Minox 35 VS Rollei 35

It's been a while since I last posted anything, I almost forgot how to log in!! Anyway, this is just a filler until I come up with something more interesting. It is a reply to a ten year old question posted on a photo forum:

Michael DeFrancesco , Oct 25, 2009

I can't believe this post has been running for 10 years!!! Surely, Daryl, you must have bought something by now!! Like some of the other responders, I have several Rollei 35s, Minox 35s and specifically the GT-E. The Rolleis are by far the most solidly constructed with the least amount of problems. On the other hand, most of the Minox 35s that I've had have had shutter failures. Cleaning the contacts has never fixed any of the Minox shutters on my cameras. I will say that these have all been the dreaded "L" cameras, that is EL, PL, ML....I think my AL, surprisingly enough, might still be in working order. I have most recently purchased a "new" old stock first generation (circa 1993-1994) GT-E and so far I am quite pleased with it. As far as the image quality, I don't think there is any real noticeable difference between a Rollei 35 and a Minox GT-E, at least not with print film. If you like the Rollei but want something a bit lighter consider a Rollei 35B (also known as B35) or a 35 LED. There is also a 35C, but it is somewhat rare and too expensive for a user camera. These all have the cheaper, supposedly inferior quality Triotar lenses, but again the practical difference in picture quality compared to the other lenses is slim to none. If you want reliability go with a Rollei. But at the same time, the Minox has a cleaner more pocket friendly design that is hard to resist even though logic and past experience tell me to stay away from them! The bottom line is they all have their merits and their pit falls, that's why I have several of both brands. I guess that is what makes a camera collector!

Minox GT-E photo

Ogunquit As Seen With a Minox B

End of Summer

The end of Summer is a sad thing. The shadows are getting longer. The days are shorter and the beach chairs are empty and overturned.

Cash For Clickers!!!

There should be a "cash for clunkers" for old junky cameras program. Lets face it, old cameras use up too much film and batteries. Film contains precious silver, which I think I recall back even 25 or 30 years ago talk about recovering silver particles after development in order to preserve the precious element. Also, dumping chemical developers, stop bath and fixer into the water system is really bad for the environment. Since we moved into a house with a well and a septic system I no longer develop film.....but mostly I'm too lazy. Actually I gave it up long before we moved!

Point and shoot or "idiot" cameras which seemed to be ubiquitous during the 80s were big battery guzzlers. The reason is because everything was controlled electronically: autofocus, autoexposure, autowind (that was a big power drain) and autoflash, another battery guzzler. Cameras in the older days, prior to the 80s, had more manual controls, so they were less battery dependent or not dependent at all. Many of them used the button batteries, which were originally made with mercury...not good for the ecosystem, especially fish and anyone or anything that eats fish. Most, if not all of these cameras can still be used today with silver oxide or some other non mercury battery. The nice thing about the Rollei 35 cameras is that not only they are a well constructed, classic design but they will function without a battery, as long as you can guess or otherwise determine the proper exposure. Believe it or not, the little sheet of paper that used to come with the film with the pictures of sun and clouds is really quite accurate! Some old cameras used a selenium meter which requires no battery. The drawback with the selenium meter is that it is supposedly not as accurate as the CDS (cadmium sulfide) meter which replaced it, however I have not noticed any difference with the selenium meters and cameras that I have. In fact, I think some of them are more accurate and even more importantly, more consistent than some of the CDS meters. The other bad thing about selenium is.......you guessed it, it's bad for the environment. But that's only if you throw it out. I'm saving the environment because I refuse to throw out my very nice Minolta Autocord twin lens reflex with a working (the last time I checked!) selenium meter from about 1959.

Getting back to the "cash for clickers" program as I would call it if I could be the camera czar (I'd rather not)....there really are a lot of 1980s vintage idiot cameras. They seem to show up mostly at tag sales and Goodwill stores. Gone is the day when you might find a Konica C35 or maybe a Pentax K1000 at one of these places, I've all but given up looking. The 80s is the new retro, but as far as common point and shoots it is in bad taste. That is not to say the 80s were bad, only the real cheap throw away products of that decade were ugly. Most of the music of the era was actually great except for "throw away" songs like Disco Duck. The ugly ducklings illustrated in this post are, yes, I'm afraid to say, from my own collection. Almost all of them were given to me by friends or relatives and they are the Disco Ducks of cameras! In fact, I think a Donald Duck camera would be more interesting and collectible than any of these. Check them out below along with my comments:

This Keystone 126 cartridge camera actually dates back to the sixties. In fact, I could dig out some of my old Ansco, Agfa and Kodak Brownie cameras from the 1940s and 1950s if I really wanted to do a history of ugly point and shoots, but I don't think I could stand it!

I don't know if people had trouble seeing back in the eighties, but these type of cameras with big viewfinders were quite common. By contrast, the digital cameras of today either have very tiny peephole viewfinders or none at all. Notice these also lack any other features like a zoom lens and were really quite simple. Were people with poor vision also simple?

As the 80s progressed toward the 90s a zoom lens was often added to the point and shoot for a few dollars more as evidenced by this Minolta Freedom Tele. This helped contribute to the camera's clunkyness and bad looks in general.

Canon has always been a big player in any camera market be it consumer or professional. Here is a slightly smaller more pocketable point and shoot which is almost not bad looking.......for the 80s.

Nikon, a big camera name, famous for its great SLRs had to get into the point and shoot market, although the One Touch was really pretty decent and not bad looking. It had a nice lens too.

Even early digital cameras such as this one from HP in 2001 were not immune from the ugly duckling syndrome!

