Triple Take Thursday 1: Plates, Film, and Digital

Variety is the slice of life.  While I continue to shoot traditional film stocks lately, I've been dabbling in some other mediums at the same time.  I've become increasingly involved in the use of dry plates coated by Jason Lane, that have allowed me to use a number of cameras designed for such plates, while also improvising their use into a many other roll film cameras as well. 

I'm also doing a little bit more with digital cameras, between early models with decent specifications and more recent ones with more bells and whistles.  While it's no replacement for a film camera, it does make a pretty easy tag along on my film (and now plate) photo outings.  

Here and there, as I shoot some plates, I'll be supplementing them with the same scene shot on both film and digital to allow for an interesting comparison between the blue sensitive media of the plates, the panchromatic or color media of the film, and one or more settings on a digital camera that may mimic or differ from that of the non-digital media.  

First up in a scene taken in Patterson Park in Baltimore.  I'd known for some time that there was a small lake there, but had never taken the time to visit it until earlier this week.  Along with me for my visit were a Kodak Recomar 33 plate camera that shoots 9x12cm size plates, a Kodak Signet 35 kindly lent to me by Mike Eckman, and a Nikon J1 that I recently picked up.  As a gentle drizzle began to threaten, I managed to shoot a closely focused scene along the banks of this small pond on all three cameras to compare.  

Kodak Recomar 33: 9x12 J. Lane Dry Plate developed in HC-110 and printed on Ilford Multigrade IV RC paper.  Shot at f/8 for 4 seconds

Pentaxonomy: The Pentax ZX-7

It was with mild interest as I mused back upon my photographic past to realize that prior to my "digital hiatus" beginning in 2001, the camera maker from which I had shot the most different models of film cameras was in fact... PENTAX!

Among my earlier film camera experiences was shooting staff K-1000 cameras as a photographer at my college yearbook in 1991.  Later, when I became the editor of this yearbook, and enabled with some funds to replace the "K-Grands," I selected the P-30T model for offering an affordable choice with auto-exposure.  Years later, when I was a Bus Operator, I snapped up an IQ-Zoom 80 QD to carry with me as a means to occasionally document (on slide film!) the buses, routes, and settings I had the privilege of driving.

When I got back into film shooting however, Pentax had been conspicuously absent my "wants list." In each of my earlier examples of using a Pentax, the camera model was selected more for a pragmatic aspect of cost benefit in a pricey camera market than it was selected for the shooting experience.  The K-1000 simply was there already, and I didn't recall liking it much.  The P-30T performed fine, but always felt a bit cheap.  The IQ-Zoom was actually rather likable, and produced some decent results in favorable conditions, but seemed easily thrown by any varied lighting situation. Simply put, despite my interest in photography and sentimental ways, I was at a loss to conjure up nostalgia for shooting a Pentax.

You would at least think that given my exposure (pun intended) to the brand throughout the 1990's, I would at least be pretty well versed in "Pentaxonomy" but even this fails to ring true. Despite being a Popular Photography subscriber for most of the 1990's, I paid little in the way of attention to the Pentax brand, though much of this is due to the maker rarely getting much in the way of prominent attention at the time.  While Canon, Nikon, and Minolta stole the show with their many new releases, Pentax's line-up generally sat humbly in the backdrop.  There were some occasional feature stories on some of their more innovative releases, but most of the buzz tended to focus on the industry's "Big Three."

Or at least that's how I remembered it.  But then as I was digging through some online copies of Popular Photography from 1999, I spotted an advertisement that suddenly spurred a memory for me:

Suddenly, I could remember being the twenty-something "Quirky Geeky Guy with a Camera Magazine" seeing this very ad back when it first was featured.  I was totally enchanted by the idea of the light up dial featured on the ZX-7 at the time, but had not long beforehand picked up a Canon EOS Elan II-e, so this Pentax and its novel arrangement showed up just a hair too late for me to consider at the time.

But... here I was remembering this in a new era where the film cameras that cost several hundred dollars a decade and change ago could now be had for barely more than lunch money.  I stole off to ebay, found a nice looking ZX-7 for under $20 and pulled the trigger with little hesitation.

The Pentax ZX-7 has a fairly basic look that is hardly intimidating to the amateur photographer.

Admittedly, I was making a buying choice based on little more than a novelty feature, but it wasn't a huge investment.  Looking through what I could discover in documentation seemed to support that this Pentax could provide a new and welcome shooting experience for a person like myself who had been largely used to a much more manual experience.  I certainly looked forward to giving it a try.

Point and Shoot Pity Party Part 1: The Olympus Infinity Zoom 200

This is Part 1 of a recurring series on basic point and shoot consumer cameras, the details of which can be found here.

Olympus is a camera maker known over the decades for engineering some of the most compact cameras of their types.  Among the most well known of these are the svelte OM series of SLR cameras, but also the PEN half-frame cameras, XA and 35 series rangefinder models, and the modern micro 4/3 mirrorless digital cameras.  Thus, the rather blocky Olympus "compact" camera below caught me by surprise when I spotted it for sale in the thrift shop display case.  It was certainly among the earlier of autofocus point and shoot cameras, but was it any good?  I was about to find out. 

Name: Olympus Infinity Zoom 200

Format: 35mm

Type: Autofocus Point and Shoot 

Year: 1989

Features: Multi-Flash, Spot Focus, Auto Portrait Mode, Date Back, concealed removable remote trigger, Limited filter use possible with optional proprietary attachment.

Lens: Olympus 38-90mm f/4.5-6.4, 7 elements in 7 groups.
Battery: 2 CR-123 Cells.
Manual: http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_support_manuals.asp?id=972