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Olympus Trip AF 30
by SoadFan
~Olympus Trip AF30~
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At the time of purchasing my Olympus Trip AF 30 camera I recall it was a mid ranged piece of user friendly photographic equipment that provided me with a quick and easy way to take off the cuff photographs as required. In use I found that the camera was very easy to get to grips ... with and it offered a simple solution for fair quality holiday snaps etc, that could be taken with minimum fuss and effort. In terms of the finished results obtained from the camera I would say that it could at times produce very nice photographs, however I did find that results could be rather varied at times and getting the best pics was highly dependent on light conditions etc.
~ Ease of use~
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In use I found this camera very easy to handle as it had a nice weight and balance to it that made it fit well in the palm of your hand, without it feeling too small and flimsy or too large and bulky. The easy to use features built in to the camera were something that took very little time to get used to and whilst these features would be considered minimal at best these days, when this was new this camera was considered a good mid range buy for snapping family photos etc. The camera doesn't have a super fancy lens fitted and does have limited abilities which limit what it can produce, although when I was using this as my main quick snap type camera a number of years ago I felt it was a fair choice to take with me on days out etc, as it was always quick and simple to use.
~35mm film~
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The camera could be used with a 35mm film in either colour or black and white which was easy to put in place, as the camera had a simple winding mechanism that wound the film on to the right spot once the film had been set in to the casing correctly. This worked as soon as the camera case had been closed up after placing a new film inside. The number of shots left to use was displayed on the top of the camera and was easy to see when this was in use, with the number of remaining potential shots moving forwards and decreasing with each use as the camera film wound on automatically. I found the auto wind on feature very helpful and recall that at the time it was considered to be pretty high tech as many other general use cameras had yet to include the feature as a standard thing.
~Are you ready for your close up?~
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There was a simple push button selection feature with this camera which allowed me to go from close up to long range shots, although I often found this a little awkward as the buttons were small and hard to press down accurately on at times. This made the switch from one type of shot to another a little more time consuming some times, although to be fair I feel this may have been a little of my own fault as well as it was down to the placing of the hard to use camera setting buttons. The slide across/ ready to use feature built in to this camera was something I liked however, as I felt it worked well. The slide action was smooth and easy to use and once it closed down after use the camera became neat and compact enough to be able to fit in to a small camera case that could be placed in to a large pocket or small bag if wanted.
The camera had an auto focus feature that was meant to be able to produce good quality photos without the need to know what settings to use and whilst this could work well, I did find that some shots could end up being fuzzy and out of focus in poorer light conditions. I often noticed that when taking a close up shot this same fuzzy finish could arise even in good light conditions which was a shame. As with many of these simple point and shoot type cameras that were on sale at the time, the finished results could be varied with there being a number of nice clear photos being produced as well as a few fuzzy ones with each film developed.
~Power hungry~
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The camera used disposable batteries and I found the battery life was not as good as I would have hoped. If I was out and about taking photos I tended to take a spare set of batteries with me and I often had to replace the batteries with the spare set after using a full film, as once the power levels had died down to their lower levels the camera would not work for very long at all. This did make using the camera a little more expensive than I would have liked which was something that I felt could have been improved upon.
~A very durable case~
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The simple and neat looking black plastic case that the camera came in was very durable and of a good quality, with it never having any real damage to it even after a number of knocks and bumps. All that could be seen damage wise after a number of years worth of use were a few light scratches to the plastic, as the slide and close feature made sure that anything really important was protected when the camera was not in use. The price of the camera at the time was around £70/£ £80 which I felt was reasonable at the time, with the cost of a standard 35mm film coming in at around £2 to £3 depending on the type and quality bought.
~Product rating~
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Over all this camera was a quick fix solution for anyone wanting to take holiday snaps etc with the minimum of fuss and effort and on many levels I feel it worked well enough. There were some issues with a degree of fuzziness noticed in some finished shots at times which was hard to avoid and this effected both long range and close up photos at times. As a simple point and shoot solution the camera worked as well as it could in order to produce reasonably good photos, which is why I want to give it a 3 star product rating over all.
