A Rough Neighborhood

 Some media attention has been given lately to the discovery and dating of the preserved footprints of humans and extinct animals in the dry bed of an ancient lake in White Sands National Monument.  The DNA of pollen associated with the prints suggests an age of twenty thousand years.  That puts the arrival of humans in the New World much further back in time than previously thought.  It also means that the humans were coexisting with some fearsome large predators including Saber-toothed Cats and Dire Wolves.

The Dire Wolf exhibit at the Natural History Museum is nicely lit by large nearby windows, making it an attractive subject for my cameras.  On this occasion I was shooting my Olympus Pen-FT with the 1.8/38mm lens.

Inside and Out

 I suspect a lot of people, when they first encounter a Minolta Hi-Matic 7s wonder if the fully automatic exposure system is really going to work.  It just seems too easy to simply press the shutter release and get a perfectly exposed picture every time.

I experimented a bit with mine, checking the metered values when the camera was on full auto, and then with the shutter and aperture set manually.  It did seem to be consistent in its performance, so it seemed the next step should be a real-world test.  I started a roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 on Wednesday at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and then took the camera on Friday for a walk around Old Town Albuquerque.

I could not find anything to complain about in how the HiMatic 7s handled the full range of lighting from dim interiors to full sun in the Plaza Vieja.

No camera, of course, is perfect.  The display of EV values only in the meter leaves one wishing for aperture and shutter numbers.  Size and weight are the other big issues.  The camera, while of extraordinary build quality, is a heavy-weight among rangefinders.  Here is a comparison picture showing the HiMatic 7s next to the little Olympus 35 RC, also having auto-exposure.

Seeing that Olympus was racing ahead in its light-weight design, Minolta did make the next model of the HiMatic much closer in size to the 35 RC.  With use, though, one does get used to a bit of added bulk.  And, the 1.8/45mm Rokkor lens on the Minolta has got to be one of the best lenses to emerge from the 1960s.

Small, But Mighty

The Olympus 35RC looks like a traditionally designed rangefinder camera, but it is scaled down to palm size while still making full-frame 35mm images.  The shutter-priority auto-exposure is reliably accurate.  Shutter speeds range from 1/15 to 1/500.  The lens is a sharp 2.8/42mm 5-element E. Zuiko.  The viewfinder is  bright and the rangefinder features good contrast and fast focusing.

 

I loaded a roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 and carried the 35RC around for a week, visiting my usual haunts around Albuquerque's Old Town.  I've gotten in the habit of giving most of the films I use an extra stop of exposure beyond the box speed.  However, the UltraMax 400 really seems to yield better results without that extra push.

 

 The UltraMax grain pattern is quite fine for a fast film,and the speed yields good versatility, producing well-exposed images in both bright and low light scenarios.

 

I particularly like 400-speed film for sunny day hip shooting.  With the focus set to ten feet, the shutter at 1/500 and a f16 aperture, about anything you point the camera at is going to be focused and sharp .

I finished off the roll on a Friday morning in the Plaza Vieja.  The sleek Pontiac hardtop was one I hadn't seen there before.  The little '32 Ford Victoria got to show off its engine.

The Stylus Epic

 I decided I really needed to put more film through my Olympus Stylus Epic so I loaded a roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 and carried the camera in my pocket for a week, with walks through Old Town and the UNM campus.

Dane Smith Hall

A lawn art statue representing the UNM Lobo mascot

I had not been on the campus in some time and it seemed a lot bigger than I remembered it.  I visit the Plaza Vieja in Albuquerque's Old Town at least weekly and it is much less of a challenge to my limited mobility. 

As usual on a Friday morning there was a long line of restored classic cars in front of the church.

1938 Chev

upholstery talk

All of the cars are ones I had seen and photographed before, except for the little blue Mercury Comet, perhaps the most modest model to carry the Mercury name; I think this was an early one.

The camera seems to work perfectly.  Its only issue is a small light leak, and a narrow stip of electrical tape easily deals with that.  The Stylus Epic is even smaller than the compact Infinity Stylus and the 4-element 2.8/35mm lens is a bit more sophisticated than the earlier mju's 3.5/35mm, though I don't see a significant difference in the quality of the pictures between the two.  I actually prefer the handling of the earlier Infinity Stylus, but it may be I am just more familiar with the older camera because I have put a lot of film through it over the last fifteen years.