ZLR, bridge camera, or both

<p>The Olympus IS series cameras seem to fit either category with the IS-1/2/3 being for the more series shooter and the the IS-10/20/30/50/5 for the user who wants simpler operation. The later series does stand out because of its zoom starting at a very useful 28mm rather than 35mm like the former. I used Fuji Reala for my tests since its ISO 100 rating would force the lens at wider apertures for at least some of the pictures. Unlike typical viewfinder P&S camera with this series you are viewing through the taking lens (complete with VF blackout at moment of exposure). Unlike conventional SLR's the lens is non-interchangeable. Only front supplementary components are available. <br>

For my test I am using the IS-30, which was the last to use the 28-110 f4.5-5.6 zoom. The later models went to 120 and 140 mm. My experience with this camera (bought it new several years ago) is that the lens (expecially at mid-apertures) is superior to the wide-to-tele zooms on small VF P&S, and as good or better than some kit lenses that shipped with budget AF SLR kits, but falling short of the performance of more sophisticated (especially pro level) zooms and certainly below that of most primes. What to watch for is fall off in edge sharpness at wide apertures and distortion (especially at 28mm end at close focus).</p><div></div>

<p>With the power on and flash activated, it looks quite different.</p><div></div>

<p>A few shots from the roll of Reala that I ran through the camera. I used full auto for all shots. There is an option to choose the aperture so the camera can work in aperture priority, but you don't know the shutter speed that it sets. Cool thing, though: the top shutter speed is 1/2000 second. It can also sync at any shutter speed in full sunlight.</p><div></div>

<p>My favorite way to photograph the sunflower field above is at a distance. From afar they remind me of melted butter.<br>

Another wide view- this one was a late afternoon view of a wall painted by a local artist.</p><div></div>

<p>As mentioned earlier, one pitfall of wide to tele zooms is that many of them show increased distortion at close distance. Here is a detail of a door to shot the lenses barrel distortion. With this camera I try to avoid subjects with lines so the distorion isn't as apparent.</p><div></div>

<p>While not capable of focusing as close as "macro zooms" it still gets in close enough to be useful.</p><div></div>

<p>Out into the tele range for the next shot. I don't remember how close I came to maximum zoom here.</p><div></div>

<p>The above was taken the same day as my black & white post that featured this campground.</p><div></div>

<p>If you don't push the range too much, the IS-30's built in flash is usually adequate, although you'd probable want ISO 400 film rather the 100 as I used. My "helpers" (left to right: Pearl, Hermione, and Remus) had just finished "inspecting" the new blinds that I installed. </p>

<p>I think this may be somehow related to the AZ-4. Nice work with it. Of the bridge cameras of this sort that I have played with, I liked the <a href="00Yk4S">Ricoh Mirai</a> the best (and the AZ-4 is pretty much the same camera).</p>

<p>Like the pictures very much.</p>

<p>Having lost my pets this last winter, I am a sucker for the 'flash photo' of course. (Eternal question: Just <em>what</em> is it that cats are looking at? Something we can't see? )</p>

<p>Thanks JDM. I sometimes think cats just pretend there's something to stare at just to "wind us up". While a cat's vision may not have the resolution of ours, their ability to detect motion of even very small objects is almost without equal. I can take a small grain of sand and drop it from across the room and our cats will follow its motion, if they're interested enough to look at the moment that I drop it. Sorry to hear about your pets.<br>

The AZ-4 had a 35-135 so it might (at least optically) be related to the IS-1 or IS-2. Depressing how much they've gone down. When I bought my IS-30 (just before the IS-5/50 came out) I thought I was getting a deal at around 150 USD. Now they go for peanuts. I picked up a near mint IS-50 for 8.95 plus about 7 USD postage last year. It has a slightly slower 28-120 (f4.9-6.9), but if you set the aperture it displays the shutter speed.</p>

<p>Mr. Gammill...</p>

 

<h1>ZLR, bridge camera, or both </h1>

<p>Neither. The "IS" series were true SLRs. They had non-removeable lenses. Removable lenses have nohing to do with the SLR designation. ZLR was a marketing term. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke</p>

<p>Mr. Burke...<br /> I really don't know what Olympus marketed the IS cameras as, although I am sure it would probably be easy to find out if it became a subject of serious contention.</p>

