Sizing things up

One of the things that fell by the wayside during the past year was buying bouquets of fresh flowers for the house (and, of course, to photograph). Unfortunately, flowers just didn't make it onto the minimal shopping list all that often; instead, we relied on our own garden. Fine, but I do rather miss photographing the fancy store bought blooms through their life cycles. Anyway, I was rummaging through piles of negatives for flower photographs and I happened across some that I took with an old Pentax auto110 camera. 

What a sweet little imager! The film is 16 mm stock, comes in little pop-in cartridges, and funnily enough, is still available. I found a source of something called Fukkatsu film. How could I resist buying a few rolls? The negative size is pretty tiny, 1.3 cm by 1.7 cm. With that in mind, the quality of the Pentax optics is pretty stunning, resolving plenty of detail in the sunflower. By the way, I always enjoy how one or two little petals wend their way to the center of the flower.

Here is another flower image, this time taken with the Pentax 67, the biggest Pentax I own. The area of the 6x7 negative is about twenty times greater than that of the auto 110.

Yes, I do prefer the larger negative size, and it sure is easier to process the medium format film. But I have to admit that there is something rather charming about the images from the little Pentax auto110. 

Maybe its time to take out the Minox spy camera and shoot some Kodak P3200. Stay tuned.