12 Aug 2010

WhooHoo! New Camera!

As some of you may know, I really like the Olympus Trip 35, hey I even started a separate blog just for that little wonder of a camera! So when I came across a close relative of the Trip, I jumped at the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. It is my first range finder camera and is the fantastic but scarce Olympus 35 DC, a fully automatic camera with manual focusing. (Isn't that a contradiction of terms?)


Like all range finder cameras the focusing is very easy and accurate, and the shutter is just amazingly quiet. The shutter speed and aperture is taken care of very effectively by the camera and leaves you free to just concentrate on getting the picture,


As with the Olympus Trip 35 it sports a Zuiko lens, but this one goes all the way open to f1.7! Yeah, now I can shoot in the dark! And if you look at the pics below you can see that the lens is every bit as sharp as the Trip. The main thing I  like about this camera is that the focussing is a lot more accurate than the Trip, but then it also becomes a little slower to use and shooting "from the hip" isn't quite as easy either.






All these photos were taken on expired but frozen for years Kodak Ektachrome 64 slide film and scanned on my CanoScan 5600F scanner. The only thing I did was correct a slight blue cast, resize and brand before posting. No sharpening required, boy this thing is sharp!

If you can get one grab it, as far as I can see there were far fewer of these manufactured than the Trip 35, so they might be harder to find.

Some links featuring the Olympus 35DC:
Photo.net
Flickr
emuu.net
Camerapedia

1 Aug 2010

A Cityscape


This is a view of Pretoria, my hometown, from the hill on the southern end of town that has Fort Klapperkop on the top.