Tag: cameras

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State of the cameras update

I already did a post in February about the current camera situation. That’s still evolving, and I’m procrastinating on my real writing, so let me ramble a bit.

First, the Sony a6400 ended up going off to KEH, as did all the lenses. End of experiment there. I know people love Sony, but it just did not work for me. At least I did not get completely swindled on the trade-in. (Thanks to KEH on that.)

The Canon R10, I think I’m largely settled in on it. My only big complaints were lack of GPS and lenses. The GPS part: I was able to get the camera to talk to my phone and automatically grab GPS data and reset its clock when I change time zones. That’s handy, because I always forget, and end up with a swath of pictures that are out of sync with my phone pics. As far as lenses, I picked up Canon’s 16mm f/2.8 and Sigma’s 18-50mm f/2.8 Contemporary, both in RF mount. The 16 is very small and decent but the 18-50 has pretty much stayed on the camera full-time since I got it a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to invest in a ton of RF glass that I can’t use with my other cameras, but I also didn’t want to drag around giant pro lenses plus the adapter, and it looks a bit silly hanging off of such a tiny camera.

I’ve been shooting more film as of late. That slowed down after Iceland, but I’ve got a hoard of at least 50 rolls of film I should probably burn off. I shot a few rolls in Cambodia with the Olympus XA-2, which is such a great little camera. It’s pocketable, dead simple to use, and shoots amazing photos. I put a quick album of the Cambodia snaps over on Flickr. Only regret there is I didn’t take more pictures. I’ve also been dragging out the EOS 620 a bit more. I have the Canon 35mm f/2, which is incredibly sharp and has IS, but is a bit of a beast. Works great on this camera. Even better is when I drag out the 16-35mm f/4 L. That lens has such an amazing look when I’m using it wide open on a beach or mountain, just amazing dreamy vibes.

And yeah, I’m back on Flickr I guess. I nuked all my old albums and started fresh. There’s one album of my favorites from Iceland, but I’ve got to start over, basically. I burned a lot of cycles going back and forth on what to do about public photo hosting, and gave up. There’s not much of a community on Flickr anymore, but it’s one of the easiest ways to share out of Lightroom without sinking even deeper into the Adobe ecosystem, which I want to avoid. I’ll add more albums as I clean up and keyword old trips, which will happen most likely never, given current time constraints.

For some dumb reason, I thought it would be fun to try Kodak’s new half-frame camera, the Ektar H35N. It’s a “vintage look” point-and-shoot that shoots in portrait orientation, so you get 72 half-sized shots from a 36-shot roll. I got it, and it’s absolute junk. It’s roughly the same quality as a disposable camera, without the cardboard sleeve on the outside. Fixed shutter speed; fixed aperture; a built-in flash that might or might not work correctly. I loaded a roll into it, shot a dozen shots, and the dial was still reading S. I figured the film didn’t grab the teeth and wasn’t advancing, so I popped the door, and of course it was a dozen shots in and I ruined the roll. So this is going straight into the bin.

The other camera I got – and yes, why am I buying all these cameras? – is the Fujifilm Instax Mini EVO. This is a bizarre little thing, a “vintage looking” camera that’s really a combination of an Instax mini printer and a 2010-era 5MP digital camera. You point and shoot digitally, writing the images to a mini-SD card like you’re using an old Powershot, and you can spray-and-pray as many pics as you want without burning film. Later you review your takes, find the perfect shot, and flip the “film advance” thumb lever; the image gets printed on the mini-instant film. I’ve got an older Instax, and the usual drill is I take ten shots to burn up a pack of film, and maybe three are okay. Now I shoot twenty, thirty, and print the couple of keepers. And if I want to hand a copy to someone, I print two.

It shoots slightly better than the dumb version, but you also have a screen on the back to line up shots, instead of straining to look through a plastic-lens viewfinder. The camera also has ten film effects and ten lens effects, so you get a sort of cheap version of the Fujifilm emulation you’d find in an X100. I’d say there are maybe three of each that are acceptable, and it’s definitely not an Instagram-killer. You can also digital zoom a bit and play with the exposure compensation, the latter which is useful. It’s got a flash, too.

