Another Fire Hydrant

You just never know where you will find an interesting photo-op. This little jewel showed up right outside the Steakhouse where we had dinner after my son's graduation ceremony. Although I had multiple cameras with me the Pentax K-1 begged to take the picture so I obliged it.

Fire hydrants are one of my favorite subjects, especially when they are as colorful as this one or discovered against an interesting background, as this one is.

Nikon Coolpix A vs. the Olympus Stylus?

Yes, I am really going to compare one of the latest, greatest, state of the art digital cameras with a twenty year old 35mm point & shoot film camera!

First of all in spite of all the hype the Nikon Coolpix A is really just a point & shoot camera with an APS-C sensor. I have a Nikon Coolpix P-300 that I truly love which is comparable except for the sensor. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a very nice camera and the APS-C sensor is not to be discounted. It has in fact become the standard by which everything these days is judged. The resolution and overall image quality of these “cropped frame” sensors has improved to the point where they can and do in fact compete with “full frame” (35mm) film images. They have taken over as the “go to” camera for most photographers although generally in a DSLR body rather than a compact point & shoot body like this one.

The truth remains however, that any good 35mm film camera with a sharp lens (like either the Olympus Stylus or the Canon Shure Shot I recently blogged about) can produce images just as good if not better with greater dynamic range than this digital powerhouse and the reason is simple.

The 35mm negative is substantially larger than the APS-C sensor and therefore capable of gathering significantly more detail, plus being larger it can be viewed or printed much larger without corresponding loss of detail. This all assumes high resolution scans or high quality prints of course.

All these arguments are clearly observable in the images and undisputed by almost everyone who has ventured into the film vs. digital debate. I haven’t even gotten into the more contentious issues like whether film generally captures and displays more dynamic range than digital sensors or whether there is some undefinable character that is missing from digital captures.

The bottom line for me is that it makes more sense to spend less $10 or less for a fine used 35mm point & shoot camera like the Olympus Stylus than it does to spend $1,000 for a Nikon Coolpix A and then spend hours in post processing to make the photos look like they were shot on film (like so many folks do).

 To be fair, shooting a film camera does require paying for film and processing and these digital cameras can do some things film cameras cannot, like shoot at very high ISO’s and have instant results. Still, you can pay for a lot of film and processing with the $1,000 saved by not buying the Nikon Coolpix A, and film shooters have been managing without shooting much beyond 3200 ISO for a long time.

Would I like to have Coolpix A? Absolutely! But that’s not a fair question. I would like to have at least one of everything out there. For now though I’ll keep shooting my Stylus.

By the way, the photo above was taken at night with the Stylus shooting Kodak Portra 400.

Pinhole Mania Strikes Again!

The plastic fantastic Holga pinhole camera is amazing. Yeah, I know it’s a cheap plastic camera and this is only my second roll of film through it but just look at the results!

These are two of the shots I took on April 27, 2014, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD). Because the day was mostly overcast and threatening rain or worse I loaded the Holga PC up with the very reliable Kodak Portra 400. Exposure for both pictures was about 5 seconds.

I haven’t decided which photo to submit to the WPPD website yet. I will likely wait until I get the negatives back in a few days from The Darkroom and do a high-resolution rescan for the one I submit.

Holga 120-PC Pinhole Camera

In honor of Worldwide Pinhole Photography day I decided to post a photo from the first roll shot through my Holga 120-PC Pinhole Camera last year. I received it for Father’s Day, shot one roll of Kodak Portra 400 with it and put it aside. Finally this weekend I pulled it out again for Pinhole Day.

As you can see it provides surprisingly good images, much better than my home made cardboard 35mm pinhole camera that I used for the first two Pinhole Days I participated in. I just finished shooting another roll of Portra 400 in the Holga 120-PC and sent it off to the Darkroom for processing. 

The image of the bridge shown above is the way into a local arboretum. The pinhole camera is unique in that it has an infinite depth of field and presents everything in focus.

Stay tuned until next week when I will be hopefully showing off my latest pinhole creations. 

Don't Forget - It's Pinhole Time Again!

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is this Sunday, April 27th, 2014.

Check out the link below to get in on all the action and be sure and take some pinhole pictures to post and share with the world.

http://www.pinholeday.org/

Canon Sure Shot A-1/WP-1

Canon pretty much invented the auto-focus point & shoot cameras with the release of the first Sure Shot back in the late 1970’s. I bought one of those to compliment my “Go-To” Olympus OM-1N and remember thinking at the time that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. 

The little gem shown below is one of the last versions of the Sure Shot line before the digital revolution and this one also happens to be water proof. 

I was looking for some kind of water proof 35mm camera to give to my soon to be daughter-in-law for her birthday. She has a nice Pentax Q-7 digital but I wanted something she could take on the honey-moon and use by the pool or beach without having to worry about ruining it. I ran across the Canon Sure Shot A-1/WP-1 at www.Shopgoodwill.com and was able to rescue it for a very modest amount of cash.

I cleaned it up, checked the seals, put a fresh battery in it, and took it for spin with a roll of Fuji color 200 film.

The huge bright viewfinder was my first surprise. What an awesome view! Next was the crisp clean action as the chunky, well-built camera impressed me with it’s quick and precise autofocus, crisp shutter, and instantaneous film advance. And, as if that weren’t enough, the super sharp wide angle lens delivered a set of dazzling images that were so impressive I didn’t even notice at first that the local CVS pharmacy’s One-hour Photo Lab had scanned them all in backwards. 

Here’s an image of the camera borrowed from the Canon web site (since I don;t have it anymore).

Oh, and I forgot to mention the built in flash which did about as good a job as any such flash can. The mantle shot above was taken in my living room using the on-board flash unit. I rescanned it correctly (not backwards). No one but me probably would have noticed but it would have driven me crazy every time I looked at it on the blog. Besides, I’ve wanted to play with my new Epsom V550 scanner since I got it for Christmas. I will be blogging about it too as soon as I’ve used it enough to have something to share on the subject.

At any rate the Canon Sure Shot A-1/WP-1 is definitely a keeper that I am sure will be enjoyed for many more years to come.