The Film Retriever

This camera was not on my plans but I came across this advert on the very popular selling site, it was local to me, so I ended up buying it. I paid only £60 for it, most of it was money gathered from selling other cameras featured on this site. Any single digit Canon camera is something special and I always kept an eye open for a EOS-1n. The EOS-1n is a fantastic, reliable workhorse that many people still enjoy using. The EOS-1RS is an exotic variant which utilizes a pellicle semi-transparent mirror that does not lift up during exposure. The result is a ½ to 2/3 of a stop reduced exposure as the 1/3 of the light goes towards the viewfinder. The advantages of the pellicle mirror are: a) no blackout during exposure, you can still see through the viewfinder and b) reduced noise, vibration and shutter lag. Once you pick up the camera, you realise that it is a big camera to hold. It is taller than the Nikon F4s and heavier although the mass distribution is much better. This r...

The story will sound familiar as it has been reported time after time on this blog but it applies to this camera too. I spent a considerate amount of time, back in the very early 90's trying to buy, what I thought, my dream camera that I could afford and there were many cameras that temporarily fitted this role before I ended up buying that Practika BMS. The Minolta X-300 and its “S” variant was one of them – broken-hearted after I realised I could not afford it (second hand market was not that big back on those days in Greece) I settled down with the Practika. I few months ago, I found this X-300 in a charity shop for lunch money so I went ahead and bought it for old time's shake. Minolta was always making beautiful cameras, even the budget models like this one, are well made and with good fit and finish. The plastic top cover could easily pass for metal and despite being the X-700's small brother, it has everything you need: Manual and aperture priority and even ...

Another short review/initial impressions of a camera that unfortunately was not in working order, so I did not put any film in it. This camera was suffering from the dreaded 'Dead aperture magnets' problem, something that marred the first generation of AF cameras from Minolta. When you pick up the 9000 you immediately understand that this is a very well made camera. Although the outer shell is plastic, there is a lot of metal underneath it and fits well in my hand. It has a rubberised grip which unfortunately it suffers from deteriorating and chipping away but this does not impact on the camera's functionality. The camera accepts a motor drive but without it you have to manually advance the film after each shot. I find this quite nice really, especially if you like your camera to be quiet – and the 9000 is a quiet camera. The shutter/mirror vibration/noise is kept to a minimum. The camera offers the 4 most important (according to me at least) modes; manual, ap...

Cameras in this blog are a bit like buses – no camera for months and suddenly four in a row. Two of them were given to me as non working examples so I did not bother putting any film in them but I am happy to share my initial impressions of them. One of them is this Miranda Auto Sensorex EE. If you have not heard of Miranda before, you are not alone. Many people haven't. The thing is that Miranda cameras are exceptionally well build, with high quality optics and features which pro cameras of their time (that is 60s' and 70s) would be envious of. Take this one as an example, it comes from the very distant 1972 (before the OM-1 era) and offers: Dual light metering including spot ! Removable prism. Totally mechanical shutter. Speed priority automation. These sound like old school kind of staff but find a better equipped camera of that time. And not only that, the camera is very well build, it weights 930gr with lens on – that is Nikon F2 category – and...

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...