Curiosity, my Olympus camers(s) and vanilla ice cream

rsv1cox Sat Jan 27, 2024 3:55 pm

So, I went to the store this morning for some OJ and also came home with vanilla ice cream. I have been lusting for warm Brownies with a scoop on top. I'm not a cook and neither was my wife so we always liked to see my Mom arrive as she was a great cook and made most everything from scratch. I use store bought mixes.

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Also, my Olympus C3000 cameras. Mark gave me his old one years ago and got me hooked. 90% of all the pictures that I have posted here have been taken with one. Old type SIM card but with enough image stablization to compensate for my shakey hands. Marks gave out so I bought another, and another. ebay, cheap some as low as $5.00. I have seven of them, most with a problem. I got five of them working again this morning but two for sure are gonners.

So I took one apart out of curiosity. Lot's going on in there.

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Took those pictures with one, repaired. Poor lighting, but properly lit they take great pictures.

Any cooks here, camera people?

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GallopingGhostler Sun Jan 28, 2024 3:48 am

Bob, for a long time I made my camera system based on the Yashica FX-3, which was a basic 35mm manual camera and the underdog Yashica lenses, plus a few others. Yashica, Japanese make had decent optics, but was an underdog because of the name. But, it produced professional results. Made do with a Yashica to screw lens adapter, and acquired older decent optic lenses to expand the camera system.

Then 35mm fell out of vogue 25 years ago. Did wedding photography for the cost of the film and developing only, for the local congregation of a small church I attended in Gallup NM back in the 1990's. We had a good number of folk with a Native American background that were "common law marriages", they were making babies and had families, but never officially tied the knot. Pastor was encouraging them to complete the legal side, so I helped by doing wedding photos. I even made a multi-flash setup with two high powered Vivitar battery operated flashes and my homemade PVC stands to put those 7 feet high, to provide modeling in faces, crude, but it worked.

One couple, they reimbursed me for $400 worth of Walgreens photo lab developing costs, $1 for 5x7, $2 for 8x10, $5 for 11x13. After this, then I would simply give them the negatives, so they could reprint as they desired. I was glad to do this, because the pros would have charged them up to a couple thousand bucks for the same quantity.

Plus, I found out that if Walgreens lab in Albuquerque got a decent set of negatives, they went out of their way to provide decent prints in return. I mentioned that to a pro, and he thought it was a good, innovative idea, because he was paying boo-koo bucks with a pro lab and had to pass on those costs to the customer.

So, I was able to build bridges to people, even taking outdoor portraiture photos by using my 80-205mm telephoto, use a wide aperture throwing the background way out of focus with a sharply modeled facial shot of them. Gave them to people as gifts.

Now, I use a Fuji-film digital bridge camera with 50x zoom, image stabilization and built-in flash, it is like a small SLR, bought it maybe 10 years ago for $109 refurb (looked like new) for only $109 or so from Amazon. New they were about twice that. Still have it, it is a good all around, even using for photos here until I got my most recent cellphone a couple years ago. The Fuji also has macro capability, used it for close-up details on both engines and aircraft here.

That cellphone is an LG-V20, has decent camera optics for good photos. Got it also refurb from Amazon for under $120, but looked like new with new warranty.

Verizon wanted like $500 (over time) for theirs, why I bought it outright from Amazon. I contacted Verizon, got the personality sim-card for it from them for free. Been using it for a couple years now.

rsv1cox Sun Jan 28, 2024 3:32 pm

Sounds like you really got into it George and put your talents to good use.

I have taken pictures all my life. Parents gave me a 110 camera one Christmas that started it. I have forgotten what my first 35mm was, probably point and shoot but I graduated to something better. I liked it because I could get photos printed to "landscape" which I used a lot.

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Mark is always trying to get me to use my cell-phone camera. Look........you just hit this button and you can email it. Hershey bar photos. Not into it.

