Tag: Olympus PEN EES-2

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

20 May, 2013

An old friend has departed. My Olympus PEN EES-2 is on its way to a new owner in Sweden. I had it for a little over two years, and it featured in the first two posts here at Filmosaur. It was a fun little camera, easy to use and easy to carry. I enjoyed our time together.

EES2_3

So why, the inquisitive reader might ask, did you send it halfway around the world? Well, the simple answer is that we grew apart. As you will recall, the Olympus is a point-and-shoot kind of a camera, with little manual control; as Your Humble Filmosaur has become more serious about photography, this lack of control has become increasingly frustrating. Additionally, the half-frame format is interesting, but I find it gets in the way more than it offers advantages, at least for my type of photography. Finally, having acquired other cameras, most notably my similarly-sized but more capable Rollei 35, the Olympus had been spending a fair bit of time on the shelf. So I decided it was time for it to move on to an owner who would put it to better use than I was.

But I did not simply sell the Olympus; I sent it off as my half of a trade deal that will see a Kodak Retina I coming my way. So both the Olympus’ new owner and I will have new toys to play with, and our cameras will have new things to see and commit to film. I’ll introduce the Retina properly when it arrives. In the meantime, I put together a few frames I shot with the departing PEN this past winter. The new owner has been known to assemble photos this way; hopefully my old Olympus will help him produce some new ones.

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 200
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 200

So join me in bidding farewell to the Olympus PEN EES-2. We had some good times, made some memories, and now we go our separate ways. There’s no cause for sadness – it was all for the best – but one can’t help but feel a little wistful at the final parting with an old friend.

It may not be big, but it’s pretty damn good…

4 February, 2013

A moment’s lament, if you will, for the poor, discarded half-frame format. Once loved as a way to cram twice as many excruciatingly dull, poorly composed holiday photos onto a roll of film, the half-frame now lies among the other discarded film formats – 126, 127, 620, and others – as an afterthought amid the rigidly enforced conformity of full-frame 135 and 120 (plus of few of those large-format weirdos).

But wait! There’s life in half-frame yet! Even though no one has made a half-frame camera in decades, those still extant use commonly-available 35mm film, so unlike their deceased comrades, they may yet soldier on! Like our forefathers before us, we may have the pleasure of getting 72 (or more) exposures on a single roll! We too can have the experience of loading a roll of film in the dead of winter and delivering it to be developed in the heat of August! Saints be praised!

(Your Humble Filmosaur is obviously off his meds and probably shouldn’t be committing anything to writing at this point, let alone publicly, but what are you going to do?)

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400

Half-frame is undoubtedly limiting if your intention is to create anything more than snapshot-sized prints; there just isn’t enough data in the 18x24mm frame for larger prints to come out clearly. But snapshots are exactly what it was designed for. Who needs full-frame negatives if all you’re going to do is run a set of 4x6s of your trip to Myrtle Beach to bore your inlaws with at Thanksgiving?

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400

Besides, half-frame photography is fun. Who cares about wasting a shot or two? There’s more (plenty more) where that came from! It’s almost like digital in that regard – there’s little sense of the need to make best use of every frame. Just blast away and see what happens!

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400

Your Humble Filmosaur happens to be the owner of not one but two half-frame cameras: an Olympus PEN EES-2 and a Yashica Samurai Z. Most half-frame cameras offered fairly little manual control, the exposure settings being primarily the responsibility of the camera, not the user; mine are no exception. All the photos in this post were shot with the Olympus on Fuji Superia 400 (with slight tweaking – mostly just straightening and cleaning up the scans), which just reminds me that I need to load up the Yashica next. The PEN is just so darn easy to carry around, though….

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400

As long as you recognize the limits of half-frame, the results are perfectly acceptable. Even the best half-frame shot is never going to let you produce an Ansel Adams-style wall-sized print; you’ll be lucky to get any sort of sharpness over 5×7. Look at them on a big computer screen and the shortcomings are even more obvious.

Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400
Olympus PEN EES-2, Fuji Superia 400

But who cares? Think of half-frame as the predecessor to the digital point-and-shoot, or even the cell phone camera, and it makes a lot more sense. Hell, I forget to focus half the time (come to think of it, that’s probably a good pick-up line to use on Lomography chicks). Put aside your serious photographer pretensions and just shoot. It ain’t the equipment, it’s how you use it – or so they say.

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Got a half-frame camera, or have a deep, perhaps slightly unhealthy, desire for one? Tell your old uncle Filmosaur all about it…