The Film Retriever

Olympus always knew how to make compact cameras that you carry with you all the time. Do you remember the OM series? Or maybe the legendary XA ? This one was the next step, the Mju-1 in Europe (Stylus infinity in America), is a nice little compact with sexy sleek lines that can fit into your shirt pocket. It was followed by the Mju-II, an improved version with a 35 f/2.8 lens and a spot meter and then there were numerous version with Zoom lenses and so on.. Olympus got it right straight from the start with this camera. It had everything the amateurs wanted and it was taking very good pictures. There are the usual flash modes but unfortunately there is no way to disable permanently the flash (once you shut the camera, it resets to default - Auto). Good news though: the fill in flash does not pop up in almost every occasion like the Fuji does. In the little Fuji i need to remember to turn it off every time i switch on the camera, with the olympus you might get awa...

I came across the DL super mini while i was going through a box of junk cameras on a car boot sale. It was in pretty bad condition, dirty with a small nick on the lens cover and loads of dust on the lens and the viewfinder. I asked the seller how much he wanted for it and he told me that he " has no idea what it is but i can have it for a couple of quids ". The Fuji DL SuperMini is Fujifilm's largely failed attempt to sit between the Hi-Class pocket cameras (Minolta TC-1, Nikon 28Ti, Ricoh GR-1) and the consumer range of advanced compacts (i.e Olympus Stylus Epic) and that failure is mainly due to two reasons. First of all, it reached the UK market with a delay of 1,5 year of it's release and second because of poor marketing which meant that after one year it was replaced by the DL SuperMini Zoom. It enjoyed better reception in the Japanese market (under the name Tiara) and there is an updated model called Tiara II, differing in some internal programing and an...