Above photos taken with one of my defective Olympus camers which won't delete so I have to use one of my other camers to do so. Makes it interesting. Smile

cstatman Sun Jan 28, 2024 7:36 pm

my father bought me a 110 for my 10th birthday.
he worked for Eastman Kodak as a sr . Chem Eng. I was pretty certain he could do anything.

We also drove from our hometown to Arlington, TX, to visit Six Flags over Texas. Just me and him. It was an awesome day. He let me eat any candy i wanted, we rode the "big kid" rollercoasters. We watched the shows. awesome

then? I dropped my brand new camera. the case broke and it may have shattered into 700thousand parts. (in my young mind)

Pop found every part, and reassembled it on a park bench. A maintenance worker saw this and handed my dad a roll of electrical tape to seal it up. We then walked to a vendor stand, and ought a new roll of 110 film, positive my existing roll was exposed and junk.

There were brand new, 110, exact same cameras as mine for sale at the shop. Dad told me something that sticks with me today

"why buy something new, when you can fix what you have"

I used that camera for the next 12 years. He tried to get me into 35mm, but I was resistant. the 110 was easy, and took great snapshots.

still have it, almost 50 years later.

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GallopingGhostler Sun Jan 28, 2024 8:05 pm

I no longer have my 110mm basic no frills camera that used a blue one-shot flash bar instead of a flash cube. prior, I had a Kodak 110 similar to yours Charles, bought it in the base exchange in the 1970's, used it through Basic Training and Advance Individual Training (AIT). the other came later.

Tossed the generic away may be 5 years ago. Gave the Kodak 110 away, think maybe my sister. Now there's no longer film for it as far as I know, and except for nostalgia, had no other value. Even my 35mm stuff is now not used, because although they still sell 35mm film, mostly Fujifilm, I can do darkroom stuff on digital easier through more advanced photo editing software, plus much faster turn around time.

Even at one time back in the early 1970's, had my own color processing kit for developing 35mm Kodak Ektachrome film. Once dried, would cut the frames and mount to 35mm cardboard mount slides.

Black and White was easier to process, do iteresting things with. Infrared B&W could do some amazing special effects, ditto with color. I did have a Durst M-301 color enlarger, but found that the difficultly and cost with making color prints combined with getting good color balance, it was cheaper just to take good pictures and have the photo labs to the processing of both film and prints.

However, prior to inexpensive digital scanners, I would use my close-up lenses and in bright sunlight, use my camera tripod stand with legs shortented, with two sheets of plate glass to hold the photo I want to crop and enlarge, take old photos from the photo album, and re-shoot these, then get the enlargements processed.

Thus, I was able to make larger prints of wallet sized photos for my mother of prints over 30 years ago into 5x7's and 8x10's.

Curiosity, my Olympus camers(s) and vanilla ice cream George11

This may look a little crude, but it is a rescan of a small wallet size print enlarged. I have the original photo still (this was a baby photo of me with my mother from the mid 1950's in Japan). I gave the enlargements that I cleaned up from my home photo lab back in the 1970's.

rsv1cox Mon Jan 29, 2024 8:12 am

Ok, Charles and George, you got me going.

For the life of me I could not remember what my go-to 35mm camera was. I finally found it tucked away in a bag full of old two-way stuff. Pentax, loved that camera, took hundreds of pictures and 35mm slides. Pictured with the worst camera that I ever bought. A Nikon Cool-pix. Takes poor pictures in either auto or manual modes.

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I had the good sense to remove the battery. Three of my Olympus camera buys had corroded battery compartments.

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In my looking-around I found this old Brownie 2A that somehow has survived. My Mother probably took pictures with in back in the 1920's. Contrasted with an Olympus C3000 with multiple printed circuit boards worthy of the Space Shuttle.

