Dutch Date - Part 5: Ricoh Singlex TLS and Ricoh 35 Flex

Every so often, I'll get really frugal and ask a couple of cameras to share a roll of film.  Though there are problems here and there, they'll usually agree.  I call these "Dutch Dates" and usually try to pair cameras with something more than simply the film format in common.  Below is a look at just one such pairing...

As they settled in to enjoy an English delicacy, the 35 Flex asked the Singlex if the battle wounds were real or self-inflicted. 

Camera Models: Ricoh Singlex TLS (1967) and Ricoh 35 Flex (1963)

Similarities: Both are 1960's Ricoh SLR cameras under their own brand name.

Differences: The Singlex is a conventional focal plane shutter SLR with interchangeable lenses, while the 35 Flex is a leaf shutter SLR with a fixed lens. 

Film Shared: Ilford FP4+, Fresh Dated 

The 1960's might be considered to be the prime period for Ricoh's camera models.  Though the Japanese camera maker certainly had a pretty lengthy run of producing some very capable, and often quite unique film cameras, the Sixties seem to be when Ricoh made a name for itself in a pretty crowded industry.  Though the maker continued creating some excellent cameras in the decades to follow, it seemed to be increasingly marginalized, at least in the US, as Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, and Olympus took the top spots in the remaining field.

Lemonade from a Lemon: The Mamiya Auto-Lux 35

At what point is a vintage camera review no longer a review?  Perhaps when your main objective is simply trying to get an image under when the camera you have in hand has only a fraction of its functionality.  I would say the following qualifies...

The Middletown Goodwill used to be such a treat.  It seemed as though each visit to this location always brought me a cheap and fun new toy with which to play.  I've gotten a number of lenses from this store, some nice sub $5 point and shoot cameras such as the Samsung Maxima Zoom 105, and even the Mamiya MSX-500.  

In hindsight, it's easy to think I had a perfect string of luck with my cheap scores at this location, but this isn't quite the case.  Even the all-star Home Run Derby hitter eventually lands short of the outfield wall.  Such was the case with this interesting piece.  

It looks like an SLR, and in fact it is an SLR, but not quite in the way that most people tend to think. 

Priced at about $8, and seemingly working at first glance, this seemed like a unique piece to add to the stable.  I had never heard of this model, and never expected to see one available in person again, so it seemed like an easy decision to snap it up while the opportunity existed. 

Mamiya's 1963 vintage Auto-Lux 35 is a camera that looks like an SLR, and feels much like the SLR cameras so many photographers know.  This is because it technically IS an SLR camera. But it has a few modifiers that make it a bit of a downgrade from even the more basic cameras in the SLR camp.

Five Dollar Deal : Canon FTb

Most film camera collectors may dream of hitting a yard sale or thrift store and finding a Leica priced for a nominal $5 or so.  I'm not even a Leica-phile, but would gladly welcome such luck in my sojourns through the various places in my area where I might spot film cameras for sale.

Still, I certainly can't complain.  I've been fortunate to encounter a few very reasonably priced acquisitions at some of my favorite local haunts.  These include the Tower 60, the Ricoh Five·One·Nine, the Olympus OM-2, and the Yashica T2.  Still, while all of these were great pick ups, I think one camera stands out as the most stellar deal that I've ever stumbled across...

Handsomely clad in all-black, the Canon FTb is a well built and handsome model for its time. 

On the way home one evening, I capriciously elected to stop in a Goodwill near me at which I had never previously seen anything film related, save a fixed focus point and shoot... once. My cynicism was obviously high, expecting it to be wasted time and effort, but as the entire effort would take no more than five minutes, it wouldn't be a huge loss.

To my sheer surprise, a pair of SLR cameras (one manual and one auto focus) were haphazardly tossed onto the shelf in the electronics section, both priced at $4.99, having just been placed there judging by the price stickers having been printed and dated on the same day.  I wasted little time in quickly snapping them up and getting in line to pay.

