Wharf Street Stroll
I took a recently purchased Olympus Infinity Jr point and shoot camera for a stroll along Wharf Street and adjacent waterfront walkways to give it a test. I blogged about the camera at 52 Rolls yesterday; here are more photographs from the same roll of film. The gallery at the bottom includes the entire roll of film including several not shown within the body of this post or in yesterday’s post (minus a couple of duds due to operator error).
The light was terrific when I went out to shoot on New Year’s day, a low angle winter sun not so bright as to be difficult but bright enough for great contrast. Such light and the clear skies invariably are accompanied by cold outflow winds from the interior of BC so by the time I was finished with the roll, my fingers were nearly done as well. When it is warmer, we have wet winds coming in from Hawaii, with clouds and rain. I love these clear winter days, which are not uncommon in Victoria, but usually don’t last more than a day or two. As I write the next day it has been grey, grey and more grey so I am glad I tested the camera the day before.
If the camera interests you, check out yesterday’s write-up at 52 Rolls, reblogged here as well – I provide lots of technical detail about the camera. It is a more than serviceable little camera. I suspect it works just fine in less interesting light since the shots taken in shade came out well. Low light is another matter, it has no real ability for low light other than with fast film (up to 1600 ISO, though functionally only 800 ISO) – the slowest shutter speed is 1/45th, at which moment the flash comes into play. I suppose this is to eliminate camera shake as the biggest common source of out of focus photographs, but it limits the camera’s utility if you want to try out more difficult lighting.
To view larger versions of any images in the gallery below click on the photo and navigate with arrows or by swiping on a mobile device.
Press the ‘x’ or esc to return to this page.
Any images that are small have been transformed during uploading to 52rolls and can be viewed larger there.
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This is a pretty cool project. I like this new direction! You are inspiring me, I want to do it! 52 is too many for me, though, maybe I could handle 12.
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You should! You can scan them here if you want, to keep the costs down. Even process the film here once I get that set up, costs even lower then! If you want to borrow a camera(s), that can happen too.
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The lens on this little camera is amazingly sharp and there seems to be good color rendition. I don’t know if it’s possible to disable the flash but I suppose you can just put your finger over it.
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Hi Ken – I find that the better Olympus point and shoots have very good optics. This one has an “Olympus” lens, while the others that I own and respect have “D.Zuiko” glass, going back to the 1960 Pen and including the XA cameras. The only issue that I had to do some correction for is vignetting, if that is the correct term for what I think results from the shutter opening out from the center, and closing back to the center. This means shorter exposures at the outer edges of the frame, and seems worse, or at least the same, in brighter light when the aperture should be closed down and not producing optical vignetting. Easily corrected, and possibly enhanced a bit by the fact I was using ISO 200 film and the camera sets either ISO 100 or ISO 400 but has no 200 setting. I think it probably was shot at ISO 100.
I suspect, but don’t know for a fact, that the flashes in these cameras have a preset relationship with exposure; if the flash fires it is always at the same exposure and not responsive to the light bouncing back from the flash. If this is the case, then covering the flash with a finger might be a good work-around for some situations, but not for others. However, one of the good things about this camera is that it has an off switch for the flash. Unfortunately when you close the clamshell cover, it returns the flash to auto mode which is why I had unexpected triggering of the flash. Fortunately, there is a very simple fix to this problem, which I will be doing soon: here
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