Throwback Thursday

Another $3 camera and a nice cold, sunny day so I took the camera to the zoo!

I was attracted to this junk bin find purely by the brand, Ricoh. Here is a quote about the company.

“Although perhaps better known for its office equipment than its cameras, Ricoh has in fact been producing cameras since 1936, during which time it has garnered a loyal hobbyist following, and was one of the early innovators in the digital camera market. By the 1990‘s the company had become well-known for producing luxury enthusiast-level 35mm compacts with high-quality optics. Today Ricoh offers a range of stylish enthusiast-level compacts (plus a couple of water/shockproof models) and the unique GXR system, which uses interchangeable lens/sensor units in place of the usual bayonet lenses.”
(http://www.dpreview.com/products/ricoh)

My first impressions of this camera were not so overwhelming. Plus it didn’t have a zoom, not the best choice to test at a zoo. This example was clean enough, but the light seal by the film window disintegrated on touch. I put in a new one and as you can see I did a bang-up job…not. With the back closed you can’t see what film is in. It is light tight though.

The camera is from 1994 and uses 2 AA batteries which is handy, it is splashproof so would be good for street photography on a wet day. Not much else to say really other than it has a fixed focus lens and does have a panoramic feature. I will not be keeping this one as I have others I prefer more.

Here are some shots from the day. There were a few of my friends that I will not be posting here, except the very 80s one with the post coming out of his head. We did this on purpose to go with the camera mood.

As you can see, it performed very well in most conditions, it even took selfies 🙂 The expired film didn’t do too bad either. Not bad for a 20-year-old camera and a 10-year-old film.