Overshadowed Overachiever: The Minolta Maxxum 5

A few months ago, I waxed poetic about an oft-overlooked Minolta camera model, remarking of its many charms, and insisting that it was a great sleeper find that was overlooked due to all of the attention of its slightly more capable siblings that hog the spotlight.

Well, prepare yourself for more of that.

Like a Hollywood reboot brought 30 years forward from its original setting, I'm once again here to espouse the virtues of an oft-overlooked Minolta camera model that I feel to be a phenomenal bargain in the marketplace today.  

To those of us either discovering or re-discovering film, the myriad of Minolta Maxxum models and their generational successions can be a daunting learning curve.  However, the one most novel standout from the procession of about 15 years of Minolta "Maxxum" film SLR models is the Minolta Maxxum (Dynax) 7, an amazing machine that uses an intuitive LCD display on the back to display settings.  It is a film camera that can easily be mistaken for a DSLR, and regularly fetches upwards of $100 on the used market.  It has, to this date, retained a certain degree of cult status that is only reinforced by the scarcity and price in the used market.

But for a mere fraction of the price of a Minolta Maxxum 7, a comprehensively featured alternative in this same line up can be readily found in working condition: a light weight camera excellently suited for advanced film photography on a budget. This my friends, is the Minolta Maxxum 5.

Unlike the dated look of many Maxxum line cameras of the 1980's and 1990's , the 2000 vintage Maxxum 5 presents a fairly contemporary look in comparison.

ME Superb! The Pentax ME Super

Fully aware that I have posted a lot of camera reviews as of late, I feel compelled to offer a "Cliff's Notes" version for those viewers who simply wish to skip down to the photos without guilt...

• Quirky guy buys cheap "parts only" camera in order to secure a manual focus lens.
• Quirky guy finds out that camera actually works with no seeming issues.
• Quirky guy elects to try out the camera on a whim, though worried of its performance.
• Quirky guy finds a stellar new favorite camera in this "throwaway!"

It's true, and I blame the Pentax K-1000.  And this is why.

As the proud new owner of the Pentax ZX-7 camera that can readily accept both AF and manual Pentax lenses, I got a "bee in my bonnet" to pick up a K-series 50mm lens in order to have an affordable fast prime to fit onto this modern film camera.  With patience not being my strongest virtue at this particular point in time, I scoured ebay "Buy-it-Now" listings for a cheap pickup on such a lens and found the cheapest to be around $35 once shipping was added.  I certainly wanted to see if I could find such a lens for a bit less, so I employed a particular strategy to search for a "parts" camera body that included the lens to see if I could find a worn out camera with an optically decent lens attached.

Knowing that the basic K-1000 cameras were typically running about $50 or more with lenses attached, I tried to jog my brain cells to recall what other models were made by Pentax, and vaguely recalled the LX and ME.  The LX, a known premium model, certainly was showing up at prices reflecting that premium.  However, I was able to find a some worthwhile results on my search using "Pentax ME Lens," the cheapest of which offered an ME Super body and lens for $29 total.  The seller readily acknowledged that the camera likely didn't work, but this was still cheaper than buying the lens alone, and that was really all I wanted.

I knew nothing about this camera model, but by using logic (something that one should really discard in this hobby), I figured that if a bland vanilla K-1000 typically cost at least $50 with a lens, and if an ME Super could be found pretty easily for $30, then it stood to reason that an ME Super was an older, less desirable, less versatile camera than the austere "K-Grand."  I gave little initial thought to the camera at all though - it was almost certainly dead, and even if it worked, I would hardly be elated to have a camera that was the lesser of the K-1000.

This camera can really be summed up in the one in-focus word in this photo. 

Nikon's Perfect Vision? The N2020

Bloated, ungainly, and bulbous are all words that could be accurately used to describe Nikon's autofocus SLR cameras of the 1990's.  Despite their reputation for rugged and dependable cameras, Nikon's film SLR line up in the later days of film carried a look that was admittedly unbecoming to a number of camera fans, myself included.

