Panasonic Lumix LX-3

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Panasonic Lumix LX3 with its excellent wide angle adapter.

I owe a lot to this camera. Somewhere along the line I’d lost interest in photography. Over the years I’d gone from the Minolta 7sii rangefinder that got me started, to a film SLR (Canon AE-1) and then to digital (Maxxum D SLR and Canon Powershot S-50). I’d also picked up a used Rolleiflex on a whim, but only used it once or twice – but that’s another story. I’d reached a point where I rarely went out to take photos, and was even reluctant to take a camera on vacations, family events etc. I’m not entirely sure why I lost interest. As I had moved to SLRs they had gotten bigger (the bodies and especially the lenses) and I no longer wanted to lug all of this stuff around.

More importantly perhaps was that I was dissatisfied with my pictures because I couldn’t entirely control the results. I never developed my own film and so I was always at the mercy of the labs. Even with digital images I had rarely post processed (even though I had copies of an older version of photoshop and also Photoshop Elements.)

I’d stopped carrying around the SLRs and pretty much restricted myself to the Canon. Then I was in Switzerland for my younger daughter’s wedding and I left the Canon in a taxi. It was later returned to me and I eventually gave it to my grandson, but for a while I was without a small, carry around camera. So I did some research and decided to get the LX3. I was very impressed with the results. I liked that it was small enough to carry around; it has a great f2.0 lens; 10 megapixel resolution; multiple aspect ratios; good macro and wide angle performance.

Although the LX3 is a wonderful camera there are still things about it I don’t like including: It’s small but still a little too large to comfortably carry around in a pocket; Noise starts to get bad above ISO 400; The zoom range (24-60mm equivalent) is a bit short;The LCD screen is almost impossible to see in bright sunlight and the only viewfinder option is a fixed 24mm optical.

The LX3 pretty much solved the portability problem. When I got this camera I also started to use RAW format files and Adobe Lightroom. This combination gave me much of the control I was lacking. Not all of it though. I still haven’t fully mastered digital printing.

Overall I was more than satisfied and I started taking pictures again – lots of them. It came at just the right time. With retirement looming I needed a hobby – something to occupy my time. Suddenly I was back into photography with a vengeance. Not just taking pictures, but studying the philosophy of photography, the history of photography etc. I even got into vintage cameras and started using film again. I’m now retired and spend a lot ob my time on “things photographic”. I don’t know if this would have been the case without this camera.

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Bridge to Wildflower Island, Teatown preserve

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Grand Central Terminal, NY

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Autumn leaves at Kingsland Point Park, Tarrytown, NY

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Man on a Train. Scarborough Station, Briarcliff Manor, NY

Gone but very definitely not forgotten (even though I’ve tried) – Casio QV100

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This is a third of a series of posts. The first covered some cameras, which I liked but which I no longer have. The second covered a camera, which I still have but which I find hard to like. In this post we look at a camera, which I no longer have and which I didn’t really like. In fact I’d consider it to be absolutely the worst camera I’ve ever owned. Also one of the most expensive. It’s a Casio QV100. I don’t actually have a picture of it. I’ve tried my best to blot out the memory so I’ve had to “borrow” one from the internet. I “borrowed” the camera photograph from Alistair Patterson’s photostream on flickr, where you will also find a very interesting (and probably more balanced) review of the camera.

Cast your mind back to 1996. I was living in Geneva, Switzerland at the time. I’d been using film cameras (Minolta Hi-Matic 7sii and Canon AE-1) for some time. I was working in IT and now here was a digital camera. I can’t remember what it cost, but I do recall that it was very expensive – more expensive than most of the cameras I’ve bought. But I couldn’t resist it. Among other things it was the first camera with an LCD screen. You could actually see the pictures you were taking!!

I don’t have any pictures taken with this camera. I remember having it, but I had forgotten the model number. We moved back to NY late in 1998. Some boxes were not unpacked immediately and went into our garage. We (my wife and I) were cleaning out the garage the other day and we found some boxes untouched since 1998. In one of these boxes was the manual for the QV100. I no longer have the camera. I gave it to my older daughter who took it back to the UK where it is stolen. Probably the best thing that could have happened to it. I feel sorry for the thief.