What is neat to me is that if you have the app on your phone, you can use the camera as a photo printer. Find a picture on your phone, and you can zap one or more copies straight to the camera and print them. This is an awesome feature, because I can take a super-sharp picture from the iPhone and it will make an amazing print on the white-border instant film. It’s both a modern not-plastic-lens shot and has the dreamy analog feel of instant camera film.

The Evo is slightly corny, and it’s slightly too big to be pocketable. Using it as a travel camera would be problematic, because it has this certain “look at me, I shop at Urban Outfitters” vibe to it, and I wouldn’t want it hanging around my neck all day, but it’s too big to stuff in a jeans pocket. Also, I’d expect any Instax film to get destroyed by TSA. “You can get them to hand-check your film” is right up there with “the airline will get you a hotel if you’re delayed” and “the free market will sort out retirement accounts.” Instax film packs are ISO 800, and the new stronger CT scanners are showing up everywhere. Of course, I could pop in a Target if I’m traveling domestically and buy some new film, or pack a lead bag with film packs. Or I guess I could just shoot away for a week and print what I want when I get home. But by that logic, I could just leave the whole thing behind and shoot on my phone.

Next two trips are booked. One is a quick one domestically in two weeks. The other is a much bigger thing in August. Stay tuned.

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general

Labor, Sweden, Cameras, School

Labor day. A day off. As always, I haven’t updated here in forever, and a lot has been up. It’s good to have a Monday off to get caught up on things, so here we go.

It is unbearably hot this weekend. I think inland east in Pleasanton and Concord, it’s supposed to be like 110 this afternoon. It’s 93 here, and we have no AC. I have all the windows closed and drapes shut right now, and will open them as the sun sets. This generally keeps it cool, but I expect tonight to be unbearable.

* * *

OK, so, Sweden. I was in Stockholm last month. I was going to write a big thing about it, but I lost momentum, and then I ran out of time. I was anxious to pick up travel again, and haven’t been to Europe since 2016, so I threw a dart at the map (actually, looked at places with direct flights) and ended up on Sweden. I don’t know anybody there, except for maybe random Death Metal people I met once in 1993 or whatever. Didn’t know what to do, didn’t have time to make any plans, and just booked the whole thing on Expedia, forgot all about it, and next thing you know, I’m on a 13-hour flight to Scandinavia.

The trip was… weird. Stockholm is a beautiful city. I loved the bullet train from Arlada airport to downtown: 125 miles an hour and so clean, you could perform surgery on the floor. The whole city was spotless, and the architecture was a perfect mixture of a 16th-century city that had never seen war, mixed with the ultra-modern development of a thriving economy. Every subway station was a work of art. I think I had four bars of 5G at all times. I went to the Westfield mall, the biggest in Sweden. 224 stores, no vacancies. Everything about Stockholm was ultra-modern and progressive and advanced and almost surreal.

But… it didn’t click for me. I think part of it is that the people were a bit standoffish. They weren’t impolite, but they weren’t entirely inviting. I guess this is a thing? Also, I’d always heard that everyone in Sweden spoke English. They do, but by default, everyone spoke Swedish to me. I do not know one word of Swedish. Maybe I looked like a native, or because I was traveling alone and not in a pack, they assumed I wasn’t a tourist. I don’t mean to go on a rant about how people in other countries don’t speak English; I get it, and it would be stupid to think otherwise. I guess my experience in places like Germany or the Netherlands is that the switch from the other language to English was more fluid, or maybe the tourism was more English-oriented. And for me to be in a place where I can’t go to a record store or a camera shop and chat, or crack a joke to a waiter, it made the whole thing feel somewhat isolating.