But it wasn't always this way.  Nikon's very first successful autofocus SLR actually looked much more like its manual focus predecessors than the bulky AF cameras that would follow it.  In fact, the camera actually had a sister model (the N2000) that looked more or less identical to it, but lacking the autofocus feature.  The 1986 AF model, known as the F-501 in other markets, was known as the N-2020 in North America, which leads to me jest that this camera was Nikon's perfect vision of its future.

I'd rarely use the term "elegant" to describe most Nikon Autofocus SLR cameras, but I certainly can appreciate such a trait in the N2020. 

My interest in the N2020 came after reading Mike Eckman's well-penned Nikon trifecta article.  I was particularly pleased to discover that he had a spare "beater" body that he'd shell out for some surplus trade bait of my own.  I'd already had some experience with the N5005 and N60 that I'd genuinely liked, but the N2020 seemed very much like my kind of Nikon, being an autofocus camera that remained remarkably true to its manual focus roots.

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.

No, Not THAT Canon.... The Oft Overlooked AV1

It's a camera of lore and of legend, that the deep pocketed (and perhaps foolhardy among us) will shell out handsome sums of money to acquire, that some film photography websites will dangle as a giveaway to boost their social media presence in an attempt to lure in more clicks, and that has become synonymous with a rather lemming-like tendency of many amateur film photographers to have a camera model that is "in."

This oft-heralded (and perhaps more often despised) model is none other than Canon's AE-1 model of 1976, a handsomely crafted machine that was groundbreaking 40 years ago, and has since found new favor as a defining instrument of many of today's film photographers. The supply and demand aspects of this model have caused its price to be higher than most other cameras of similar spec and build quality.  I've actually seen AE-1 models going for more than the more advanced A-1 Canon models.  

But Canon's stable of cameras of this era go well beyond the AE-1 model and its more full featured sibling. In fact, the coveted pricey AE-1 lacks a certain key bit of desirable functionality that is the specialty of an all but forgotten sibling in Canon's lineup: the 1979 vintage Canon AV-1.

The look of the Canon AV-1 is rather plain yet elegant, but doesn't come across as cheap like some entry level SLR's might. 

Oh Me Too? (What more can I add?) The Olympus OM2

Some camera reviews are easier than others for me.  Give me an overlooked quirky model and I can readily reveal the fun aspects of shooting one of these unique models supplemented with what little bits of interesting information that I can discover about the model and its maker.  It's a fun process that makes for a fun to write review that I always feel proud to share.

But give me a well-known and well-loved model with oodles already written about it, and I will be crippled by a severe case of writer's block.  After all, what more can I add to a conversation that has already been so extensively covered from more or less every conceivable angle.  And that is just where I am in trying to pen a fitting review of the Olympus OM-2N.

A special thanks to my Minolta 5D for producing such a wonderful vanity shot of the OM-2

The Olympus OM-2 is perhaps the most well known camera for which I have in my stable and I've yet to write a post.  On its debut in the 1970's (arguably the prime period of manual focus SLRs), the OM-2 was very well received for its compact size and easy to use feature set. Forty years later, the OM-2 is still a darling of a camera for many of today's film shooters, and has any number of positive write-ups online.  Two of my film shooting buddies, Mike and James both have favorable reviews posted of the OM-2 that can relay more about the camera's history and attributes than I can ever hope to convey here.

Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Nikon N60

Admittedly, there is much to be spoiled about for those who shoot today's digital SLR camera technology, permitting feature after feature that simply didn't exist in the heyday of film.  And while there are some film cameras from the later years that show some pretty remarkable uses of technological advances of their era, there are any number of other models that would seem to compete for the title of the most "plain vanilla camera" of their respective categories.  And if indeed such a contest would have existed for later model film cameras, Nikon's N60 would have certainly been among the stronger contenders for capturing the title of "Most Plain Vanilla SLR Camera Model."

