hello from marstonfoto

I think I came rather late to digital cameras. When clearing out a cupboard last week I found the first one I had. It is an Olympus Camedia C-2000, a plastic-bodied 2.1 megapixel camera from ten years ago and it is a good candidate for my camera collection. With a 3 x zoom (35-105 mm equivalent) f2.8 lens and an optical viewfinder as well as a small LCD it has an auto mode plus aperture-priority and shutter-priority modes. The storage medium is Smart Media and I found a few 8 Mb cards. It looks a bit battered but works perfectly and will produce nice 7 x 5 prints. I remember that I replaced it with a Minolta XT (3.1 megapixels and a nice slim body) but I gave that to my grandson otherwise that would also be in my collection. It was when Canon produced the 300D that I started to move to digital and the 300D was replaced with a 20D which was replaced by a 5D and I now have a 5D Mk II with some fine lenses for serious work.

But before the 300D came along I was already toying with the idea of a digital camera capable of making large quality prints. My local friendly independent photographic dealer sold me on the idea of a Minolta Dimage 7 Hi. It must have been about 7 years ago. This “bridge” camera with a fixed 28-200 mm Minolta lens with a 5 megapixel sensor cost the best part of £1,000 and my business dutifully parted with the cash. I took it to Prague in December 2002 (together with the little Olympus) and it was more than a disappointment. It was a disaster. I had read the manual, taken a lot of test shots and was going to give it a real workout. I think it must have been the most user-unfriendly gadget ever made. Because the LCD was so tiny and the typeface miniscule most of the settings were achieved by pressing buttons that had a rotary selector switch. You had to move the rotary selector to the parameter to change and hold the button down while using a wheel by the shutter button to change the parameters. There were three of these selectors in strange places on the left of the camera. The  electronic viewfinder was dim and despite having a diopter adjustment was not sharp. In nearly every case the camera’s metering system was beaten by the Prague light. It came closer to being right with the spot meter. Focus was hitty-missy but again the spot variety was the best option. It’s cold in Prague in December and batteries don’t  function too well but they lasted hardly long enough to get more than a couple of dozen (poor) shots. The Olympus was a star by comparison. So after another try over Christmas with slightly more success the 7 Hi went to live in a cupboard alongside an old Polaroid and one of the first-generation digital video cameras. Three years later I lent it to my stepson to take on a trip to Antarctica (he’s a travel agent and has a wonderful photographic eye) and it beat him too. Now it is sitting on my collection’s shelves as an example of a poor effort.

To put a digital camera into a collection (by default or by buying it specially) it ought to have a special quality (which both of the foregoing have and for very different reasons!). I don’t count the Canon DSLRs although I think the original 5D would have qualified had I not sold it to buy the Mk II. The next possibility was a Panasonic FZ-50 that had everything going for it except for much too much noise at high ISO levels but I also sold that for a good price after using it for 18 months.

The first deliberately purchased digital SLR for my collection was an Olympus E-330. This is a FourThirds camera introduced in 2006 and the first DSLR ever to offer Live View. The E-330 has a distinctive design. Instead of the standard prism, that creates the “hump” it has a finder light path that runs sideways which gives it an elegant shape. The very clear and bright LCD is articulated in the vertical plane which allows for low and high shots as well as providing a really good “waist-level finder” that is as good for candid shots as it is for portraiture. The 7.5 megapixel sensor produces good prints with the trademark “Olympus colour” and the two “kit” lenses are good. The implementation of Live View was excellent since it permitted the phase-detection auto-focus of the earlier Olympus DSLRs while also providing the contrast-detection auto-focus that is a feature of compact cameras. The E-330 shows Olympus in full creative mode.

Almost simultaneously I had the opportunity of acquiring a FujiFilm S2 Pro from a wedding photographer who was upgrading to a Nikon D3. The S2 is built from a Nikon D80 body using the wonderful Fuji 6/12 megapixel sensor and was introduced in 2002 at which time it was something of a revolutionary concept. This particular camera has a battery grip and the camera thus can run off a total of 8 lithium AA cells, certainly enough for a whole day’s wedding shooting. The S2 is not an amateur’s camera. It is deliberately aimed at the professional who needs to get high-quality shots with excellent pictorial quality and in particular the best skin-tones in the business from a fairly simple camera over a lengthy period using Nikon lenses. As such it deserves a place in any collection, particularly as its successor the S3 did not bring any startling improvement. The S5 Pro (there was no S4) is quite a different camera being based on the Nikon D200 and represents a standard of pictorial quality that in my opinion has yet to  be bettered by any digital camera. My own S5, currently used as a back-up camera to the Canon 5D II, will no doubt join its predecessor on the collection shelves in a few years time.

In 2007 I bought a Pentax K100D Super. This is a 6 megapixel entry-level DSLR that runs off 4 AA cells, has a sensor with a sensitivity range of 200-3200 ISO, in-body shake-reduction system and a dust-removal system in a metal body. No Live View, just a camera designed for taking pictures in the traditional manner. You could think of it as a modern-day Spotmatic or K1000. Pentaxes are unique amongst digital SLRs in that they support every lens that any Pentax camera could use right back to the first one in 1957. The screw lenses need an adapter, cheaply available. Manual lenses with the “auto” aperture setting will meter in aperture-priority mode but the magic of this camera is that even the oldest lenses will meter in manual mode; you set the aperture and press the AEL button and the camera sets the shutter speed. And for all lenses, even manual-focus ones, the camera will beep when the lens is focused. So you can see that the reason it is in my collection is that it can use so many of the collected lenses.

