Pentax PC35AF
I bought a box full of cameras for $25 and I’m working my way through them looking for the perfect lightweight, take-anywhere camera. First up is a Pentax PC35AF. It has an excellent reputation among connoisseurs of cheap cameras for having a great 5 element, 35mm, f2.8 lens. It is small and all metal. It is solid as a rock. It has an integrated lens cover that covers up the viewfinder and disables the shutter release. It fits easily in a pants pocket. Perfect, right?
Well, the good news first. The lens is nice and sharp. It seems to expose correctly.
You’ll notice that both these shots are landscapes and herein lies the problem. It seems as if the autofocus is pretty imprecise. It is scale-focusing automatically. Scale focus is when there are like 3 set positions that the lens will set itself at. So for this candid below, the focus is off. The position of the lens is not exact enough for close candids. It is not exact autofocus, it is close but no cigar autofocus.
And close is good enough in hand grenades and horseshoes, but not photography. So in camera Survivor, I vote this one off the island. It’s too bad though, it is the perfect size.
Olympus 35SP Rangefinder Review
I recently scanned a bunch of old slides for our family. In those slides I found the first roll of film that I ever shot. I wrote about that roll here. That got me feeling all nostalgic about the good old days, so I decided to find another copy of my Dad’s old rangefinder, the Olympus 35SP.
I found it on ebay. You always take a chance on ebay. You never know if the item will match the description or if the description is just incomplete enough to leave the seller an out for something imperfect. I wanted a good shooter so I decided to pursue one that had been cleaned, lubed and checked out.
I found the one I wanted. It even included the original paperwork and box. The camera had a fresh battery and lightseals and the meter works.
Since my Dad used slides, I decided to run a roll of Fuji Provia 400 slide film through it for its first roll. I got the slides back and they were for the most part blank. I was really disappointed. Slide film can be very tricky, if overexposed it doesn’t have a lot of latitude. There’s not a lot of room for error. I had to backtrack the problem. By using my lightmeter app I discovered that the meter works, but it was off by about 2 stops.
The Oly has an automatic mode that I used for most of the shots. The meter sets the exposure. The meter overexposed the slides. The only slides that weren’t overexposed were ones that I set the exposure manually by the LightMeter app and the ones that I tested using flash. The flash is set mechanically using the guide number of the flash and the meter isn’t involved.
My next roll of film was color print. Color print film has lots of latitude. You can screw up an exposure and still get something out of it. I used Kodak Gold 200 and set it for 800 on the asa dial to compensate for the meter being off by 2 stops. This method works fine if using 200 or slower film. Unfortunately, the little Oly only goes to 800 iso, so it can’t compensate for anything higher that 200. If I want to use higher speed film, I’ll have to expose manually.
So that covers the bad. Everything was as described on the camera, but the meter was too inaccurate for slide film. Two stops overexposure probably wouldn’t have ruined color negative film, but I used slide and found the problem right away.
Now for the good. The Oly has a sharp, fast, 42mm, f1.7 lens. It is small, lightweight, quiet and unobtrusive. It is easy to use and everything operates with smooth mechanical precision. It is perfect for candid and street photography.
My uncle Lee
I still need to practice with it. I had a hard time getting the focus right. I’m too used to using auto-focus SLRs. This is good for me, it slows me down and makes me work to get it right.
Read MoreLightMeter iPhone App Review
Light is what we photographers work with. Not cameras, film, lenses or digital sensors. We work with light. And understanding light is the most important aspect of understanding the craft of photography. Once you understand light you can bring that understanding to any tool designed for capturing light.
This app, LightMeter by Ambertation, is a great tool for understanding light. It uses the iPhone’s camera to record an image, analyze it and give you options for determining your best exposure. Here is the opening screen:
The first thing you do is touch one of the camera buttons at the top. That will bring up the iPhone’s camera. You can use the touch screen as a spot meter. Anywhere you touch the screen, the scene will be metered by that area. This is useful for backlit subjects. You can click around until you are happy with the exposure and then click the shutter button. The app will then show you the image and you can either click “Use” or “Retake”. There is also a zoom bar at the bottom if you want to see what you’re focusing on, but it’s not very useful in this situation, what we’re looking for is a good exposure for the whole scene.
