chrism
Well-known
I was always well-disposed towards Olympus. My first proper camera was a Trip 35, and I was dreadfully jealous of my brother's OM-1. For reasons now forgotten, my wife bought a used Pen FT in 1977, and travelled quite a bit with it. She was probably impressed with the idea of film costing only half as much as usual. She had an ever ready case, the 38mm/f1.8 and a 150mm/f4, which was far from the most useful second lens, but we were young and knew no better. Years later I resurrected the camera, with a battery adapter and some zinc-air hearing aid batteries, along with a 25mm/f4 lens (roughly like a 35mm on normal 135 film). I didn't find the meter very accurate, and I read how the viewfinder was darker because of the light being diverted to the meter. So I obtained a Pen F (it has a ground glass focusing screen but it is still easier to focus than the dark microprisms of the FT's screen), and used the same handheld meter I'd got used to using with medium and large format cameras. It's smaller and lighter than a Leica M, and you would need a microscope to see the differences in the results from the lenses.
In the last few years, I have had the chance to explore something that dates me dreadfully - avoiding grain. When I was young, wide aperture lenses were beyond my means, so faster film was the answer, and that meant grain. No one liked it then, rather than today's attitude that grain shows you're a real photographer using real film. We did what we could with so-called fine grain developers, but the answer to all this finally came by accident, when C-41 process B&W films were sold. Since these films have extremely fine grain (after all, they have minimal amounts of silver just to activate the dyes), and can be developed at various speeds in conventional B&W developers with next to no graininess, I recently thought of a torture test for this combination of film and developer. Why not use the Pen F, which will instantly double grain size given the half-sized negative, and rate the XP2 Super at 1600 just to make it difficult? I make no claims for the value of the photo, but it does illustrate that half-frame and this film can make decent pictures. This is a triptych of half-frame XP2 Super at 1600 developed in 1+49 HC-110 for 18 minutes:
This one was FP4, before I discovered XP2:
And this was Kodachrome 64:
So what am I to do with this now? There is a meterless Pen F with a bright viewfinder and a microprism focusing screen, and it's the Pen FV. One is coming. There is also a shockingly expensive portrait lens of 60mm/f1.5. One is coming. Madness is a real thing, and maybe some of that is coming too. We shall see. Maybe the madness has been a long time coming: here is a 4x5 photo of some of the Olympus cameras I owned:
In the meantime, do please, post some half-frame photos here.
In the last few years, I have had the chance to explore something that dates me dreadfully - avoiding grain. When I was young, wide aperture lenses were beyond my means, so faster film was the answer, and that meant grain. No one liked it then, rather than today's attitude that grain shows you're a real photographer using real film. We did what we could with so-called fine grain developers, but the answer to all this finally came by accident, when C-41 process B&W films were sold. Since these films have extremely fine grain (after all, they have minimal amounts of silver just to activate the dyes), and can be developed at various speeds in conventional B&W developers with next to no graininess, I recently thought of a torture test for this combination of film and developer. Why not use the Pen F, which will instantly double grain size given the half-sized negative, and rate the XP2 Super at 1600 just to make it difficult? I make no claims for the value of the photo, but it does illustrate that half-frame and this film can make decent pictures. This is a triptych of half-frame XP2 Super at 1600 developed in 1+49 HC-110 for 18 minutes:
This one was FP4, before I discovered XP2:
And this was Kodachrome 64:
So what am I to do with this now? There is a meterless Pen F with a bright viewfinder and a microprism focusing screen, and it's the Pen FV. One is coming. There is also a shockingly expensive portrait lens of 60mm/f1.5. One is coming. Madness is a real thing, and maybe some of that is coming too. We shall see. Maybe the madness has been a long time coming: here is a 4x5 photo of some of the Olympus cameras I owned:
In the meantime, do please, post some half-frame photos here.
