Last month I wrote a post about the relentless march of digital technology and the constant upgrading of software that often accompanies a new camera. Since that post, I have subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud much to my own disgust, but I will give it a whirl for 12 months and decide if I can live without the library functions and catalogues of Adobe Lightroom.
Before I did this, I had been lamenting the loss of my 35mm film equipment, with the exception of my Olympus Trip. As much as I like the ‘Trip, it does have limitations, or rather because of my inability to remember to change the focus distance, my good results are limited. I missed my Canon EOS 30V Date, with Eye Control. This was part of the trade deal I made for my Fuji X-Pro2, and frankly I got peanuts for the 30V along with the 28-105mm USM Canon Lens. In hindsight, I was not aware how rare this particular model was and now I have been trying to buy an identical replacement along with a 50mm f1.4. This so far has proven unfruitful, but in my desperation to continue my way through the expired film that is in the cupboard, I decided I’d try an Olympus OM 10.
I chanced upon a guy selling one on Gumtree fairly local to where I am, so started correspondence. A price was agreed for this impulse buy, and off I went armed with two rolls of expired film for a few hours on the coast at Saltburn-by-the-Sea. A Kodak Colour Plus expired in early 2010, and an Ilford Pan F 50 expired in 2009. The camera was fairly dust free, given it was as old as me, and probably much less mouldy. It wasn’t however, until I came to load the film that I noticed the light seals were super fragile, and just crumbled. when touched. This was quickly fixed by not touching them. The sunshine was pretty glorious to be fair, so I have high hopes for the results from a prime 50mm lens, provided the seals could hold out. What could possibly go wrong?
After exposure, the films were sent off to AP Photographic in Birmingham. I thought I would try a new Lab, and hearing of AP Photographic on the ‘Sunny 16 Podcast‘ they seemed as good as any. I posted off six films, a mixture of medium format and the two from this OM10. A week or so later received the six films back, one of them even has some wonderful crease marks. More of that another time. In fairness, I have heard many good reviews, so this aside the negatives are as good as I can expect from the old OM10 and my steady hand. I have scanned the negatives using a Epson Perfection 4490 Photo Scanner, as it is simply a lot quicker than my Minolta Dimage 5400. The quality of the slides is not as good as I had hoped, this probably being a function of the camera and probably bits of light seal floating around in the body.
Once scanned, a bit of spotting to tidy up the negatives, and then imported in to Lightroom for slight adjustments. This has consisted mainly of adjusting the temperature slightly along with a little sharpening. A few photos below, but all 36 frames contained in the gallery at the bottom 🙂