<p>However, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Ricoh Mirai and the Olympus AZ-4 were "Bridge" cameras. They define the term as it was originally used -- <strong> </strong><br /> <strong>a non-interchangeable lens SLR with autofocus and exposure</strong> in a compact, often futuristic design<br /> ( http://www.photo.net/modern-film-cameras-forum/00Z97j -- look at my several posts on 'bridge' cameras on this forum starting with the Mirai).</p>

<p>Although some later versions of these cameras were altered to zoom viewfinders, many bridge cameras remained SLRs.<br /> Modern digital 'bridge' cameras often have only electronic viewfinders, unlike the SLR film ones (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_camera )</p>

<p>The "Bridge Cameras" deserve a special niche in the history of film cameras - a point where the" box with a lens on the front " was being regarded with close interest by many of the finest industrial designers. Form Follows Function was the ethos, and computer-aided lens design,especially for zooms ,plus advances in battery technology,made these extraordinary design statements possible.<br>

If I had an empty shelf,these cameras would fill it. Ironically,I can't think of a bridge camera that wasn't fairly mediocre in its actual on-film performance , but they brought a kind of Buck Rogers panache to the tired old compact family camera market.<br>

If I had a Bill Gates budget, I would re-release some of these designs as a retro statement;digital, naturally, as they certainly make some of the butt-ugly digicams currently available look like the cellphone with a lens on the front they really are.<br>

That Fuji ( X100?) with the fixed focal length sure is pretty though. Kind of like what the Yashica GT/GSN rangefinders would have been with a chip behind the lens. And what most of the d***tal Leicas aspire to be,if you have the income of a small,failing state. But the rot really set in when Nikon allowed Georgio Guigiaro to put a thin red line on the front of the F3 body.<br>

It is still there,on the front of Nikons DSLR's, to this day.</p>

<p>Olympus also had an APS SLR (ZLR?) that was similar in style to the IS-10 with the widest focal length being in the low to mid 20's IIRC. I think Fujifilm also offered a similar camera. Interesting discussion, BTW.</p>

<p>Ian, regardless of the "artistry" of my examples I've been posting here over the last few months, I think that your conclusion that the performance of these in terms of image quality was generally mediocre is not true.</p>

<p>They are certainly no worse than the performance of contemporary zoom lenses on the main SLR cameras of the day.</p>

<p>I agree with you on the image quality, JDM. The trick to getting good images is to understand the limitations that each camera has and go from there. When I have enough light I often use my IS-30 or IS-50 in aperture priority mode (usually f11) not just for better quality, but for increased DOF. With a 1/2000 second top shutter speed I can even use f8 in bright light.</p>

An interesting presentation and discussion with some nice pictures - thanks. I like the iS series, the very essence of a

'modern film camera' — with clean looks and elegant design.

 

The Olympus APS bridge camera was the Centurion; it's zoom range was 25-100mm. Much more at

http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~rwesson/esif/om-sif/is-series/is-series.htm#Centurion%20&%20Centurion%20S, which states

that Olympus built the equivalent Fuji camera. It's a shame that APS film is in decline now as I'd really like to try one

of these out.

 

I agree these cameras were highly capable, with good AF and exposure systems. I've just finished putting a film

through my iS-3000 (iS-3) and I'll add a note on this camera here when I get the time.

<p>Mr. Weinberg....</p>

<p>I mean no contention, serious or otherwise. </p>

<p>I do want to point out that the "R" in SLR refers to a viewing system whereby the light of a viewed image is reflected off a mirror. The "L" refers to the lens, which the light also passed through. The "S" refers to a camera having one lens system. There is also a TLR type camera where the "T" stands for twin denoting there are two lenses. Some TLRs have non-interchangeable lens like the Rolleiflex. Other TLRs have interchangeable lenses like the Mamiya 330s.</p>

<p>Bridge and ZLR are marketing terms that have become part of the photography lexicon. They were "coined" by marketing types try to gain public acceptance of, or create demand for, a product that is attempting to appeal to buyers who might otherwise purchase some other product or no product at all. An example would be where Ford Motor Company created the Edsel line to "bridge" an imagined product gap between the Ford and Mercury lines. </p>

<p>If the goal was to denote a type of camera rather than produce marketing hype, the marketers could have used SZLR instead of ZLR which would then properly define an SLR camera with a zoom lens attached either permanently or interchangeably. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke</p>

