Monday, October 31, 2011

The Perfect Digital Camera – Part 2


Sorry about the interruption but I was so excited when I saw the great pictures taken with the Brownie 127 last week I just had to share it with you guys. That’s really what this blog is all about after all.

Some of you are probably wondering why a blog trumpeting the advantages and joys of shooting film would be dealing with the subject of digital cameras at all. While I do love film photography and intend to keep on shooting film as long as there is film to shoot I would be foolish to ignore or deny the reality of digital photography. I have already admitted that I like the idea of digital photography, it’s just that digital photography, is so “soulless,” and I have yet to find a digital camera I like as well as my film cameras. Hopefully that last one is about to change.







After much research, meditation and rumination I finally ordered a Nikon P-300 like the one shown above.  The price was right and this little camera seems to have everything I want in a digital camera, except a viewer of course. It does profess to have a feature to brighten the viewing screen in bright daylight and if I can figure out and remember how to work it without having to consult the manual each time that may help.

It is clearly small & compact, easy to carry with me everywhere I go. It has a 12 megapixel sensor. The optical zoom equivalent is approximately 24mm to 100mm with a 2X digital zoom. The lens is a fast f1.8 and there is a pop up flash.

I never could locate one of these in the stores but I did find and tinker with a Nikon S9100 which seems very similar in many respects and I found that camera to be very intuitive and easy to operate. Hopefully this one’s buttons, dials & menus will be similar.

With a little luck I will be taking pictures with it soon and I can post some and let you know how my decision turned out. I’ve had one reassuring experience already. The day after I ordered the camera I stumbled across the latest copy of Consumer Reports and thumbing through it found that they had rated this camera a top choice! Hopefully we’re both right.



Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Old vs. New


I just couldn’t resist. Here’s a couple pictures that I think say a lot about photographic technology’s evolution and why I still shoot film.

The first is a picture taken with my 60 year old Kodak Brownie 127 using Kodak Portra 160 film and processed by The Dark Room.


As you can see in this first picture my wife is taking a picture with a Pentax ist D, DSLR.

The second picture is the one she was taking which is a picture of me taking the first picture.


Now if I hadn’t said anything about it could you tell which was taken with the new DSLR and which was taken with the 60 year old Brownie?

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

60 Year Old Camera Takes Great Pictures


A month or so ago I talked about the Brownie 127 I received for my birthday. The Brownie 127 is a really cool looking old camera that was made and sold mainly in Great Britain back in the 1950’s. That makes mine probably 60+ years old.

I finally got a chance to run a roll of Kodak Portra 160 through it and get processed. The results are amazing. Here’s just one of eight great pictures taken with this 60 year old camera.


The Kodak Brownie 127 takes eight pictures on roll of 127 film. The plastic lens is fixed at f14 and the shutter is set at 1/50 of a second. I have to give some credit to the Kodak Portra film which I am slowly coming to believe is one of the best films Kodak has ever produced and The Dark Room, as usual did a great job processing it

If you want to see what this little camera looks like check out my September 13th blog post.