I quickly ran out of things to do. There are a lot of museums, but I can only look at so many 600-year-old swords, and I’m not terribly into Vikings. I walked a lot every day, but I also found that I should have planned a train trip out of town to go walk in nature. You can easily walk for ten miles and still be in what looks like downtown. Went to lots of stores, bought some records even though I don’t have a record player, and I tried some of the native food at an old-school restaurant that had antlers hanging from the ceiling and looked like a ski lodge. Reindeer meatballs and lingonberries, along with a Swedish cake that put me in a coma. Cool, but two nights later, I’m at Pizza Hut. I am the Ugly American.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it in the Denver trip, but these solo trips are really getting to me. I mean, unless I have a really solid list of things to do, I tend to drift off into depression and loneliness, and it’s never good. Add to that not speaking more than ten words all week, and this one got pretty dire. Also add to that the jet lag situation. Normally, I’m chatting with people all day on messenger and reading posts online, but I was waking up just as people were falling asleep, and my day was the dead part of the news/doom-scroll cycle when no updates were happening. The trip made me realize how dependent I am on social media and chats to stay sane on a daily basis, and I sure didn’t in Sweden.

* * *

I posted a few pictures here and there, but the trip was a bit of a bust, photo-wise. I brought that Canon 5DS, and fought with it the entire week. First of all, Sweden is at a high latitude, so the light was just weird. It felt like there was maybe five minutes surrounding noon where light was directly overhead, but otherwise I was caught with harsh shadows from either side. (Or maybe I don’t know what I’m doing, which is very likely.) But like Denver, I had a lot of trouble getting clear shots with the high-megapixel 5DS. And it’s a beast of a camera to lug around all day. I think part of it is that lens has such poor dynamic range, and it really brings out any imperfections in lenses. Even that EF 24–70 f/2.8L II I have (also heavy) is pretty iffy on that camera, and it’s not image-stabilized. Locked down on a tripod taking pictures of a building, the 5DS is a great camera. On the go, I was finding my metering was just off and I was getting too many blurry shots. I also had an EOS M1 mirrorless with me, but I’ve been saying for almost a decade how bad that camera is. Most of my best shots were with the iPhone.

Short story long, the 5DS went back to KEH, and I got a 6D Mark ii. It’s a bit lighter, a bit smaller, but just a more well-rounded camera. It’s got half the pixels, but seven times the ISO performance. It has more creature comforts like a folding touchscreen, a built-in GPS, and all the bluetooth/wifi stuff I will never use. I still need to figure out my lens situation, but the few times I’ve taken out the camera, it’s been decent. I went out to the former NAS Alameda this morning at about nine to walk early before the heat got bad, did a quick lap, and shot a few hundred shots. I think it will work much better next vacation.

I also shot half a roll of film on my old Vivitar point/shoot today. I need to shoot more film. I just checked, and between my freezer and my closet, I have fifty rolls of 35mm, and a dozen more of Polaroid, and a dozen rolls of 120. Film’s hard because I can’t take it on a plane, unless I want to deal with TSA hand-checking stuff, and there’s not enough deodorant for that conversation. At some point I will have to go hike somewhere nearby and blow through some of the stockpile, but most days, I want to go digital.

* * *

Still motoring away on school. I actually finished my ethical leadership class while I was in Sweden. On day 100, I passed my financial management test, which was my worst class so far. Lots of math, lots of terms to memorize, but it’s done. I have this quant analysis class I’m about a third done with, then econ, and then the big final project. The goal was to finish by Thanksgiving, and I might be slightly ahead of that, but we’ll see.

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general

New camera: Canon EOS 620

Because apparently I don’t have enough film cameras in the house, I got another one recently: the Canon EOS 620.

Film isn’t cheap right now, and some cameras are getting ridiculous. The Canonet QL17 rangefinder I bought in 2014, probably one of my best film cameras, costs roughly three times as much on the open market now. An Olympus XA2 you couldn’t give away for $20 back in the early 00s when digital hit could easily fetch $150 or more on the bay. Don’t even think about a used Leica.

But there’s a weird bubble at the end of the film era, where nobody wants those cameras. And that’s really interesting to me. I never had an SLR in college. Always wanted one, but wasn’t serious enough to drop the equivalent of a semester of tuition on a full kit. I could barely afford the hundred-dollar point-and-shoot Vivitar I bought in 1993. Now, these end-of-film-era cameras are going for cheap prices, maybe because they’re so similar to their digital counterparts.

