Posted on November 23, 2018November 23, 2018

Kodak P3200 TMAX + Olympus Infinity Stylus

Everyone has been raving about Kodak bringing back the P3200 TMAX black and white film. As a novice photographer, I was curious what it would look like to run a roll through my Olympus Infinity Stylus point and shoot camera.

The beginning photos are from our family trip to the Smoky Mountains in Gatlinburg, TN and the remaining roll are various shots taken around our home.

My favorites are the shots of the mountains, the one with my Mom and niece sitting down with their reflections in the water behind them and the criss cross shadows on the cement planter.

See below for all of the photos!

Posted on April 26, 2018

My First Photo Shoot With The Canon AE-1

I’ve never used a 35mm SLR camera before.

The past few months I’ve only shot with Polaroid and point and shoot cameras. I’ve avoided using an SLR camera with all of the different settings. How do I learn to use the proper aperture, setting the ISO/ASA, lighting, etc? Even just loading the film is intimidating.

I decided to stop avoiding the inevitable and learn how to shoot the Canon AE-1 camera below. I found the manual online, watched a few YouTube videos, loaded a roll of Kodak T-Max 100 film and just started shooting.

My first few photos were not shot according to the manual and yet somehow turned out to be my favorites. The user manual suggests setting the aperture ring to the “A” mark for automatic exposure. I incorrectly set the aperture to another setting which provided the great shots below with the bokeh (blurry) backgrounds.

I adjusted the aperture back to auto and the following photos are acceptable, but they may have been a little more interesting if I wasn’t using the automatic exposure mode.

That’s not all I screwed up. When rewinding the film for the first time, I stopped with the film counter at “S” and should have kept rewinding, as the “S” does not always mean it’s the end of the film roll. I opened the back of the camera and immediately closed it when I saw the film had not been fully rewound.

Therefore, when scrolling through the photos, you will see some have a bright line or two going through the middle. I believe this occurred by not rewinding the film the entire way. Oh well, lesson learned.

I also need to practice focusing and steadying my shot. A few photos turned out focused, but others are a little blurry and that could be either from not focusing properly or from a shaky trigger finger causing the camera to move when taking the photo. Taking a photo with this camera is a lot different than using a point and shoot and obviously different than an iPhone so it’s easy to accidentally move the camera when shooting.

Please note, the two photos below are the same shots, just focused differently. The first photo I intentionally focused on the leaves, hoping the background would be blurry. The next photo is the same shot but focused on the path instead of the leaves.

It is encouraging to see how these shots turned out using the Canon AE-1. I already shot another roll of black and white film and am excited to see how those photos also turn out.

One thing I will do differently going forward is turn the aperture ring off the “A” mark setting and experiment more with the aperture settings and depth of field.

I look forward to shooting with this camera again this weekend.

Posted on March 5, 2018

Olympus Infinity Stylus + Kodak UltraMax 400

About a month ago I stopped at my favorite local thrift store on the hunt for cameras. I am an active thrift store shopper, usually hunting for old electronics to fix and flip. I always passed up cameras because they seemed too intimidating to purchase, test and resell. They felt like a headache.

The past few months I have been keeping an eye out for cameras in thrift stores, especially with the growing interest in point and shoots. My first few attempts greeted me with just the inventory I needed to continue searching every weekend. One of those early finds was this original Olympus Infinity Stylus.

Research informs me this is the “older brother” model to the insanely popular Mju II model. The camera was priced $3.99 and it was the day of the monthly 50% off sale so with tax and rounding up for charity I paid a whopping $3.

I finally got around to shooting an entire roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 film with the camera. I have a couple of other Olympus Stylus models, including a Zoom 80 version and just like those cameras, this model fits easily into my pocket and is easy to pull out, slide open and take a quick photo. Compare that to a Yashica T4 Zoom I recently found (and will post about soon) which I find to be a bit less efficient in use. With the Yashica I have to manually turn the power on and off and it’s a bit clunky. These Olympus cameras fit anywhere and are so easy to power on and off by opening the slide on the front of the camera. I love it.

Overall I thought the images turned out as expected for this point and shoot. I am just getting back into film photography so the auto settings and ease of use with a point and shoot is key for me. There are a few shots below that didn’t turn out that well but mostly because of my lack of understanding regarding how to use the camera in the best possible way. Also, at some point during shooting, I triggered the date to be printed on the camera which obviously hasn’t been updated since 1989, ha.

I’ll definitely be shooting more with this little camera!