Camera Blog

Hello--I enjoy this site a lot and have been able to contribute a little bit here and there. For the past 18 months, I worked on a blog project that I dubbed 18 Cameras/18 Months. You can view it here if you're interested: https://18cameras18months.blogspot.com/

 

My intent was to work with a single camera each month and post the results. Some months were harder than others. And I realize that a lot of my entries are light on specs but I figure they're available elsewhere on the internet and just wanted to give my overview of each camera. Hopefully, if someone is researching a particular camera, they might find my blog and examples of pictures taken with the camera they're interested in.

 

Now that I've "completed" the blog, I have several favorites that I'm looking forward to revisiting. And--as you can probably guess--I have a few more cameras that I've added to my collection that I'm looking forward to working with. I picked up a Fujica Compact Deluxe, an Olympus 35 SP, a Mamiya Super Deluxe 1.5 (with a gummy shutter I still need to sort out), and a Canon Dial 35. I'll admit that I tested out a couple of these cameras on the sly but now I can do it out in the open.

 

I hope some of you find this useful.

Great stuff, Bobby; I'd come across your blog before and bookmarked it. You touch on many of this Forums old favourites in a nice down-to-earth fashion. Make some further contributions to CMC if you have the time.

Thank you, Rick. I will definitely keep contributing here. Especially when I dive into using my "new" cameras.

You certainly snagged a couple of nice bargains in your collection! A clean, fully-operational Ricoh 500G for only $20 is outstanding: one typically can't even find the lens cap on eBay for that little.

 

Your results from the lowly Vivitar 35ES are way better than I expected, shooting my favorite subject (seemingly abandoned industrial/business districts and/or theaters). The Jefferson pics are especially nice: I might have to hunt down one of these Vivitar RFs. Also really like the surreal birds in flight compositions you took with the GAF L-17. The Chinon SLRs got ruthlessly slammed by magazine reviews in their day, but time has shown them to be durable cameras (and a great, cheap knockaround platform for M42 enthusiasts).

Thanks, Orsetto. Looking back on the blog, I realize that I never fully completed my write up on the Vivitar 35ES. I think my additional comments were going to be that I wasn't as impressed with it as I thought I would be but it was still a capable rangefinder.

 

Yeah, the Ricoh 500G is one that I'll be returning to sooner than later. Super easy to use and superb results without a lot of hassle.

 

I think I got the GAF for super cheap too because it was just the body. So I think it was probably $20-something shipped. Seems to work pretty good.

 

Oh, another camera I picked up and will be using soon is the Braun Super Paxette.

Nice job! I've been meaning to put together something like this myself, but have never gotten around to it.

 

The GAF/Chinon SLRs are great shooters, and the Sears cameras and lenses are also an underrated bargain.

Edited January 4, 2019 by m42dave

Nice work and interesting reading. Thanks for sharing.