Tag Archives: film

Yashica Zoomate 70

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As the BBC is saying right now, this was filmed before the current government guidelines.

I am not sure where I got this camera, I think it was in a job lot of stuff I bought a while ago, but it was a Yashica so I thought I would try it. I put in a half used film that I had already exposed in another camera. I didn’t think the other camera worked so if I had to pay for processing, then at least there was a chance of a few photos on the roll.

This point and shoot from early 2000 is nothing special, a regular compact camera with an average zoom lens. You can find lots of technical details here. When I loaded the film I had to shoot passed the previous exposures. On pressing the shutter with the lens against my leg to avoid light, the shutter stayed open for quite a while. I was surprised by that. Looking at the technical details I saw the longest exposure was 2.8 seconds, so it took a while to get to the 25th shot and I fogged the first photo by lifting the camera and looking through the lens to check.

I finished the roll on the journey to the photolab. The walk to the bus stop and the walk through Leeds. Looking at the photos now I am struck by the fact the few people in the photos are sort of isolating themselves. That is common near an ATM anyway. In the UK we call these “hole in the wall” or “cashpoint”, though signs say ATM.

Well, it did a pretty good job. Compared with the Konica, they are a little softer, less vibrant. The difference is the lens of course and the manual focusing. Both cameras had the same job to do with the Konica requiring a bit more input from the user…just a bit.

As for this camera, it is fine and cheap. If it was your only choice then its not a terrible one, quite good for wandering around on a bright day…when you get the chance.

Panorama Wide Pic

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When I first started writing this review I put “Halina” in the title, I was sure it was a Halina camera. Then, taking photos of the camera I realised it didn’t have a brand name on it. The Halina name was on the bag that I had put the camera in. Plus a fellow blogger had sent me this review about the same camera. He obviously love it.

Mine is at least a nice red version

This isn’t a true panoramic camera as you can see from the photo of the exposure frame. It just masks the top and bottom of the 35mm area. The camera has a fixed focus, a fixed f11 aperture lens. There is a single shutter speed of 1/125th. There is no flash, nothing but a shutter button really.

I put in some Fomapan 100 with the intention of pushing it to 400 in development. All toy cameras work better with 400asa film, or so I have found. I was only going to take half a roll as I had just tried some panoramic photos and wasn’t too interested in this camera. I just have some spare time so I might as well test some cameras.

Then I took it out when I went on walks to local supermarkets.

Oooh so many people about, not.

As with the review I linked to, I found the minimum focusing distance to be quite long, My father was at least 6ft away, but he is still out of focus in from of the cash machines. The film did have some light leaks on it which can be seen in the photo. That could be due to the damage to the film spool side of the internal area which can be seen on the photos. Easily fixed with some tape. Other than that there is not much to say about this camera. A cheap plastic toy. It was fun, but not something I will put another film through. I prefer the digital camera if I am going to try panoramas again.

Konica FP-1 Program

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When I tidied out my photography stuff I found two lenses that I no longer had a body for. One was a Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.7, I remembered using it with another camera, I must have sold the body but kept the lens because I liked the quality of the photos it produced. I could sell the lens, but what if there was a cheap body for sale? I am not yet at the point where I can’t not look, so I did. And there was this camera, very cheap and with a very cool looking strap. It was worth it for the strap alone.

I thought it was a nice looking camera…initially…but hey, wait a minute…where are the dials to choose stuff? The speed mode, aperture mode, manual mode…any mode come to that?

There weren’t any…not one single solitary mode, nada, nothing. But what about the viewfinder? Was there any information displayed in there? Nope, just a green or red light. It turns out this camera was a program only camera. You have no choices. You can just focus the camera and press the button. You leave the lens on AE and let the camera do absolutely everything. There is no override and no information about the choices the camera has made. Well, that sucks.

The camera was originally produced in 1981 and discontinued in 1983, a really short run. If you read that link you will see that, not only is this a program camera only, it only chooses from 3 apertures. Those apertures are 2.8, 5.6, or 11….WTF! So there was absolutely no point in having the F1.7 lens that I had attached. What a pile of poo. Once I had realised all of that, I was glad I didn’t pay much and had basically bought it for the price of the strap. At least the body would act as a lens cover.

I doubted I would ever use it…but then I got bored and decided to go to Bolsover Castle. I could get in for free due to my membership of English Heritage, so why not wander around with this camera…trying cameras is another hard habit to break. It was a nice day, a break in the rain/snow, but not a break in the wind. Ooooh it was cold.

