A few rolls in the Olympus Pen FT
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- I had an opportunity to borrow an Olympus Pen FT with the 38 mm f/1.8 Zuiko for a few weeks. I shot three rolls during this time (which wasn't that easy!) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Would I buy one though? I don't think so.
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00:00 Introduction
00:35 Overview
05:56 Pros
09:06 Cons
17:14 Conclusion 
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A blast from my past. In the early 1970s, I concluded that I wanted this Pen F system, buying an FT, 35mm, 100mm, and some intermediate zoom plus maybe a wider lens and some accessories. (In for a penny, ....) I liked it for all of the "pros" mentioned here. I loaded bulk 35mm, so I did not suffer :"long roll". Back then, film image quality was more of an image issue for half frame because we didn't have the modern T-grain films or some of the finer grain developers common today, but quality seemed good enough. When I finally had the time, I took the kit on a trip where its small size and light weight would be a huge advantage. When I got home, I stored the kit for a while, then sold the entire kit. Reasons: The TTL metering system is slow in use and clumsy. Oly adopted the half ass metering system on the FT because the system was originally designed without a meter, and a retrofit with an external meter coupling (think early Nikon) was both impractical and not "cool" looking, a key feature in the lore of the camera. The camera's compact body required a porro mirror reflex finder, which is significantly dimmer than the normal top mounted prism finder on 35mm SLRs. Then, tap off about a 1/3 of that light to run the meter, and you end up with the dimmest viewfinder ever made. IMO if you want to use a Pen F, skip the metered model. Otherwise, it's numerous lenses are mentioned here, but probably half of the system - the more exotic lenses (ex.,40mm 1.;4) - were very expensive new and practically unobtainable used, even 40 years ago. If you want to see what happens when you use this shutter design for a larger format, check out the "Mercury", a US made rangefinder from the late 1940s, which didn't shoot even a full sized 35mm format.
Super useful. Thank you!
They sell adapters to use modern 675 (1.4V) batteries. Or, you could just make your own insulation ring around the 675 battery (it has a smaller diameter) so that it does not move around. There is also a company that makes a modern battery that has the correct diameter (WeinCell).
Interesting to hear an in depth review for this one!
From my experience you do get used to the lightmeter a little bit over time, but I am also still not a fan of the 0-7 scale for it. I must say I found it quite accurate though.
Another thing to point out, the patch where the light enters in the meter is located at the top of the camera. There are lots of separate occasions where the hat I was wearing cast a shadow on that patch and I ended up overexposing my images by quite a bit.
Meter reads thru the lens. 😊The window on top of the camera just illuminates the meter needle. Try it, cover the window with your finger while taking a reading and the meter needle and 0-7 scale go dark, the needle won’t move. It wouldn’t make sense for the meter to read the sky. 😅
@@robertjagitsch2859 That makes a lot more sense haha I also recently realize that you can flip the ring on the lens to use the 1-7 numbers instead of apertures to make it easier.
Great video and Thanks for the depth review. I have this camera for 2 years and I was very confused about the 0-7 numbers. I always thought that number should be the f number and then got wrong exposure. First time to understand this system and discover the 0-6 number (on 38mm f1.8 lens) at the bottom of the lens. I agree normal meter would be much much much better!
I have a Canon Demi EE17 which is a fixed-lens viewfinder camera (note: not a rangefinder). I dig the half frame format, I use a lot of 24 frame Kodak Gold 200 rolls, and they turn out nice, with twice the amount of shots. I scan my own photos using a Sony a7ii and an old Minolta slide duplicator setup that works a treat.
Great video, just found your stuff via Attic Darkroom, excited to watch more stuff!
24 exp rolls seem like a happy medium for half-frame, moreso if shooting less normal stocks. I'd definitely feel less bad paying full price for 24 exp dev (same as 36, here) if I were getting 48 shots out of it.
Resolution: It's not half as much as a full frame 35mm camera. It's more like ~70%. This is because to get the same print size you need to enlarge by a factor of about 1.4 times as much as a full frame 35mm negative. And that figure doesn't take into account that the Olympus FT lenses are really good, so its probably more like 75% or 80% of the equivalent resolution compared to a full frame camera.
Grain is going to look a little bigger with this camera, about 40% bigger based on the enlargement factor. That's based on the linear dimension. If one needs to consider it in terms of negative area rather than a linear basis then the grain would be considered twice as big in the enlarged print. I don't know which figure is more realistic in terms of perception of grain, 1.4x or 2x.
You're completely right. Back when I made this video I didn't correctly understand the difference between linear resolution and overall image detail. Thanks for breaking it down clearly for anybody reading.
Linearly, half frame is 3/4 the size of full frame. Not bad.
The reason why the rotary shutter wasn't more utilised is an issue of scale, the bigger the resultant image the larger the disk needs to be to cover the whole image area its not tenable for anything larger than 1/2 frame
Hey, amazing video of this fun little camera. Your review is the only one I’ve found so far that covered the diptych scanning issue. If I could make a small request. Could you make a video covering this issue in more detail? I would very much like to retain the two corresponding frames as that’s why I bought this camera. Composing diptych’s is just so appealing to me for some reason. If you could just cover Negative Lab Pro settings/editing the single images separately and then putting them back together. It’s all so confusing!
I couldn't promise a timeline as I have some heavy projects and other things that would take priority (as much as I dislike the system, periodic gear reviews keep the viewership up for the other videos) but that's a good idea!
Hey, thanks. Well I’m subscribed and while I’ll continue watching your other videos. I’ll definitely be on the look out for some Pen editing vids. ;) Thanks!
Great review! I agree with most of it and I don't understand why labs would charge more for scanning single frames? Like, a noritsu does it automatically and pretty fast 🤔
Not every lab has one, and any lab that does manual colour correction/refinement now has to do twice as many frames, so in that case it makes sense. I'm sure there are a couple of labs out there that just take the opportunity to price gouge, though.