When I began this blog I did a piece on compact cameras, four of them which I still own but I think that fairly soon two of them will join the others above in my collection. I think the case for one of them to be there is pretty strong. The Fujifilm F31 fd is a really good low light point and shoot. The sensor was overtaken in the market by the rush for more and more megapixels (but you really don’t need more than 6 for a p&s) so it was the last of its kind. The other one is the Canon Powershot A590 IS which I think will be the last of its kind as well.

I think I’ve mentioned somewhere that I have a collection of manual cameras. Over the years it has grown and it now contains quite a large amount of cameras from the mid 1950s to the 1980s. All these are of the “amateur” or “enthusiast” variety with perhaps a small number of “pro” examples. At present there are 104 SLR cameras and 4 TLRs with 225 lenses, 63 assorted fixed-lens cameras, 8 interchangeable lens rangefinders and a few miniature cameras plus conversion lenses, adapters, flashguns and odd items.  I have used many of them in the past but honestly do not have much desire to use any of the 35 mm ones on a regular basis except perhaps one of the Nikons, maybe the Leica R3 or the Olympus  OM 2n and possibly the Nicca 3-F that is the oldest in the collection. On the other hand I do use many of the lenses with my Canon 5D Mk II for which I have adapters for 8 of the lens mounts. I also have a Canon EOS to micro 4/3rds adapter so that what I can use on the Canon I can use on my Olympus E-P1 or Panasonic G1.

But I do miss film. Until about 1980 I processed all my black-and-white work and while I’m not going to go back to darkroom printing I can certainly process monochrome film to negative and scan it. I don’t really want to use a mechanical SLR because my digital SLRs are so much more advanced. What I need is a take-everywhere film camera to complement my digital cameras. Thinking about  this it seemed obvious to me that I should be using a modern 35 mm interchangeable-lens rangefinder. After a lot of looking, I was lucky enough to find this.

It’s a  Voigtlander Bessa R4A, the actual one I bought, with  my Nikkor H-C 5 cm f2 lens which was on my Nicca 3-F when I bought it mounted on it. This is a wonderful lens, quite the equal of the Leica Summicron of the day and mine has survived without a blemish since 1953. This camera was made in 2008 and I bought it used but mint from Aperture Photographic close to the British Museum in London. Aperture is a great place. It’s part cafe, part shop. The coffee is excellent and you can be sure that there’s no rubbish in the camera department. Prices are on the high side of average but you get what you pay for.

Voigtlander is the oldest name in photography and nowadays it’s just that – a name. It is licensed to Cosina Co. Ltd of Japan who have been producing cameras under the Voigtlander name and the Bessa range since 1999. Cosina is a very interesting company. Started in 1959 it is still a family business in optical manufacture. It has made cameras and lenses for many of the major brands as well as its own and today makes its own Voigtlander cameras plus Zeiss Ikon and the Epson RD-1 and makes lenses for Carl Zeiss. The lenses it  makes under the Voigtlander name are for its Bessa cameras and the Leica cameras and for Nikon and Pentax. The best  way to discover Cosina is to visit Cameraquest’s site.

The Bessa R4A is a rangefinder 35mm camera of about the same size, weight and conformation as the Leica M7 and uses the same Leica M lens mount. Because it is metal it is reassuringly solid. It features an eletronically-controlled shutter with speeds of 1 second to 1/2000th and is an aperture-preferred automatic camera using a centre weighted exposure system. It may also be used in full manual mode. Designed to be used with wide-angle lenses, the rangefinder has framelines for 21, 25, 28, 35 and 50 mm focal  lengths although of course any focal length lens can be used. The large and bright viewfinder is a pleasure to use and the rangefinder is quick and easy. The Bessa range includes two other models that are available in either mechanical or electronic shutter mode and each has a different viewfinder magnification and different built-in framelines. The R2 model is the most “Leica like” as it has framelines for 35, 50, 75 , 90 mm with a 0.7 finder magnification. The R3 has a life size finder and framelines similar to the R2 except that there is a 40mm replacing the 35 mm. I chose the R4 because of the very nice wide angle finder and the wide angle frameline choice. Although I could have afforded one, I didn’t consider the Leica M7 because my budget would be for that and only one lens and I wanted a good lens collection.

Voigtlander lenses for the Leica M mount are not expensive but they are very good quality. For example versus the new Leica Summarit f2.5 range of 35, 50, 75, and 90 mm the Voigtlander equivalent lenses are on average only 36% of the Leica price. Right now I have 21, 25, 35 and 75 mm, the 25 and 75 bought used with the camera and the 21 and 35 bought new from the UK importer. My cost is just about the same as a secondhand Leica M7 body only. The single lens I would have wanted with the M7 and could (only just) afford is the 35 mm Summicron (f2) at £1,915. But I’m not going to spend that much.

With the lenses I have (including my old Nikkor 50 mm f2) a very good wide to short tele film camera system and one I have confidence in. I did not consider buying a 28 mm lens as it is a length I hardly ever use (even in a zoom range) with my full-frame digital camera for which I have 24 and 35 mm prime lenses. Actually to put that into context I don’t consider my Canon f2.8 wide primes to be as good as the Voigtlander lenses, certainly not wide open. If I do buy more Voigtlander lenses then this will be for another purpose.

The reason for this piece, which I’ve filed under “ramblings” as well as articles is to remind visitors that a Voigtlander system makes a very satisfactory return to film. My current cost is slightly under £1,500. To see all details if you are in the US contact Cameraquest as above and if in the UK go to Robert White’s site

Of course I do have another route back to film and that is Medium Format via my Mamiya TLRs  so the developing tank I bought is one that will take 120 as well as 135 film. Another story I hope.