Canon came out with the EOS 650 in 1987. (The EOS 620 came out a few months later, and added a faster shutter and some other minor improvements, despite the smaller model number.) The EOS was essentially a blank-slate start to an SLR, turning its back on the manual FD lens platform, and doing everything right the first time. Nikon was the choice of pros back then, and couldn’t turn their back on professionals who had massive investments in their existing lens system. Canon rolled the dice on this, and it was a good call.

The EOS 650 is built around the EF lens. EF stands for “Electro-Focus” and it’s an autofocus lens with no central mechanics in the camera itself. On previous systems, little gears levers or mechanical plungers were used between lenses and the body, so motors and other guts were kept in the camera itself. With an EF lens, there are seven little electrical contacts, and it’s all fly-by-wire. The lens contains any motors or electronics it needs to work. This was science fiction in 1987.

(Fun trivia: the very first image ever posted to the World Wide Web was taken with an EOS 650 and then scanned to a file. I’m not going to link to a Gizmodo story, but look it up.)

The EOS 650 (and 620) is also noteworthy because every EOS camera after it is based on the same essential design. I have the 620 and an EOS 750D sitting next to each other on my desk. The 620 is almost 30 years older, and the latter is a 24-megapixel digital camera that shoots video and has a fold-out screen. But there’s something in the basic design language that’s incredibly familiar with the two. Buttons are in the same place; the right grip feels similar; they both have a display on the upper right. The view through the viewfinder, the green aperture/shutter speed display below the image, looks almost identical. Obviously, one’s got no fold-out LCD screen and a little window that shows if the film is loaded, but they are very much from the same lineage.

The big attraction there is that the EOS 620 uses any EF lens from 1987 to present, and so do my DSLRs. I have a “nifty fifty” 50mm prime lens that I use a lot, and I slapped it on the 620, no problem. I’ve also got a nice 28-135 lens, and it works great on either.

(Minor nit: EF-S lenses made for crop-sensor APS-C digital cameras won’t work, and I’ve unfortunately got a lot of great EF-S lenses. Good news is EF lenses work great on APS-C cameras.)

(A less than minor nit: now that everyone’s going mirrorless, Canon’s introduced a new lens type called the RF. Mirrorless cameras with the RF mount can buy an optional adaptor and use their EF and EF-S lenses, but you can’t do the opposite. And there aren’t that many RF lenses yet. Also, this is the second time Canon’s tried this stunt. I have their older EOS-M, which used EF-M lenses, or an EF/EF-S adaptor. I’m not about to buy into this new system and have them change their mind a third time.)

Anyway, the EOS 620 is a strange shooting experience, because in many ways, it’s a normal shooting experience. It’s got a decent fast autofocus; a nice light meter; similar shooting modes and metering and exposure modes and all the usual stuff. Set it to P and shoot just like you would with a Canon Rebel. Swap to Tv or Av, same deal. Or shut off everything and go full manual. The one difference you’ll notice is the satisfying ca-chunk when you hit the shutter. It feels like a “real” camera.

There are some other advanced features I’d never expected in a film camera. The film loading is auto-everything, completely motorized. I guess my Vivitar point-shoot does this, but you drop in a cartridge, close the back, and it sucks in the film and tells you the frame number on the top. It’s fully motorized and fast (for the time), so you can set it on auto, hold down the shutter, and burn through three frames a second, much faster than simply lighting twenty-dollar bills on fire. And I never realized there were film cameras that did exposure bracketing, but if you want to shoot over/at/under a given exposure, set it to AEB and eat film three times as fast.

I think one thing that’s missing is there’s not any mystique or difference in the shooting experience versus using a modern DSLR. With a quirky camera like my Olympus Trip 35 or some vintage Polaroid, it’s so different from the typical experience, it’s like going from a Toyota Corolla to a Model T Ford with no roof. The 620 is like going from a 2015 Corolla to a 1995 Corolla. But try hand-cranking a Model T a few times, and you’ll see why a Corolla has its advantages. This won’t have any vintage vignetting or lens distortion like my toy cameras, but it will be nice to have something full-auto with no film loading drama involved.

Anyway, ran through a roll already, but let me do a few more and then get them off to the lab and see how it goes.

Related news: Kodak’s upping their film price by 25% in 2022. I’ve already started hoarding; I think I picked up 20 rolls since I heard that news.