Facing the reality of it all, the N60's feature set admittedly is a pretty short read rooted in the basic, carrying the usual suspects of a handful of "scene" modes in addition to the expected presence of Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual modes.  It seems that aside from an EV compensation button, the N60 offers nothing in the way of extras.  If the N60 were a car, it would almost certainly be the "base model" that lacks the panache of the deluxe trim package.

Third Time's The Charm: The Mamiya MSX-500

Way back in my initial film days of the early 1990's, I subscribed to a number of photographic magazines that helped enlighten me to a world of photographic possibilities, most of which were beyond my photographic reach as a result my finances.  Little did I realize at the time that the current information in these magazines would foster some false assumptions on my part that would only be disproven decades later.

Consider this: at that time, 35mm was about the most capable film format that a person of modest means could afford.  The 120 format was much more of a pie-in-the-sky for a college student at the time that I eventually broke in 1993, but even then at a modest level.  The majority of the format was in a "professional tier," and magazine ads of the times for cameras well beyond my means ran through a lineup of brand names that seemed to be namesakes only in professional medium format: Hasselblad, Bronica, and Mamiya.  

Fast forward several decades and a somewhat more grey quirky guy is peeking through camera listings, when he stumbles across an cheap and attractive Tower 20B.  In a bit of a rangefinder mood, I snapped it up, and upon digging into its history and mysteries, to discover that this camera was made by none other than Mamiya, a name I'd previously associated as a "medium format brand."

Turns out, Mamiya had a robust business in the 35mm format as well, not nearly to the level of popularity as big names like Canon and Nikon, but still quite respectable, before electing to concentrate the entirety of their efforts on professional grade 120 format cameras.  The realization of this caused a needed shift in my paradigms, but helped me put Mamiya products on my radar as an option for 35mm shooting. 

This interesting historical facet however was not enough to make the Tower 20B's shutter work, despite some of my best efforts to restore some glory to the old Mamiya product.  The camera was one of the first of mine to be relegated to the field of the "Cameras of the Dead." Strike One.

A couple of months later, while at a Goodwill, I spotted yet another Mamiya product: An Auto Lux 35, a rather unusual fixed lens SLR.  Upon testing out the shutter and seeing that it worked, I took it home for an extremely modest price.  It was only when I got home that I realized there was no consistency at all with the shutter.  It would fire at what seemed to be 1/125 of a second on one shot, only to fire at "B" on the very next shot with the same settings.  While technically, the camera could record images on film, unlike the 20B, it was certainly only good for experimentation until I could find the time to see if I could fix it. Strike Two.

Fast Forward to the more recent past and another Goodwill visit.  On entering the store, I could readily make out an SLR camera among the small electronics offerings on the distant wall, and upon approaching, I could see it was yet another Mamiya-Sekor product: The MSX-500.

At last, a fully working Mamiya for me. 

Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: The Nikon N5005

Looks can be deceiving.

This has proven itself to me on several occasions in film photography.  Some of the most basic cameras have delivered me some of my favorite images.  Kodak Retinette cameras have yielded some great photos for me, while I have a full size poster of a photo that I took using the basic Agfa Billy Record.  

This phenomenon works in reverse as well.  While browsing some bulk camera lot listings on our favorite online auction site, I happened upon a listing that contained photos of a camera that gave me the initial impression that it was built to be a professional workhorse, helped no doubt by the presence of bulbous analogue dials atop it indicative of a machine of professional standards...

Of course it didn't hurt that this camera carried a name broadly displayed vertically upon its grip that is considered to be the premier 35mm SLR brand for professional users...

My initial thought on this quick first impression that this was certainly a camera that would fetch a hefty price tag.  I dug in and looked a bit deeper at the model of interest to discover, much to my surprise, that it was readily available for under $20.  I did a modest bit of research and rather quickly discovered why this camera was so readily attainable, but yet, I was still intrigued enough to add this rather offbeat addition to my collection.  And with this, I became the owner of a circa 1991 Nikon N5005.