<p>I still see the Centurian up for auction once in a while. Likely it will soon become a shelf ornament since I doubt APS film will be around much longer. If there were a way to reload APS cartridges with Tri-X, I'd be tempted to pick one up though.</p>

<p>Mike,JDM, - I take your point about relative performance. My experience is limited to reading the reviews in "Popular" and "Modern" when these devices first came out.<br>

And it still is true that the current plastic-fantastic kit zooms have the same barrel distortion at wide, pincushion at long, handlebar in the middle,not very sharp in the corners problems the bridge cameras have. But these guys had it first,which could be considered an acheivement.</p>

<p>Whatever,<br>

although as it happens, the term <em>bridge</em> was, so far as I can see from contemporary photomagazines, actually invented by the magazines themselves to describe a new (at the time) class of cameras precisely to distinguish from SLRs with interchangeable lenses.</p>

<p>The earlier bridge cameras were, in fact, all SLRs with fixed zoom lenses--later on, many zoom viewfinders were introduced; still later, LCD screens on the rear of the camera or an EVF.</p>

<p>Mr.von Weinberg....</p>

<p>Whatever? </p>

<p>I don't know when photo-oriented magazines started using the term "bridge" to dennote a camera that bridged two price points or quality levels. My first remembrance of the term bridge used in a reference to a product that bridged a like gap in price and perhaps perceived status or quality, was in the late 1920s when the LaSalle was advertised by General Motors to bridge the gap between Buick and Cadillac. </p>

<p>Therefore, if your remembrance of the camera magazines using the term is prior to that, then I must defer to your above statement. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke </p>

<p>P.S. Although the marketing term "bridge" may have been used earlier than the late 1940s by banks, that is when I first heard the word with a financial connotation. Farmers and Merchant Bank of Los Angeles, later called Security First, later called Security Pacific National Bank, used the term for a loan to a customer to facilitate the purchase of a new house prior to selling their existing home. The Bank of America used the marketing term "swing loan" rather than bridge loan. But heck, bringing a first usage date all the way up to the late '40s is getting pretty recent, so the photography-oriented magazines may well have preceded Farmers and Merchant Bank in their useage of the word bridge. </p>

<p>Very sporting of the photography magazines to so nicely allow the bank to use their coined term without referring it to their legal staff. </p>

<p>Whatever. </p>

<p>Gentlepersons....</p>

<p>I note the above discussion as to the quality on film that the so-called bridge cameras produced. I've owned and used many cameras. Several of them would fall into the bridge category. I was intrigued by the IS-3. At the time, I had been frequently using a Canon RT with the glass version of their 28-105mm lens. Over the years, the 28-105 sized lens came in several different quality levels. Some were said to have used plastic lenses. My 28-105 had excellent resolution and its itteration was said to be the best of the Canon 28-105s. Looking with a 60 power microscope in a comparison test at 50mm, the IS-3 produced better results, although only slightly. Although not having directly compared side-by-side any of the Canon L lenses with the IS-3, I cannot be sure, but it is my perception that the L lenses would be superior to the IS-3, but again, not by a whole lot. </p>

<p>On the other hand, a friend with a photo store back in the 1990s had a different brand "bridge" non-removeable zoom lensed camera (I think a Maria?) which did not produce anywhere near the results of the IS-1 or IS-3. Furthermore, I've had an IS-10 and an IS-5. The IS-5 (more expensive version of the IS-50) would be close to, but lesser than my Canon 28-105, but again, not by much. The IS-10 would fall a little below the IS-5. However, the IS-10 produced better results than my Elan IIe with its consumer-level 28-80 (and I believe plastic) lens. </p>

<p>The point being, bridge cameras came in different price and quality points. There would be no reason that a bridge camera manufacturer could not have equipped one with a Carl Zeiss 85mm F:1.2 lens that would out-resolve just about anything, except of course for saleability. The same would be true of their ability to put a cheap meniscus lens equal to those found in cheap disposeable cardboard cameras. It was all a matter of perceived marketability. </p>

<p>I have not sold very many pictures, so I am not a good example. That being said, the highest priced picture made by a film camera that I sold came from an Olympus IS-1. </p>

<p>A. T. Burke</p>

<p>Is anyone able to find links to magazine reviews of the IS-1, IS-2 or IS-3? I had acquired an IS-1 only several years ago. I had missed out on them but I would now like to know how they fared according to the experts and reviewers back in their days. </p>