So what was wrong with the camera? Well… pretty much everything. The specification in the manual says that this was a “Digital (JPEG based)/Field Recording” system. It had a “built in “32 mbit flash memory” capable of storing “64 fine” (fine being 640×480) images. The manual further claims approximately “150 minutes continuous operation … for about 96 images (one images per minute)”. It had a “61,380 1.8 inch TFT low-glare colorLCD”. Shutter speed “1/8 – 1/4000 second”

My memory is that the image quality was terrible and that the battery seemed to last about five minutes. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. This was after all in the infancy of digital cameras and the technology had probably not advanced to the stage where it was truly usable. My fault for getting in too early.

I always say that it’s not the technology that matters. It’s the person using the technology and I’m sure there are people who produced lovely pictures using this camera. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. There is a flickr group for the QV100. It has two members. Take a look at the pictures. Judge for yourself. Note: I just took a look at this group again and noticed that many of the pictures are not actually taken with a Casio QV100. I thought they looked too good. Strange.

Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D

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This was my first digital SLR, acquired early in 2006. Naturally enough I used it a fair bit immediately after I got it. But somehow I never took to it. In another post I mention how at one point I had lost my interest in photography in general and specifically in “lugging around” heavy SLRs. Sadly I got this camera around the time this happened and I didn’t really use it a lot. According to Lightroom I’ve taken only 389 pictures with this camera. To be honest I never really gave it a chance to show what it could do. I took it out again a few days ago to give it another try, but so far haven’t been able to find the charger. I’m sure it will turn up. In the meantime some older (2006-2009) pictures.

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Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, NY

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Eirah, 2009

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Blue and White China Cat

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Roy Lichtenstein – A Boat. Storm King Art Center, 2008

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Christmas Tree Ornament

My First Camera

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I’ve always said that my interest in photography dates back to the mid 1970s when my wife gave me a minolta rangefinder camera. However, I started collecting old cameras a while back and while browsing through a book I saw a camera that looked familiar. It was a Kodak Brownie Vecta and I then remembered that I had it as a child.

John Margetts’ old camera blog has a post on it. In the post he says:

This article is about the Brownie Vecta which was made in the UK and presumably only available here. I was given one of these for a birthday present when I was was eleven or twelve years old when it was a strikingly modern looking camera. It was designed for Kodak by the British industrial designer Kenneth Grange and its ‘natural’ format is portrait as that is what Kenneth Grange assumed it would mostly be used for…The Vecta was only in production for three years (from 1963 to 1966). It is basically a grey plastic cuboid with a central lens and a viewfinder in one corner. The shutter release is a white bar underneath the lens. It takes 127 film which is hard to find nowadays but is still available

Maybe I’ll try to get hold of some.

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I was cleaning out some old stuff and I came across this picture, which I remember taking with that camera. It’s of my father and our dog Peg in front of the house where I grew up in Sandbach, UK. I must have been about twelve at the time and my father would have been about 45. Both of my parents passed away some time ago. The house in the picture was emptied and sold. At the time I wasn’t so much interested in old cameras and as mentioned had even forgotten that I had had this camera. So this isn’t the original camera – that one is long gone, but it’s nice to have an instance of the first camera I ever used. It’s not such a bad picture either considering the camera is basically a fancy box with a lens in it. I suppose the large size of the 127 negative helps. As far as I know this is the only photograph from this camera that survives.

GAS attack gone wrong?