Once you click “Use” you are taken back to the main screen. Then you use the buttons at the bottom of the roller selectors to determine what you want the app to calculate for you. For instance in the above image, I’ve clicked on the f-number button to determine the f-stop, the aperture setting of the lens. I know I’m using 400 iso film, and I’m shooting indoors. I don’t have a lot of light. You can see the EV value under the iso roller. It’s +8 EV. I’m using a 50mm lens so I’ve set my shutter speed at 1/50th as the slowest handheld speed I feel comfortable with. The app then calculates the f-number for me. As long as I have the f-number set it will tell me the f-stop when I change any of the variables.
Let’s say that now, seeing that I don’t have to use 1/50th indoors, I decide I want to use a wider aperture for a more blurry background. Then I click the shutter speed button and change the f-stop to something like f2.8. Going down 1 stop in the f-stop will change the shutter speed up 1 stop to 1/100th. This is great because you can actually see how changes to one setting affect the other.
If you click on the lock button, all the way to the right, you can now calculate all the values independent of the photo you took. This will let you play what if scenarios. In the above image, I’m calculating different values and I’m trying to keep the EV value at +15, which is a sunny day value. I know that I have a maximum iso of 800 on one of my old film cameras and a maximum shutter speed of 1/500th. Using those values, I can see that I will need an f-stop of f22 on my lens. This helps me plan my shooting, determining that I might want to use a lower speed film instead of the maximum 800.
This is a great app for just $3. A good digital light meter can cost hundreds of dollars. Like all iPhone apps it can be hard to read in bright sunlight and some of the numbers are kind of small for my old eyes to see. But if I use my glasses and look at it in shadow, I find it a very useful tool. The only thing that would make it more useful is if I didn’t have to take a picture, but could just point it something and get a live readout of the light. I highly recommend this app if you don’t already have a handheld light meter.
Read MoreWalzflex Camera Review
Walzflex is a TLR, a twin lens reflex camera. It has two lens that are identical twins. The top lens is for framing and focusing, the bottom lens is for taking the picture. I found mine in an antique mall for $25. When I found it the focus wheel was stuck at infinity, but a little (okay a lot) of WD-40 and some slow steady turning of the focus wheel finally freed it up and I have a nifty little camera.
This TLR was made in Japan back in the 50s. It is a copy of the German Rolleicord, with a few differences. One of the nice features of this camera is its film counter. Unlike a lot of roll film cameras, you do not have to look through a little red window to get to the next picture, you just turn until it clicks. You have to push the center of the film advance to get it to click to move to the next frame.
The picture is composed through a large waist-level viewfinder. The viewfinder works well when you are in the shade and the your subject is bright. The left and right sides are switched by a mirror that reflects the image onto a ground glass that has 4 bright lines in a grid to help get things straight.
The view is a little dim and it’s a little disconcerting to try and frame the picture backwards. But it can be done if you are patient. I think that is this camera’s best feature. It forces you to be patient. Take some time to get the composition just right, take some more time to get the focus just right, take some more time to figure out the exposure.
There is no light meter in this camera. No batteries, nothing but simple mechanical goodness. A Luddite’s dream. I used an app called Light Meter for my iPhone and it works pretty good. I set the shutter speed to 1/200th to make certain I didn’t have any camera shake, the iso is set by the film I used, in this case Ektar 100. So I had the Light Meter app tell me what the f-stop should be. For the portrait below, in shade, it came out to f3.5, which is the maximum aperture of the lens affixed to the camera.
walzflex portrait
At the park, I metered the sky and then the shadows, the sky was f11 and the shadows were f5.6. I then picked a value at either end or in the middle if I wanted to split the difference to get the exposure I wanted. The aperture setting is stepless, so it can be set to any value, not just in full stop notches like manual slrs.
The nice thing about having the focus working is that I can now focus on something close and get some depth of field. The lens is very sharp and there’s nothing objectionable or particularly noteworthy in the bokeh. Bokeh is the blurriness of the image behind or in front of the focus point.
Overall, this is a terrific camera. The Walzflex is not as well known as the Yashica Mat or the Rollei which it was based on, but it is less expensive when you can find one because of it. The camera uses 120 film which is 6cm x 6cm images. There are 12 images per roll. At $5 per roll of film and $7 for developing and burning to CD, each image costs $1. The good news is that for this price I get an image that can be blown up to 30″ x 30″. There is more information on this negative than in the best digital slr. I can get a 4000 dpi scan for $5 from my local lab, Creve Coeur Camera. That works out to 81 megapixels.
At $1 per snap, it’s not a camera I would take to take snapshot memories. Digital works better for that. But for serious landscapes and portraits I think this camera is a perfect tool when I have the time and patience to get the shot exactly right. You can see hi-res images and more shots from this camera here.