Given the lack of features, the camera was very easy to use, point – focus – check for green light – shoot – repeat. I used part of the film and then transferred the remainder to another camera, a real point and shoot that I will post about later. So how did it do? It sounded slow, I didn’t have any faith at all…

Well, holy moly..it worked and worked really well. In all the lighting environments the camera chose a perfect setting, of course it did because cameras are actually suppose to work. But it works so well. It was not fooled by backlighting, lots of sky or high contrast. Even in fairly dark situations it worked. And I still love the lens. I would be tempted to get another, better body for it…if I didn’t have lots of similar cameras and am reducing my collection.

As for the other lens I found without a body… I decided not to buy another SLR. I have already sold the lens to avoid the temptation. So I am getting a little better at not buying stuff I don’t need.

Minolta Vectis 20 – APS

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This is the last APS camera I will ever try, seriously. I sold all the APS film I have so I couldn’t try another even if I wanted to. Though, selling the film is a whole other story due to an unscrupulous eBayer who decided to open a case just to see if they might get a refund. And now they are blocked.

Anyhow, here is the camera.

This crappy, yes I assumed it would be a crappy little camera was produced from 1996 and you can find all the technical details you need here. As this is a typically basic point and shoot aps camera, I decided to try some more double exposures. Increasing the exposure by two wouldn’t hurt the expired film.

First I took the camera around my local park and then to Conisbrough Castle. In retrospect, I wish I had trusted in the film and the camera a little more. The results show that the camera and the film performed quite admirably. In its day I think this camera would have been perfect as a sling-in-your-bag or a fun night out camera.

Here are some of the results from the test and experiment.

They didn’t come out as well as the last aps double exposure trial I tried, but I do like the castle photos.

As for APS film, I am sad that it isn’t more readily available. It is slowly getting more and more expensive, and harder to find. As they are slowly getting used up this trend will only continue. I am happy to get out now. At the moment I still have the IX7, but only for memory sake as I no longer have a Canon lens to attach to it or any APS film. If that camera sells then so be it. Goodbye APS and thanks for the fish.

Chinon CE-5

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As part of my new year plan, I am selling most of my film cameras, but not this one. I have decided I love Chinon cameras. I love them. I love this one. I love that it is unpretentious. It is not one of the cameras on the hit list of the trend setters. It rarely or if ever comes up on lists of must have cameras. But here it is, a cracking little camera, as is the CE4.

It is light, easy to carry around all day. It looks great, a very traditional looking SLR. It is simple to use. It has manual and aperture mode with a clear viewfinder display. And it takes Pentax lenses, but the Chinon lenses are great too.

The camera has an ISO range between 25 – 3200 and takes two LR44 or SR44, which is very convenient.

I loaded it with some expired FP4 and wandered around my local area. Then rushed home to develop the film and… was disappointed. Not with the camera, but with the film. It was just so dense and grainy, something was wrong. I suspected the fixer. I developed another, different film after this and that showed the same issues. I changed the fixer after that and all was restored. As for the camera I still loved it. Here are a few shots from the weird fix film.

But I already loved the camera and wanted to try it again. So I loaded it with a roll of Arista Edu Ultra 100 and this time added a yellow filter. I headed to Sheffield for a wander with an amalgamation of two film groups I attend. I bought the film on my last trip to Japan, but after reading a couple of reviews I found out it was Foma 100 in a different package. I didn’t notice any blue tints in the chemicals, so I am not sure about that.

Anyway, walking around Sheffield was a little painful. Firstly I fell over at the station before the meeting time…twice, due to black ice. That was brilliant for my already very tender knee. Then we headed out of the back of the station which leads up a steep hill, also brilliant for my knee. For me, it was a whole new area to explore as I always go out the front of the station. Maybe I should try this tactic in the future at other stations. On this trip I was determined to take a few portraits. I used to take more when I first started out taking photos, but rarely do so now, unless it is of a member of my family.

The others in the group had the same idea and one asked a very interesting character for a photo and he said yes. I didn’t want to have the same shots as everyone else so I asked the person sitting next to him. He also said yes, Yatta! Later a group of teenagers were doing wheelies near a fountain. I had no reserves about asking them to do more so we could practice panning. They were very compliant, actually they went a little overboard.

Anyway, the camera coped beautifully the whole day and I was very pleased with the results. At one point one of the other group members asked me about it as he had noticed the red symbol on the front. He thought is was a Sony and wanted to know what film cameras Sony made, nope Chinon.

