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Film days - many pocket cameras low quality?


RaymondC

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Out of curiosity I dug out 2 of my film point and shoots before I got into this hobby. 29mm F4.5, fixed 35mm film; and the other 30-60mm f4.5-8.5 APS film. Low quality, was this typical what was in the day?

 

Now with the availability of the Internet we can learn.

 

This was in the late 1990s for me of what was sold to me.

 

:)

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I think you might be assuming that slow lenses automatically mean poor quality--this isn't necessarily the case. One of the sharpest lenses I own is a 300mm f/9 Nikkor M for my 4x5. That said, camera manufacturers in the film era knew that most buyers of P/S cameras were getting 4x6 prints back from one hour labs, far from a demanding test of camera and lens. But size, weight and price were important factors in selling cameras so slower lenses became common, especially with the advent of decent quality 400 and 800 ASA color negatives films.
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i think my pocket kodak retina or my zenobia are very good quality pocket cameras even by today's standards.

 

i also have a few zeise ikontas n other folders that were top of the heap in their day.

 

i once had a plastic nikon 35mm point n shoot that took wonderful pictures. i loved the sound of the auto wind.... zzzzit click.

The more you say, the less people listen.
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APS film looks bad even through top quality glass :) . The last roll I shot included some photos with my Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8-a generally pretty well regarded lens-but that didn't make up for the deficiencies in the format.

 

I wouldn't automatically discount a len's quality based on the focal length and maximum aperture. I WOULD turn up my nose at a cheaply constructed lens, though. A single element(meniscus) plastic lens like what you find on disposables is not exactly a recipe for quality. Triplets can be decent, and Tessars(4 element) can be quite good, especially stopped down.

 

I tend to be more concerned about inexpensive "superzoom" lenses, although you don't see a lot of those on film P&S cameras.

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There certainly WERE poor quality point and shoots whose only function was to take a snapshot to record an activity, generally used by non photographers. Those were killed by the smartphone. But there were good ones too. They typically had some limitations such as (depending on how far back you go) lack of a light meter, lack of a rangefinder, lack of creative controls, and/or high expense. But often the lenses were quite good if you could take advantage of them and live with their downsides.

 

Nowadays, it's a harder niche because cellphones are already very good as far as picture quality and they're always with you. To be worth buying they have to be very capable and that means expensive and that means that they have to be even BETTER to justify the sale. Yet some cameras seem to be making a go of it like the Sony RX100 mk. 1-6. And there are others too. I might be wrong, but I think the niche now is that the pocket camera has to take pictures which are at least competitive with what you would get with your full sized camera and better than your cell. I'm not sure we should call them point and shoots anymore. That seems to imply an inferiority they don't deserve.

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If you look at the history of 28mm & wider lenses, you'll spot for example Leica / Leitz' old 28/5.6 or an East German Zeiss Topogon 25/4 or the Orion 15 28/6.

I neither own nor know them hands on but: If they didn't manage to produce something significantly faster around WW 2 for the top of the line camera systems; it probably isn't a piece of cake...

I also doubt somebody lusting after a compact P&S camera to happily shell out lots of money for a bulky lens like Kiron 28/2.0 or even a Sigma 24/1.8. Faster 28mms became popular among folks who wanted to focus them according to SLR screens. Who wanted portability and IQ used to pick stuff like the Takumar 28/3.5 for an SLR. Lens speed used to come at a price.

 

The higher quality compact camera lenses ranged somewhere between 35 & 50mm. Look how many folks got their Leica( clone)s with a 50/3.5. A zone focused or fishy AF camera didn't benefit from more lens speed.

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