Some older, small format photos

vilva · Expire: 2015-05-27

Some scans of old and rather small prints.

My first "real" camera was a Minolta 16-II, which I bought having got my first serious job, summer 1965. I wasn't quite twenty yet, and IBM had outsourced an independent development job to me. I took myself very seriously, of course, and it shows on one of the very first photos I took, a self-portrait taken with a close-up lens on the fixed focus Minolta held at arm's length:

The image quality is pretty good, given the original 16mm film and the 68mm x 101mm print size. Minolta 16-II was a very nice camera, see e.g. http://members.fortunecity.com/minivanman/min16a.html , and I used to carry it in my trouser pocket all the time until the time came when I couldn't get preloaded film for it anymore. Here are a couple of shots more:

Later I bought a Minolta Hi-Matic 7, a Praktica LLC, an old Rolleiflex 2.8E Planar, all larger and with much better IQ. In 1985 or so I bought another small camera, a Minolta 110 Zoom SLR, see e.g. http://my.reset.jp/~inu/ProductsDataBase/Products/MINOLTA/110-ZOOM/110_ZOOM.htm
, which I used extensively for many years until I - again - couldn't obtain film for it. There has been much talk about the poor IQ of the 110 format, but as the following scans of 101mm x 130mm prints show, the IQ was actually quite decent:

Here is an unsharpened crop from the 600dpi, 2352 x 3070 scan of the first print:

Not bad at all, for a print scan, no wonder many photographers used a 110 Zoom quite seriously, for some purposes a 30" x 40" print might be OK.

Note, however, that these prints were made optically, not scanned as they do it now. No flatbed scanner can extract this much information out of the small negs, and even normal neg scanners would have to struggle.

Veijo

Richard_D · Joined: 21 Oct 2007 Posts: 2378 Location: Faversham Kent UK

Thanks for these fascinating shots.

If you've still got the 110 Zoom, fuji superia 200 ISO is still obtainable indate (I've just ran a roll through my Pentax Auto 110 - see thread in gallery http://forum.mflenses.com/second-roll-of-film-through-the-pentax-auto-110-fuji-200-t5575.html) and it produces pretty good results. I can only imagine what you could get with a modern fine grained 100 ISO film in 110.

vilva · Expire: 2015-05-27

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Hey Veijo, it would be nice to see your young self-portrait and one of those that you took recently, side to side! What I find amazing is that in spite of the long time distance, you look very much the same, and also, that in 1965 you were taking the same type of self portrait that you are taking now! Smile

That is really not common!

spkennedy3000 · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 334 Location: London

A very interesting post! Thanks very much!

patrickh · Expire: 2011-11-18

Now that was quite an eye opener Veijo. Seems a lot of work, but worth it for the quality upgrade when you have a picture to preserve.

patrickh

Laurence · Expire: 2016-06-19

The images are REALLY well composed, especially for a "young photographer" at the time. Cool

Case in point, is the beautiful compositional framing of the landscape image with the foliage on the left and the structures (including flagpole) in the main part of the image. In fact, even with the flagpole being a "problem" in an image, you have managed to place it in balance with the composition.

It is great to see your early development!