In previous posts I've talked about some of the things I enjoy about working with the Olympus Pen series of half-frame film cameras. If you don't know, there were three different versions of the camera body that were produced over the years, and I am fortunate to have nice working examples of each. The first version -- the classic Pen, with it's outsized gothic F machined into the face plate -- is a double stroke model, requiring two flicks of the thumb to tension the shutter and advance the film. Then there is the FV model with no built in light meter, that supposedly has a brighter viewfinder than its siblings. I have never found that to be the case. My personal favorite, though, is the Pen-FT, but that has to do more with the fact that mine is the stylish all-black version. Function follows form for these well designed photographic instruments.
One thing I don't love about half frame cameras in general is the fact that a standard roll of film gives you 72 shots. Sometimes more is definitely not better. It might be handy on vacation, but it can be real a pain to fire off 72 frames in a single casual shoot. I've found two ways to get around this, because I like developing a roll of film as soon as possible after shooting. I'm a bit spoiled by my digital camera, I guess. At any rate, the first work around is to bulk roll your own shorty rolls with as much or as little film as you would like. The other is to use a device called the Lab Box, which I've recently acquired. It is a daylight film development tank that you can use to easily develop a partial roll of film, leaving the rest inside the cassette to use another day.
One other consideration is that the size of the negative ultimately limits the final size of the prints you can make, just due to resolution issues. For me, a print that would fit within an 8x10 inch sheet of paper is about as large as I would ever go. If you are just posting scans on IG, not a problem.
Today's images were taken on Ektachrome. The first image shows the interesting geometry of one elevation of a new building under construction. It highlights another characteristic of half frame photography that I am actually quite fond of. The aspect ratio of the image is 4x3 rather than 3x2, and I tend to prefer that for many compositions. Shooting in a different aspect ratio is also a good way to spark creativity.
The second frame is two adjacent images of last year's Christmas decorations. The Ektachrome did a fantastic job of capturing the colors and tones of this indoor scene that was illuminated by winter light coming through a window facing south. Which reminds me, it's almost time to start digging out the holiday stuff again.
When I first learned of the Pen film cameras, they were going through a period of popularity and were kind of expensive. That flurry of interest seems to have faded and prices have tanked. I've seen really nice copies going for around $100 recently.
