If you're camera geeks like me, you might find this interesting. Or not, depending on how bored you are.
Long story short(er), I've managed to get my hands on some pretty nifty tech lately.
The Alien
Last summer, a tragedy hit my family, with one of our best relatives losing to cancer. Some of what he left, though, passed into my hands, including a lovely - wanted to say little, but regretted even thinking this - camera - the Olympus iS-2
My first thought holding it,- and I've used Rolleiflexes, Kievs, Moskvas and whatnot - "It must have some lump of uranium inside! It just cannot otherwise be so heavy!" This monster of plastic and glass is big, and when I say big, it's not coke-can-big, it's Old-Dictionary-Big. And did I mention the noise? Louder than state-owned lawnmowers for sure!
The looks are even more unusual (Pictures will follow... someday... For now - use Google!) As the title mentions, it reminds me of the Ridley Scott's xenomorph's skull, and the zooming mother-of-all-lenses, especially in the dark,- it's recursion-struck nightmarish jaws. The whole thing is operated by buttons, so it took a little accustomation, but it is remarkably easy to use, those buttons and their arrangement being the only thing that shouts - make it screams forcefully - this camera's 20-year old age (Actually, since they were made for more than a decade and olympus serial numbers are all over the place, it can be of practically any age within the last two decades!)
It is really slow by today's standarts, but not really very good for slow, considered working. So what did I find in it that I couldn't in better suited machines?
Soul. 100% close up on the pictures reveals the kind of brute, thick cinematic look we (or at least weird I) love from old movies. Take a different angle, and it looks like a '90-s anime VHS put on pause. The scale of flare it creates with even the tiniest light sources in the frame is nothing but cosmic! Yet don't make any mistake - that lens is sharp as well (though only by superzoom standarts, which is why I always have something else). Whether it really is the lens or just the holding of the camera reminding me of the good stuff of the '90-s culture, all that matters is I am finally beginning to understand what's so special about lens "draw". Maybe by choice is bizarre, but is anything in me not? ^_^
The Cheap and cheerful
A Malaysian-made plastic-clad Minolta X-300s. So simple, so easy, so much my new workhorse!
Unlike older X-series Minoltas, this one isn't trying to look like metal-and-leather while being actually neither. This is honest flimsy plastic looking, feeling and sounding like such. The X-300s is small and light, much like the Olympus OM-10 I used before. Unlike both the OM and the japan-made X-300(plain), this has an aperture window in the viewfinder, and, to say frankly, I've never thought such a small detail could possibly make such great difference to the user experience as a whole, with that last bit of information slipping into the finder. The ergonomics are, in fact, pretty spectacular and my unit is one of the smoothest cameras in my life!
Nothing unnecessary. Heck, let's count the control features and even include the lens (about which later): Focus, F-stop, shutter speed, ISO, power switch, lens release, shutter release, wind lever, rewind crank, rewind switch and... That's really everything, down to the last moving thing, and everything you really need. Ever. Seriously, that's all you need in a film camera!
The main good thing about this cheap plastic thingy is, well... It's cheap and plasticy, so you don't worry about using it roughly and heavily: whatever happens - get another!
A main attraction though, is the lens it was sold (actually swapped) with: the ever-glorious MD Rokkor 45mm 1:2! Commited bunch of fans included. Well, I was joking about the ever-glorious part, but it's fans are a very real lot of people, and are all over this thing for a reason. Cheap and simple in itself, it is known for some really good image quality, at the same time staying very small (mounted on camera, it's almost shorter then the well-known Zuiko 40mm pancake, while having more features, like the non-rotating filter thread that's NOT the aperture ring. ^_^). Like the camera, the lens is very smooth, bettering modern kit lenses by some, like, order of freaking magnitude!
So, that simple. And I love it.
Long story short(er), I've managed to get my hands on some pretty nifty tech lately.
The Alien
Last summer, a tragedy hit my family, with one of our best relatives losing to cancer. Some of what he left, though, passed into my hands, including a lovely - wanted to say little, but regretted even thinking this - camera - the Olympus iS-2
My first thought holding it,- and I've used Rolleiflexes, Kievs, Moskvas and whatnot - "It must have some lump of uranium inside! It just cannot otherwise be so heavy!" This monster of plastic and glass is big, and when I say big, it's not coke-can-big, it's Old-Dictionary-Big. And did I mention the noise? Louder than state-owned lawnmowers for sure!
The looks are even more unusual (Pictures will follow... someday... For now - use Google!) As the title mentions, it reminds me of the Ridley Scott's xenomorph's skull, and the zooming mother-of-all-lenses, especially in the dark,- it's recursion-struck nightmarish jaws. The whole thing is operated by buttons, so it took a little accustomation, but it is remarkably easy to use, those buttons and their arrangement being the only thing that shouts - make it screams forcefully - this camera's 20-year old age (Actually, since they were made for more than a decade and olympus serial numbers are all over the place, it can be of practically any age within the last two decades!)
It is really slow by today's standarts, but not really very good for slow, considered working. So what did I find in it that I couldn't in better suited machines?
Soul. 100% close up on the pictures reveals the kind of brute, thick cinematic look we (or at least weird I) love from old movies. Take a different angle, and it looks like a '90-s anime VHS put on pause. The scale of flare it creates with even the tiniest light sources in the frame is nothing but cosmic! Yet don't make any mistake - that lens is sharp as well (though only by superzoom standarts, which is why I always have something else). Whether it really is the lens or just the holding of the camera reminding me of the good stuff of the '90-s culture, all that matters is I am finally beginning to understand what's so special about lens "draw". Maybe by choice is bizarre, but is anything in me not? ^_^
The Cheap and cheerful
A Malaysian-made plastic-clad Minolta X-300s. So simple, so easy, so much my new workhorse!
Unlike older X-series Minoltas, this one isn't trying to look like metal-and-leather while being actually neither. This is honest flimsy plastic looking, feeling and sounding like such. The X-300s is small and light, much like the Olympus OM-10 I used before. Unlike both the OM and the japan-made X-300(plain), this has an aperture window in the viewfinder, and, to say frankly, I've never thought such a small detail could possibly make such great difference to the user experience as a whole, with that last bit of information slipping into the finder. The ergonomics are, in fact, pretty spectacular and my unit is one of the smoothest cameras in my life!
Nothing unnecessary. Heck, let's count the control features and even include the lens (about which later): Focus, F-stop, shutter speed, ISO, power switch, lens release, shutter release, wind lever, rewind crank, rewind switch and... That's really everything, down to the last moving thing, and everything you really need. Ever. Seriously, that's all you need in a film camera!
The main good thing about this cheap plastic thingy is, well... It's cheap and plasticy, so you don't worry about using it roughly and heavily: whatever happens - get another!
A main attraction though, is the lens it was sold (actually swapped) with: the ever-glorious MD Rokkor 45mm 1:2! Commited bunch of fans included. Well, I was joking about the ever-glorious part, but it's fans are a very real lot of people, and are all over this thing for a reason. Cheap and simple in itself, it is known for some really good image quality, at the same time staying very small (mounted on camera, it's almost shorter then the well-known Zuiko 40mm pancake, while having more features, like the non-rotating filter thread that's NOT the aperture ring. ^_^). Like the camera, the lens is very smooth, bettering modern kit lenses by some, like, order of freaking magnitude!
So, that simple. And I love it.
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