Read MoreCanon Sure Shot Tele Review
Today’s camera is another thrift store bargain. I picked up this plastic rangefinder for $3 at the Miriam Switching Post, on Big Bend Boulevard in Maplewood, Mo. The Miriam Switching Post supports the Miriam Foundation which helps children with learning disabilities. I like buying my cameras at thrift stores because the money helps people and I get a cool camera at a bargain price.
So, this is just a little plastic point and shoot, right? Not much to write about. But it does have a nice 40mm focal length and fairly fast f2.8 lens that turns into a 70mm f4.9 lens with the touch of a button. It’s an either or situation with nothing in between. It also looks a lot like Canon’s current top of the line digital point & shoot, the G11. You can fool your friends and not let them know you only spent $3 on your camera. The worst part of the camera from a cheap skate perspective is that the battery is a 6v 2CR5. They are readily available, but they are not cheap. Mine cost $12. $3 camera needs a $12 battery. Ouch! The only other real negative is that this camera is noisy. It makes lots of cheap, buzzy sounds when it takes a picture or when it switches focal length.
The camera controls are fairly sparse, there is a switch on the back to set the flash to on/auto/off. There is a tele toggle that switches from 70 mm to 40mm and back again. At the front there is a button for multiple exposure and another for exposure compensation of +2 in case of back lit subjects. Other than that, there is a big red button for taking the picture. What else do you need?
So, I loaded up some Kodak Tri-x 400. The camera is able to use film from 50 to 1600 iso. The lens is pretty sharp and if you leave off the flash, you can force it to open up and you get some nice shallow depth of field. There is very little distortion or vignetting. This camera makes good pictures.
You don’t have to have the latest digital camera or a lot of photographic knowledge to make great pictures. You just need a camera and this one works just fine. You can see all the rest of the test shots for this camera here.
Read MoreCanon AE-1 Program Review
I replaced the gummy light seals on my little thrift store bargain and I had a chance to shoot with it this weekend. I should tell you up front that I am a Nikon guy. Canons have always seemed like Europeans, familiar, yet strange. I like Europeans, I just don’t have much experience with them. Same with Canons.
This particular Canon was one of the most popular cameras of all time. There are a ton of them out there on the used market. Mine is in mint condition, it looks like it was put away on a shelf in its case and forgotten. The battery still works and it seems to function perfectly. The viewfinder is bright, large and clean. There is a hand grip on the right side that makes holding the camera easy. This camera is a joy to hold and shoot with.
Looking through the big viewfinder, you don’t see a lot of information. There is no meter needle like on my Nikon FE. All you see is a red LED of the aperture that the camera recommends if you are in manual mode, or the aperture that the camera has selected if you are in shutter priority or program mode.
By contrast my Nikon FE is full of information. A little window shows the aperture you’ve selected above the viewfinder. The shutter speed is indicated by a thin black needle on the left. A green transparent needle shows you the relative value of the aperture to the shutter speed. All you have to do is get the two needles lined up and you’re good to go.
If you want to know what shutter speed you’ve selected on the Canon you must take your eyes off the viewfinder and look at the dial. If you want a larger aperture you select a higher shutter speed. I’m used to shooting in aperture priority, so shutter priority is a little like thinking in French. I have to work at it. Speaking of shutter speeds, 1/1000th is the max.
But shooting this camera in manual mode or shutter priority kind of defeats its purpose. It’s a Canon AE-1 PROGRAM. It’s meant to be shot in program mode. And in that mode it works very well. All of the exposures in program mode were spot on. You don’t have to worry about shutter speeds and apertures, just put the shutter speed dial on program and the lens aperture ring on “A” and shoot. The little Canon does everything except focus for you.
This camera compares very well to my Nikon FE. They are both from the same time period. They both have fully automatic exposure modes. They are even about the same size. The Nikon has a couple of advantages, it displays more information in the viewfinder about what the camera is doing, there isn’t as much plastic as on the Canon, it has a mechanical shutter setting so it can function even if the battery dies. The Canon has a bigger, brighter viewfinder and it is uncluttered with information making it easier to compose. The Canon has that grip which makes it easier to hold all day. Both take terrific pictures.
The little Canon is perfect for taking pictures. I took it to a pool party and I didn’t want to think about settings, I just wanted to capture some moments. This camera is perfect for that. I think when I want to do something more artistic and I need more information, the Nikon is the better choice. It offers me more information that I can base my shooting decisions on. My Nikon is a bit beat up, scuffed and dinged, so it’s the better choice for hiking over rough terrain, but this little Canon is perfect for everyday use.
