including an awesome home developing tank and a lovely little tripod.

If you like owning devices that are just nice to have around, actually do something and have a properly interesting history you should try to find a way to get yourself a Minox. If you shop around it won’t cost you much more than a triple A video game and I think you’ll find it very pleasing. One tip if you do decide to splash out: the selenium light meters in the B model degrade, particularly if the camera has spent a lot of time in the light. So if you are making a purchase you should make sure that you have a working one.

3D Printed Camera article now in Hackspace magazine

One of the funnest articles I’ve written

The article about my 3D printed camera is now in HackSpace magazine, which you can find in all good newsagents. There’s lots of great stuff in there along with my few pages. If you fancy making a camera like this you can find the designs and lots of useful stuff here.

The camera is now light tight and works a treat

I took the picture above with the 3D printed camera. The amount of detail in the branches is very impressive.

Dealing with a Dimpled Prism

The printing is not the wrong way round. this picture was taken in a mirror…

I’ve bought another camera. This happens. I think my camera buying hobby is now slightly cheaper than golf. Although I don’t know how much golf costs. Anyhoo, I went full-on brave for this one, I ordered it from Japan. For some reason the most interesting second hand buys are coming from there. You have to be careful about import duty and whatnot, so they are not quite the bargains that they appear when you first see them. However, I thought it was worth the risk. The seller had 100% feedback and seemed to have sold a lot of stuff so I took the plunge.

The camera arrived last week. Above is a crop from the first picture I took with it. If you look carefully you can see some dimples in top part of the camera. These weren’t on the pictures attached to the listing. There were some marks on the box that indicated damage during transit. At first I decided to live with them as a natural consequence of having something posted half way around the world. But then I decided that since I’d paid for a non-dimpled prism I might as well see if I can get one. I raised the issue with the supplier and they just said “OK, we’ll send you another one without dimples”. Amazing stuff. Very pleased. If you are thinking of buying a camera from Japan I can recommend them. You can find them here.

Ancient Pictures

The battery arrived for my Panasonic Leica camera and so we took it out for a walk yesterday. The pictures turned out rather well. The resolution is not great, but colours look pretty good. I was looking back through some of the pictures I took a few years ago and they are around the same resolution (4 megapixels or so) so it turns out that size isn’t everything. The camera is great to use. It has an optical viewfinder that zooms in along when the main lens, which is rather impressive. Performance in low light is pretty appalling but it does have a flash.

There are lots of buttons and dials on the back

The only thing I really don’t like is the way they’ve used “soft touch” plastic around the viewfinder. Over the years this has turned into “sticky touch” plastic that is rather horrible. But I think I can live with that. I’m going to see what other kinds of pictures it can take.

A digital Leica of my own

I’ve always fancied owning a digital Leica camera. Like I fancy owning a Porsche. But different. Anyhoo, a while back I discovered the Leica Diglux 1, which was produced in conjunction with Panasonic in the early days of digital photography. It looked really cool, but I couldn’t really afford one of those either. Then I discovered that as part of the joint development Panasonic actually made their own version. So I managed to find one at a price I could afford. When it arrived I took a brief look at it, discovered that the battery was broken and popped it in the loft.

Today I found it again and took a proper look. It has a very rare feature for a camera like this. You can plug in a mains adapter and power it directly. I did this and it worked fine. So I’ve ordered a battery. I’m not going to get super high resolution pictures from it, but I’d love to have a proper go.