Wednesday, June 30, 2010

On Cloud Seven

Wanna shoot film?  Here is a nice (and cheap) combo.

Minolta Hi-Matic 7s and Walgreens

First and foremost, cameras had awesome names in the 60s.  The Hi-Matic sounds like Ron Popeil named it.  The 7s is a 35mm rangefinder with a fixed 45mm f1.8 lens.  It has manual aperture and shutter speed controls as well as a matched needle meter (the only function that requires a battery).  Best of all, it is cheap.  At time of writing, this camera was only $9.99! 



The second part is the processing.  My regular lab (Richard Photo Lab) is very good, but professional quality work is not cheap.  So, for some personal work and test rolls, I use Walgreens.  There is a big difference, but I think it is an amazing value for the price.  Especially when you consider they will do it in one hour.  Normally a roll of 35mm costs $5-$6 (oddly, it has never been the same price twice) for processing and low resolution scanning.  



So, find a camera (preferably with manual controls) and shoot!

Tech Notes:
The shot of the camera was taken with a Fuji Instax 210.  The clouds were taken with the Hi-Matic 7s on VERY expired Fuji X-Tra 800 film.  Processed and scanned by Walgreens.

No comments:

Post a Comment