The Film Retriever

This is a review for the Nikon F65. I base the review on the one film I shot with this camera during the one month stay with me. Another one of these car boot sale finds, this little beauty of a camera was given away for next to nothing as the previous owner had switched to digital. To me, Nikon always seemed to get it wrong with her cameras in this price category. Canon always had secured this lucrative part of the market, offering small, full featured cameras starting with the iconic EOS 1000F. The Nikon F401 was a dinosaur, the F50 did much better but messed up with the interface and was way too loud, the F55 was better – the F65 seems to have got it right (at last!). Small sized with a wealth of features offered. This has got to be a winner. Once you pick up the F65, you immediately notice the small size and light weight. Size-wise, the body has roughly the same height and width of a Barnack Leica, it is very small for an AF SLR. It is made out of plastic which helps ke...

This is a review of the Pentax Spotmatic SP. I base this review on the three months period I spent with this camera and the two test films I shot. The first Spotmatics reached the store shelves somewhere in 1964 and it was a step ahead from the previous Pentax SLR's, the H3v. The Spotmatics were very well received and gave the M42 mount a real boost. They were well made, quite elegant in appearance and very reliable. The Takumars lenses made for them were, in a word, outstanding. Not only for the build and performance standards of that time but even by today's standards. The Spotmatics placed Pentax firmly in the top 5 camera manufacturers and even with the introduction, almost a decade later, of the K-mount, the first line of the K-series were more Spotmatics than anything else. This camera has been a charity shop find; people thought that it was broken as it appeared to have been jammed. Always read the manual, it clearly says that when stopping down to take a meter re...

As always, i will start with the usual disclaimer that I am not a point&shoot compact kind of person. So this review is probably very scatty and highly subjective. I got this camera in a car boot sale, it was sold to me for £1 and got it in order to sell it on and make some money to invest on other cameras. I shot half a film with it (removed it and put it again on the Spotmatic SP) the results were good and this is where the story ends really. This camera is the update to the first Olympus mju-1, featuring some improvements to the size (this is smaller), lens (it has a faster 35 f/2.8) and features (adds spot metering). As with every compact, comes the trouble of having to disengage the auto-flash each time you switch on the camera. The lens is quite nice and contrasty, got some lovely pictures from it and it is very compact to carry it with you all the time. There are various reports on the internet about this camera mis-focusing, i didn't have this p...

I got this camera for spare parts or repair but for the £2 I paid for it, i though that i could give it a try and repair it. The problem was a massive battery leak which caused it to stop working. Luckily, the battery compartment is held in place by 5 small screws, once removed, the whole battery department comes out as one piece. I placed it together with the battery holder inside a lunch box full of white vinegar and left it overnight. Next day i rinsed it with water and let it dry. I put it back on the camera and everything seems to be working fine! The Nikon F-301 was produced as a replacement of the aging Nikon FG. It featured a number of improvements which were hot stuff in the mid-80's and it resulted in good sales as an entry level Nikon. The F-301 inherited most of the features of the previous Nikon-FG and added an integrated winder that could advance the film up to 2.5 frames per second. The fit and finish of this camera is excellent. Top plate is pla...

So, recently I ended up having loads of spare time on my hands and thought about setting up a small project to keep me busy. I purchased an OM-to-EOS adapter and decided to put 4 lenses to a test. The Silvernose Zuiko 50 f/1.4, the "Made in Japan" Zuiko 50 f/1.8, the Zuiko 28 f/2.8 and the Canon EOS EF 50 f/1.8 . And this is what I did: The set up The idea is this: No lens test is ever valid/complete without taking pictures of newspapers on walls. Living my photographic life by that motto , I went along and put some newspaper on the wall, mounted the camera on a tripod and positioned it in a distance of 3 meters away. The camera (Canon EOS 10D) is a 6 megapixel camera, set up to fine quality JPEG and ISO 100. For focusing The main setup I used the camera's electronic focus confirmation with the Zuikos and AF with the Canon. The camera was set on aperture priority. For the 28mm lens, I moved the camera forward so that the ne...

This is a review for the Pentax Z-1. This is a friend's camera that stayed with my for 3 months during which I shot one film with it. The Pentax Z-1 came out in the (now) distant 1991 and it was a very innovative camera back at that time. I remember reading about this camera on the photographic press; it was marketed as the Top-of-the-line Pentax although it clearly lacked the modularity and the build quality of its predecessor, the Pentax LX. The LX was a modular system while the Z-1 was a high-end tier camera. It stayed in production for a total of 9 years, receiving an update in 1995 which added a few more features and a more responsive AF module but nothing else. As it is usually the case, cameras of that era (early 90's) are jam packed with useless features which impact on their usability. I suppose it was kind of way to make a camera sound very "high-tec" back at that time. The Z-1 is no exception, the user manual is a whooping 120 pages to...

This is a review of the Nikon N90s which is the same as the Nikon F90X in Europe. I came across this camera while I was browsing on that big auction site for a Nikon lens for the F4s. An online retailer was selling it for £23 including postage so I thought it would be silly to ignore it. The camera is in mint condition except from a small depression on the prism that has created a scratch. Everything else is shining new! Without going into too much details about the history of this model, the early 90's where still quite difficult for the AF Nikons as they where not the fastest systems around although they were offering backward compatibility with older lenses. In 1992, Nikon released the plain F90 which was an improvement over the older F-801s but still it wasn't a match for the Canons or Minoltas of that era. The F90x came in 1995 and placed Nikon back on the AF SLR map. It was the first Nikon with an AF module which was just as good - and at times better ...

The Nikon F-601 This a review for the Nikon F-601 that stayed with me a bit more than a month before I decided to sell it on. During the stay with me, I shot one film (Tri-X) so i am basing my review on that. I got this camera for the grand total of two pounds. Everything seemed to be working fine although the previous owner had moved on to digital and did not need it any more. First impressions when you pick up the camera are good. The camera is of a very nice size and all controls and buttons fall comfortably under my fingers. I also like the form of the camera, relatively thin and substantially well made, especially if you keep in mind that this was a mid-tier camera for the enthusiastic amateur. Fit and finish are wonderful, modern cameras can be taught a lot nowadays. Viewfinder is also very nice - bright and big - there is nothing to complain about. An uncluttered interface The camera offers everything that you need and nothing that you don't. There ...