The Fun and a Few Failures of the Half Format

The Sludge-tanker dude meeting a couple of pals on the quayside while taking on board stuff from our tanks into his own tank. He'll get it disposed off in the best way possible.

Better just face it. It's a lot more fun than actually a photographic tool, the half format cameras. 
My only experience with half formats up to this date is the more or less totally useless Diana Mini, but then I found this rather nice looking and not too badly priced Olympus PEN EE-3 when over in England this summer. For the few pounds they wanted for the thing I just had to give it a go. 
OK, it's not like the Diana Mini is useless as such, as it's still a thing to go for to capture that right sorts of moments and blurred scenes, but the Olympus is different. If nothing else it looks as a real camera made out of the right type of materials, and it's a tad more sophisticated than the Diana will ever be. 
I mean you can even adjust stuff on it, and how great is that to find when the going gets tough... well, it's great since you ask. 
Don't you get head over heels to get one though, as it's still a simple camera by all standards we're used to look for these days. You basically adjust the ASA on the film, and that's more or less it. Fully automatic with a rather distinct selenium cell light meter situated around the nice little 28mm lens on the front. 

Sea-fastening of heavy things on deck, West of Ireland, summer of 2017. Olympus PEN-EE3

I didn't plan to make any full review of the thing right here and now, as I've hardly used it long enough to do so. It's just that I've been fireing three or four rolls of film through the thing to find the answer of a couple of simple questions like if the tiny camera was even close to light tight, and if the light meter seems to work well enough for any practical use. 

Both initial questions now ticked off with a positive, meaning the camera has been put into the pile of useable stuff to bring along inside the bag of cameras I usually seem to carry. 

Luckily this camera is a tiny an lightweight sort of thing, making it possible to fit inside the cramped area of that old greenish web bag. 

Another couple of West of Ireland snaps, even though they could have been anywhere in the world obviously.

Since we're talking about a rather old and fully automatic, fixed focus type of camera, the negs might look a bit on the strange side at times. Add to this also the fact we're dealing with a half format machine, the negs are... well, grainy! Or Grainy, with a capital G to be more precise. 

If you can live with that in certain situations, it seems to be a rather decent camera. 

Still, if you have been living long enough to have grown up with one of these cameras in the house, you might think the negs are not at all that kind of small and grainy anyway. 50% of a 135 neg is still a bit bigger than the odd, and for some reason once quite popular 110 format. And hey, you'll easily get 72 exposures on one film. Since this camera seems to have a quite nice film transport and wind on mechanism I seem to manage to get close to 80 frames on one film. 

Still quantity does not always trump quality, but used for what it is and for wasting some film in the hope of getting a few fun series on a film it's as good as it gets. 

Because that's what I think I'll use it for. Having some good old fun. 

Which works for me... 

Playing with the half format... a bit tricky to do this thing, but looks decent enough for a first time test. Olympus PEN-EE3.