Sunday 24 June 2012

Week 130 - Rollei A110

Rollei A110 by pho-Tony
Rollei A110, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
The Rollei A110 is at the top of the range as far a specs go for 110 cameras. It has a zone focussing Tessar lens, and a fully automatic shutter with speeds down to several seconds. It feels solidly built compared with many 110 cameras.
I'm using one of the brand new "Orca" black and white cartridges marketed by Lomography. The 110 format went out of production several years ago, and the return of the format with a new film is quite an achievement.

Saturday 23 June 2012

photos from week 129 - Football Camera

circles and spheres by pho-Tony
circles and spheres, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.

Two photos, two discs, two balls, one umbrella.

photos from week 129 - Football Camera

circle and spheres by pho-Tony
circle and spheres, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.

Three circular or spherical subjects to match the ball shaped camera.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Week 129 - Football Camera

Football Camera by pho-Tony
Football Camera, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.

The innards of the this well designed spherical novelty consist of a very basic point and shoot camera. There is a single shutter speed, fixed aperture and focus, and a built in flash.
I've loaded it with Kodacolor Gold, and will try to include as many photos of ball related shapes and objects as I can find.

Week 129 - Football Camera

Football Camera by pho-Tony
Football Camera, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
There is a major football competition happening in Europe at the moment, so I thought I would use this novelty camera this week.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

photo from week 128 - Boots disc 515

sixteen FPP followers by pho-Tony
sixteen FPP followers, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
Well it didn't turn out too badly considering the film expired more than quarter of a century ago! I used the flash for every photo to try and get consistent exposures so that a scan of the whole disc would be evenly exposed. Here are sixteen of the FPP members who attended the London meet last weekend.

Saturday 9 June 2012

Week 128 - Kodacolor VR disc film

This pack of disc film expired in 1986, so I expect the results (if any) will be pretty poor. I'm taking the camera to the London meetup of the Film Photography Podcast (FPP) Flickr group. Hopefully I can get 15 portraits on the disc.

Week 128 - Boots disc 515

Boots disc 515 by pho-Tony
Boots disc 515, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
Kodak introduced the disc camera in 1982, each disc held 15 tiny negatives, and although the cameras were very thin, the quality was predictably poor, and the format was discontinued in 1999. Long expired discs picked up in charity shops and boot sales are the only film available today.

Friday 8 June 2012

photo from week 127 - Kiev 35A

down in the woods by pho-Tony
down in the woods, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
I set the aperture to f2.8, and the focus to 0.8m, so that the foreground plant would be in focus and everything else blurred, it seems to have worked.

photo from week 127 - Kiev 35A

The Kiev 35A was quite nice to use, a little clunky compared with the similarly specced Olympus XA2, but strangely enough more relaxed feeling than the Minox 35EL that it is a copy of, but maybe I just have a poor specimen of the Minox.

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Week 127 - Kiev 35A

Kiev 35A by pho-Tony
Kiev 35A, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
I found this in a charity shop recently for £5.99, it was in its original box with cyrillic lettering and an instruction manual in Russian, together with various rubber stamped documents that often seem to come with soviet camera.
The camera is a blatant copy of the West German Minox 35A, in fact I transferred the batteries from my Minox into the Kiev to see if it worked, and it does!

photo from week 126a - Kodak Instamatic 233-X

Bunting at The Ball by pho-Tony
Bunting at The Ball, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
Some of the bunting that has appeared as part of the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations.

photo from week 126a - Kodak Instamatic 233-X

I set the aperture to the "dark cloud" setting to maximise the chances of getting a usable image for this available light photo. The full aperture reduces the depth of field, so this one is not particularly sharp.

Week 126a - Kodak Instamatic 233-X

Kodak Instamatic 233-X by pho-Tony
Kodak Instamatic 233-X, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
Because I have many more 126 cameras than I have 126 films, I decided to give another model a quick outing by tranferring the part used cartridge from the Boots Pakmatic. The Kodak Instamatic 233-X is much more basic, but it does have five aperture settings to choose from.

Saturday 2 June 2012

photo from week 126 - Boots Pakmatic 28

wedding bus by pho-Tony
wedding bus, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
The colours and subject matter somehow seemed to match the film and camera here.

photo from week 126 - Boots Pakmatic 28

Another one shot at full aperture, this time to allow me to use the camera indoors. The depth of field was quite narrow, but I just about got away with it.

photo from week 126 - Boots Pakmatic 28

wild garlic by pho-Tony
wild garlic, a photo by pho-Tony on Flickr.
I was pleasantly surprised by the image quality from this long expired film, it is very much better than my last experience with 126. The Pakmatic camera is fully manual, so I was able to use full aperture (f2.8) and the minimum focus distance, to throw all but the foreground plants out of focus.