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I love that picture of you and your Mom George. I will never get to Japan, but it has been one of my desires. I travel through The Smithsonians "Great Train" rides on their "Bullet" train excursions. Beautiful country and beautiful people.

cstatman Mon Jan 29, 2024 9:28 am

awesome pic of ya

they DO still make 110 (not kodak)
https://shop.lomography.com/us/film/110-film

GallopingGhostler Mon Jan 29, 2024 8:55 pm

Charles, I didn't know that someone still makes loaded 110 film cartridges. Those were 1 shot devices, send it in and the lab breaks the plastic open, extracts the film, then processes it.

Because the negative size was a fraction of 35mm, best one could do with the basic 110 "box" camera was 5x7's. Any larger and it was too grainy.

At $9.00 a pop for a cartridge of film, is a little pricey, but I guess still sufficient for those few who still want to make do with it, not to mention also developing and print costs.

One camera I bought at an on-line auction was an NOS Yashica A TLR (twin lens reflex) camera for 2-1/4 120 roll film. (Negative was 2.25-in x 2.25-in. square.) I still have have it, put away somewhere.

Back in the 1950's, it was considered an inexpensive camera, basic box, had limited adjustable shutter speed and F-stops. At the largest F-stop of 3.5, a test shoot showed some lens focus distortion, but if I stopped it down to 5.6, then it was crystal clear from then on. I saved a PDF manual from Michael Butkus, Jr.'s site on vintage cameras over 20 years ago, plugged in the old URL and he had a redirect to a new URL, still amazingly maintained his website.

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From https://butkus.org/chinon/yashica/yashica_a/yashica_a.htm

I have a camera holder with pistol grip for mounting a flash similar to the Yashica manual. At one wedding I did about 30 years ago, the couple had a simple wedding in the house of the wife's parents. They were young just out of nursing school. My wife received contact info, they had gotten a job there in Gallup where we were.

We helped them to set up their apartment and get a car. Several years later, they wanted a fancy big church wedding ceremony, so we, wife and kids traveled to New York, we stayed at one of her relative's house. I did the wedding photos for them.

My 35mm with extended up flash on a monopod was leaning up against a wall. During the photo shoot, one of the guests bumped into it and it fell to the ground, damaging the camera so it didn't work. I substituted the Yashica A and completed the entire entourage shoot with the camera.

Negatives came out very good. They were happy, for all tense and purposes with nobody knowing, those 120 roll films could have been shot from a Hasselblad or Mamiya Secor 2-1/4 camera. Eyebrows

Although good equipment helps, good photography is because there is a good photographer who knows how to make his equipment work. You give the right pro a simple camera, and he will turn out quality results.

Just because a mechanic doesn't have Snap-On tools doesn't mean he can't repair the car right. Doh!

cstatman Tue Jan 30, 2024 9:10 am

I always thought the Yashika was a nice copy of the german Rolliecord, which is way too finicky and too much work for me to get a snapshot, but ya can also get film for that too.

this one was my fathers. ya know - don't throw anything away if you can fix it.

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not sure why the server rotated it

I am an okay mechanic. I'm also a known mediocre photographer. Smile

. the gear aint gonna help my lack of composition! Smile

I have a pal who is amazing with the camera, any camera. her fave is some cheap plastic eastern-bloc thing from the 70s. Holga maybe? leaks light, makes every shot an adventure, and she turns out gallery-worthy pics.

Me? snapshots always. usually with something odd happening.

rsv1cox Tue Jan 30, 2024 9:53 am

My wife was always my favorite subject.

Here, with my Olympus camera and her deep into the throws of Alzheimers she still loved music. She's "Conducting". Notice the speakers risen out of the spa. Rhapsody in Blue perhaps, one of her favorites.

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GallopingGhostler Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:39 pm

Nice photo of your wife, Bob. Thumbs Up

This is my Yashica A.

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Back in the 1950's, it was called an inexpensive camera, because of its simplicity. But, it will perform. It is ruggedly constructed out of steel. With 2.25-in. x 2.25-in. (57mm x 57mm) negative, one can easily get 16x20 enlargements, even larger than that.

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