Saturday, February 28, 2015

First Half Frame Olympus Pen Camera Photos

I finally got through a roll of film that I shot with my half frame Olympus Pen camera. With half frame you actually have 72 exposures on a single roll of 36 shot 35mm film. Gosh it takes a long time to shoot that many exposures. I did have a few tech problems, this happened when I set the aperture incorrectly on the the camera lens. I exposed the Tri-x at the widest aperture F3.5 and the shutter is 1/60 (I think). All the shooting was done without any metering. Then I just developed the film as I would my standard Tri-x in a Rodinal mixture using STAND development. What do you know! It actually turned out.

There is no focusing with this camera, the lens is sort of cheap and old but I kind of like the abstractness of it all. Shooting a camera like this is just plain fun, there is sort of an old style look to the photos with a lot of randomness and luck in the shooting. I will continue to use (play with) this camera and plan on taking it with me next trip to Asia. I think with the next roll I have to work even more abstractly with it. This camera should be doing different types of shooting than I do with the Leica's. I can shoot it either out of focus close or possibly do crops of in focus imagery. The Pen is small and cheap and easy to carry so no biggy if the shots work or not, I just want the camera to free me up a bit creatively. Sometimes by loosening the collar you can get a better fit.

Here are some scans from this this first experimental roll.