Here are some of the shots from the outing.

These are some of my favourite photos I have taken on film recently. Who needs an expensive camera 🙂 Not me…especially as I am selling them off.

Developing E6 Slide film in Black and White chemicals

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Hello again, I have a few posts in my draft folder so I feel more at ease now. Plus the days are getting longer and I have been able to get out. My knee is healing so all is well in the world. That being said I think I will start posting a few things again. And this post is exactly what it says on the tin. I wondered what would happen if I developed some slide film in black and white chemicals, if the title didn’t let you know that already.

When I research the idea every post said, don’t be daft, why would you bother. But I want to bother, because I can be bothered. So in the end I decided to do it anyway. I took a few shots and developed them in Kodak d-76 1:1 concentration for 16 minutes at 18 degrees. Then fixed it for 10 minutes. There were no recipes out there so I decided to try the same times with a longer fix as when I tried c-41 in black and white chemicals. I also over exposed the film by a few stops for good measure, it was expired film so it couldn’t hurt.

So what were the results?

The negatives were very dense due to the film’s base layer. The end results were very much like the C41 results. Oh, I didn’t see the point in de-hairing them. So at the end of the day, with lots of light and lots of contrast, the shots are interesting-ish. Nothing worse than some very old black and white film I have tried before.

It was an interesting experiment. One that I doubt I will repeat.

Pentax P30n

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Someone asked if I was still making reviews. Well, I still have quite a few cameras on my shelf and can’t quite kick the addiction yet, but this is the last one in my draft folder. It is also the last of the P30 cameras, definitely my last of this series. I have already tried the other, very similar ones, namely the P30 and P30t. On looks alone, I prefer the P30t. On use, I don’t really have a preference. While trying this version I decided to try a film experiment of sorts.

According to this site the only real difference between the P30n and the P30t are the looks. On this website you can find all the technical details you might need for this 1988 camera and some personal stories about the camera.

As I said I decided to try an experiment with this camera. I already knew how the camera worked and how it felt, so this time I focused on the film. Recently I have been trying to process my own slide film, but it has been coming out a bit funky. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong and it didn’t seem possible that I had the wrong chemicals, but the scans were coming out very psychedelic. A friend suggested I send one film away to be processed by someone else to see if the results were the same. I thought this was a good suggestion so I did. I loaded a roll and walked around my local area, it was a dull day so mostly the camera was set to F1.7 and 1/60th. I sent the film to John Salim Photographic, who did a great job. The film was expired, as is all my E6 film, but the film returned did look better than when I processed it myself. It was purple but not psycho. So then I got down to scanning it and…

Return of the psycho! What is it? Ok Occam’s Razor…simplest solution. It must be the way I am scanning them. I did some research and found this article. It basically said, turn off all colour correcting software as it is fooled quite easily. So I did that and scanned the film again.

With all options set to “none”

So the colours are better, but they are not amazingly sharp. I do find that sharpness is an issue with the canonscan though. One day I will get a camera set up like explained in this video.

Anyway the camera worked well and I have solved my wild colour issue, though I have to say I do quite like it in certain circumstances. It works very well for grafitti.

Here are some more shots from the rest of the film. Note the little library is now much less psycho.

Basically, you can’t go wrong with a Pentax SLR.

Coronet D-20

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Now, even though I just posted that my plans for my photolife are changing, I still have a few cameras with films inside. So I will be posting more reviews for now, but they will slowly die off.

One of the reasons for the change is because of cameras like this…I hate this camera. In fact I can honestly say I haven’t tried a coronet I do like. So this will be the last one I put a film in. I do have a few more, but due to my new plans for the future, I will not be wasting film in them.

My dislike of this camera is based purely on the viewfinder. I couldn’t see a bloody thing. It was clean enough, but you have to look through it at a specific angle to see anything. I rarely hit that sweet spot. So my test roll shot results were based purely on luck. I don’t think photography should be down to luck.

The one good thing about this 1950s camera is that it can take 620 or 120 film. That is handy, as I didn’t have to respool the film before loading it. Side loading by the way. To be honest, I also kind of liked the ratchety wind on mechanism. It clicked as you turned the knob, but a clicky knob can’t save it in my eyes.

The days I used the D-20 were dull so there was no need to use the built in filter for bright days. Oh I have to say, the plastic strap was equally annoying. It never quite went straight and was uncomfortable around my neck.

Not my favourite results. The one on the bottom, the field, was supposed to be of a cow, but I couldn’t see it in the viewfinder.