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood

This is a short post about a photograph that I did not take. The photo you see here (left) is a surrogate. I wish I did get a picture, kind of like

Ivan Albright's painting "That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do" (right)!

Maybe I still can, but in the meantime, had I taken the photograph you would be able to see a rather healthy, handsome, large coyote which lives in our neighborhood. To quote the sales pitch from a well known chain restaurant I would say he's "eatin' good in the neighborhood"!

There are plenty of turkey, jack rabbits and deer in the area to feast on.

He prances around in broad daylight, rather nonchalantly, like he owns the place. It drives our dog, Dexter, absolutely nuts. Is he jealous of Mr. Coyote's freedom or just mad because he is on our property? One day the coyote slowly walked along the driveway about 12' from Dexter's window as if to purposely let him know he was there. I thought the glass would break from Dex's ear piercing bark!

"TRANSPARENCY"

I'm really getting tired of the newest buzzword in politics, "transparency". I’m not going to get all political here. This is not that kind of blog…… yet. Maybe as I keep trying to digress from cameras and photography I’ll get there someday. But for now I’ll leave political commentary to the likes of Charles Krauthammer and to be fair, Maureen Dowd and many others.

The camera – photography thing does seem to becoming a kind of spring board for other topics, which I kind of like. But, to me, transparency meant color slide film or color slides such as Kodachrome and it's under appreciated kid brother, Ektachrome. (Why couldn’t someone write a song about a Canon camera and Ektachrome?) I always had a greater fondness for Ektachrome. As Kodak itself suggested, Ektachrome had stronger blues and greens and was therefore more suited for landscape and outdoor photography, which is what I like. I still refer to crystal clear blue sky, bright white puffy cloud, green grass kind of days as “Ektachrome days”. The kind of day you want to keep in a jar or, on a roll of film and save it forever. Taking pictures is like keeping a moment in a bottle. Besides, Ektachrome could be developed at home almost as easily as black and white, my other film of choice, Tri-X, to be exact. I remember getting quite a thrill seeing color positive film coming out of the stainless steel Kindermann tank for the first time. It was as magical as seeing a black and white print emerge from the Dektol waters beneath the deep red light of the dark room! Although, Kodachrome is no longer in production, Ektachrome still survives under the alias of “Elite Chrome”. Elite Chrome uses the same E-6 developing process as Ektachrome.

“If your not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”. I suppose like a lot of shutter bugs I’m partly to blame for the demise of Kodachrome. It began way back in the 1970’s long before anyone ever heard of digital photography, actually it hadn’t really even existed yet. I used to experiment with different slide films such as the also now defunct Dynachrome and Agfachrome. But one of the films that kind of stuck with me as a good substitute for Kodachrome was Fujichrome. It was very much like Kodachrome but had a faster speed of 100 ASA (yes, it used to be ASA before it was changed to ISO) instead of 64 ASA and it was probably a little cheaper. Later, like everyone else I shot more digital pictures, which are actually very similar to slides or transparencies especially when viewed on a computer screen. I always liked the idea of a large backlit transparency (which is the term usually used when referring to “chromes” larger than 35mm slides) as opposed to a projected image on a screen. I used to think it would be neat, albeit extremely expensive, to make 11”x14” transparencies and mount them in light box frames! That is essentially what we have now with iPhoto and many other viewing programs for looking at digital pictures on a computer monitor. For something more portable, the iPod has made the photo album all but obsolete.

Everything is becoming obsolete. Here’s another quote from the 60s: “The times they are a’ changin’”. Frankly, I was much more upset at the loss of Nabisco Royal Lunch Milk Crackers than the demise of Kodachrome. There is simply no replacement for the Nabisco Milk Cracker. It is sorely missed, especially at breakfast time! Another favorite of mine that has gone by the wayside is Aspergum.

Aspirin and gum combined – what a concept! I swear, it could kill a cold! So much for living in the past. For now I’ll just have to shoot digital with ISO settings, eat Graham Crackers, before they’re gone and chew raw aspirin!.......well, maybe vitamin C anyway.

The House That Jeter Built

I finally got to the new Yankee Stadium recently. Even though we (my brother in law, “cousin in law” and my son) breezed in and out and didn't spend much time in the stadium other than watching the game I did manage to get a few “grab shots” with my digital point and shoot. As I was looking at them the next day on my iMac I noticed something interesting in one of the photographs that really added a nice unintended touch. I shot the picture rather quickly from the outside of the stadium as we briskly walked back to the parking lot. Through one of the windows in the lower left area of the picture can be seen the number 2. Anyone who is a baseball fan can tell you that the #2 Yankees jersey is worn by Derek Jeter. The old Yankee Stadium which still stands right next to the new one like a tired, but seasoned antique bookend is often referred to as “the house that Ruth built”. I don’t claim to be the first person to suggest that the new Yankee Stadium is the “house that Jeter built” but the photograph seems to make the suggestion on its own merit. I converted the image to black and white for two reasons. First of all there wasn’t much color in the photo anyway and secondly I wanted to convey the classic feeling that is in the architecture of the stadium and in the history of Yankees. In fact, my son Joe and I have a bunch of baseball cards called “Yankees Classics”. They are cards of all the great Yankee baseball players printed in black and white. The new Yankee Stadium has a very classic style of architecture as many buildings in New York and elsewhere dating back to the old days of the 1920’s - 1940’s. Architecture Review from the New York Times April 2, 2009 says “Yankee Stadium is the kind of stoic, self-conscious monument to history that befits the most successful franchise in American sports.”