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Warning – long post. We’ve just had a few days of quite heavy rain. After one of the storms (once upon a time I thought that the word storm meant strong winds, heavy rain, thunder, lightning etc., but apparently nowadays what I would once have called a rainy day is now referred to as a storm) I went down early in the morning to our house in Westchester to see how it had weathered the “storm”. I was waiting for my wife to join me, but since she isn’t always an early riser I knew that I might have a few hours to kill. What to do? I really felt like taking pictures, but foolishly had forgotten to take a camera with me. It occurred to me that I could go to a CVS and get a single use camera. Or was there another alternative? I knew that there was a Goodwill store close by. Sometimes they have cameras. I could check that out – so off I went. There were three possibilities: a Praktica SLR, a Ricoh SLR and a Yashica SLR. The Ricoh looked nice but both it and the Praktica were completely frozen up. The Yashica was much better. Shutter seemed to fire OK. Focus was smooth. Meter appeared to be working. Aperture ring turned without any problems. How much I asked? $9.99 was the reply. A Kodak one time use camera from CVS costs $11.99 (it does come with a film though). The Yashica came with the body, a 50mm f1.9 lens, a 52mm skylight filter, a strap and a working flash. What could I lose.

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As it turned out I spent so much time walking the dog, looking for fresh batteries and film for the camera that I didn’t have any time left to take pictures that day. I wasn’t able to get out again for a couple of days and this gave me time to do some research on the camera. It’s a fully manual Yashica FX-2 with a built in coupled meter, but no autofocus or auto exposure. Back when this was made Yashica worked with Carl Zeiss to produce the Contax SLR. The two camera lines share the same lens mount. Yashica made two series of lenses for this mount: the not so great DSB, which is what this camera has and the much better ML. There was also the tantalizing possibility of using the legendary Zeiss Planar 50mm 1.4, which has the same mount.

Sounds good so far? Not for much longer. Fiddling around with the camera I discovered that the aperture is in fact stuck wide open at f1.9. Not so great, but it’s still possible to take pictures if you choose your lighting and subject appropriately. I dug out an old black and white film and went to try it. Total disaster! Of the 24 exposures only about six came out. The rest were completely blank. This is one of the few:

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Checking the negatives it looked as if, in addition to the stuck aperture, there’s also a shutter problem. At some speeds the shutter wasn’t opening properly (or not at all). Unfortunately I hadn’t kept notes on what shutter speed I’d used for what shots.

Since I had an adapter for my NEX 5n I decided to try the lens on that. The next picture shows the result. Not too shabby.

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Looking through the back of the camera and trying each speed in turn it looked as if the 1/000 second speed was not working. Since the aperture was stuck at 1.9 I’d used the 1/000 setting a lot in order to expose correctly. This was probably why so many of the shots hadn’t come out. Time to try again. I found another old black and white film and and off I went. It was a bright, sunny day: not the best of days for a camera with an aperture stuck at f1.9 and top shutter speed(s) not working. However, the results were much better. I kept notes this time and, as I suspected, all of the speeds were working except 1/1000 second. This time 23 of the 24 shots came out: all but the one taken at 1/1000. Some of the results are below:

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Was it worth it? I would say so. Even if the camera had been a total dud the strap, the flash and the skylight would have offset the low cost of the camera. And I had great fun for a couple of days reading about this camera and trying it out. I can live without the 1/1000 shutter speed (many of my old cameras only have a top speed of 1/500 and sometimes less). More problematic is the stuck aperture. Since this lens isn’t the best available for this mount I could just junk it and get one of the ML lenses. Or I could fork out $300-$400 for the Zeiss Planar. Not actually a lot considering that the same lens in Canon or Nikon mount costs around $800 and up and an equivalent Leica lens (e.g. 50mm 1.4 Summilux) costs from $3,000 upwards. Or I could try to fix the aperture problem.

I’ve decided to consider both options. I’ll keep the old lens and may try to repair it. I’ve found detailed step by step instructions with pictures on how to do this so I might just give it a try. If I ruin it I haven’t lost much. I found a $9.99 50mm f2 Yashica ML on eBay (Coincidentally from Goodwill Maine). It just arrived, but that’s a topic for another post. And I’ve still got my eye on that Planar.

P.S. for those who don’t already know GAS means ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’: a term used to describe an urge to acquire and accumulate lots of gear