Film continues to go the way of vinyl [big image]. Just days after I told you lot that I had bought another Minolta film camera, Konica Minolta announces that it will leave the camera business all together.
The camera I take with me everywhere is one of the smallest 35mm SLR cameras Minolta made. Male reviewers both raved and ranted about it. It’s amazingly flexible, dirt cheap, and has a solid metal body; but the controls aren’t suited to big hands. I keep it in a little rucksack that my sister bought me. With fast film in it I can take street shots like this one without being noticed, but, as I was rambling to a friend on the phone the other day, the real masters of this kind of photography go completely retro and use rangefinder cameras, of which the most famous are those made by Leica. They aren’t just small and light; they’re amazingly quiet. But you really need to know your stuff to handle one of them with confidence. There are also photographers who are skeptical about the claimed advantages of going old-time.
The guys on this site, however, do know their stuff and do believe the hype. They make their case with some lovely galleries of magical images they capture with their anachronistic tools. This, for example, is a beauty, but some of my other favourites [note that links might be slow to respond] are here, here, here, here [Not Safe For Work], here, here, here [Not Safe For Pete Townsend], here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I went looking for 1600ASA black-and-white film in the “Photographic” section of eBay today, and my search pulled in twelve hits. One of them was film for sale. One was a collection of “1600 Amateur Girlfriend/Wife” photos on CD.
I think this is a golden age for analogue camera fanatics. I already have my Pentax S1 and my Fujica ST801 for paltry sums — two great lenses and mechanisms. My local “Cash Converters” (ie fancy pawnbrokers) have Nikons of every vintage, Canons, Pentaxes. And dozens of really big tele lenses.
I have to steer clear.
People take pix not machines. The machinery is not really important. But isn’t this fixation on analogue cameras a strange Brit phenomena, similar to those oddies who used to drive around in the (half timbered) Morris Travellers? Got you there, made you a bit diferrent, but was it really worth all the fuss? Try a nice new digi camera, photoshop and a decent printer.
Epson made a digital rangefinder that took the Leica M and L lenses, but as far as I know it didn’t take the rangefinder world by storm. The second funniest thing I’ve ever seen at a photographic trade show was the Leica rep explaining their (HUGE) digital model to a crowd of white-haired gents.
I’ve always wanted a Leica, but could never justify it, given my abilities.
Try retrophotographic.com for your film. I got a load of 127 glass slide mounts off them, and the service was pretty efficient.
Konica-Minolta’s problem was that they were years too late with their digital SLR, and in the meantime, all their customers who wanted to go digital went and bought the Nikon D70.
Sir,
Looking at the picture linked to the word “vinyl” in the above post, what strikes one is not so much the old vinyl but the object protruding from under the straw hat that is hanging on the wall. What on earth is it and what does it say about the use to which that room is put?
Yours sincerely
Sigmund Freud
The major reason to like the Leicas are the fantastic lenses.
Dave F: your little Canon something 50 digital camera is not digital state of the art, to put it mildly. Its tiny sensor can’t be expected to match the resolution of a piece of film hundreds of times larger. Try your experiment with a 12 Megapixel digital SLR…