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Ricoh GR1s
by Mr. Davis
I have a GR1 so I may be cheating by writing this. As anyone who knows about cameras will tell you, a camera is just a light tight box with a shutter so great camera + bad lense = terrible pictures. Meanwhile, light tight box + great lense = great pictures.
My first camera was a Pentax MG which I got rid of, I had a Pentax ME ... super but now I just have the PK lenses and compatible Chinon and Ricoh bodies. The Ricoh bodies grow on me all the time and, in a recent test putting standard lenses on my Pentax K100 DSLR, the Ricoh F2 50mm seemed the sweetest.
The lense on the GR1 is gorgeous and if you put some low ASA film through it and get it processed nicely and put it next to a print out from your digital camera, you may decide film isn't dead after all. I have a KR-10 and a KR-10 super and the only Pentax I'd rather have is the LX. Ricoh optics are excellent (they had to be, they arrived in the camera game fairly late and had to give people a good reason NOT to buy a Canon, Nikon etc. and since standard 50mm lenses were always reviewed with cameras and were often the only lenses anyone used with their SLR, Ricoh made some blistering 50mm lenses which got good reviews. These are NOT cheap cameras. They're great cameras people who know nothing about cameras sell cheaply!
Suffice to say that Ricoh can make great lenses and if you still like film, any GR1 is a serious piece of kit. Mine's not for sale and I keep it along with my Rollei 35 SE. Yes. It's THAT nice.
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Snappy LX
by davidbuttery
I've been sorting through some of my camera collection recently, and trying to get it into some sort of order. For one thing, I've been separating out the film cameras; I don't have as many of those as I do digital cameras but there are enough that the job is worth doing. Some of them were fit only for the rubbish bin, but others gave ... sufficient optimism as to their status to be worth checking out properly, and this Canon Snappy LX was one such.
== Background ==
This is the sort of simple compact camera that was very popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in other words the generation of budget cameras before the advent of affordable digicams. There were at least two models: the base LX and its successor the LX II, which added features such as a simple mode dial. The original model was one of the simplest cameras to bear the Canon name, and never achieved anything like the reputation that the more advanced Sureshot range did.
== Look and feel ==
Whenever I pick up a film compact after using digital cameras for so long, I'm surprised at least initially by just how big it is. Part of the reason for this, of course, was the requirement to accommodate a roll of 35 mm film, a storage medium much bulkier than a digital memory card. In the Snappy's case, the bulk is increased further by the inclusion of a large viewfinder; this was a very popular feature in pre-LCD days, especially for those (like me) who wore glasses and thus found a smaller finder a bit irksome to use.
It's perfectly possible to hold and use the LX one-handed, but it's really designed to be held in two, and doing that also makes its weight a bit less noticeable. Not that it's amazingly heavy - 220 grams without batteries - but it's no featherweight contender either. The only button you need to worry about most of the time is the shutter button, and this is quite comfortable and well placed for your right index finger. Next to this is a pretty clear display showing the number of shots taken on the current film, whose details can be read through the clear slit on the back of the body.
== Features and settings ==
The Snappy being such a basic camera, it doesn't have much to cover here. The lens cover is slid open manually by means of a switch beneath the lens, and this also unlocks the shutter. The film is advanced after each shot, and rewound automatically at the end of the film, though there is an (I think deliberately) tiny button on the top of the unit that allows you to force a rewind in mid-roll. A simple 10-second self-timer is set from this area as well, and here one of the camera's very few less usual features can be found: it can be set to take two successive photos, each 10 seconds apart.
The camera's flash is automatic, and there are no manual overrides; the only way to take photos in dim places without flash is to stick a piece of thick card over the lamp itself! The manual (which is basic, but doesn't need to be any more) suggests that only colour print film with an ISO rating between 100 and 400 should be used, though I would imagine that the DX encoding on the film cartridge could work just as well with slide films. Film loading is, again, an automatic process.
The lens is as basic as the rest of the camera, being a rather small, fixed focus, 35 mm unit rated at f/4.5; there's no macro setting, so you won't be able to get sharp results with subjects closer than about 1.5 metres away. The flash can't cope with distances above around three metres, so indoor shots will have to be planned quite carefully. On the plus side, there's an anti red-eye light that comes on briefly just before a flash photo is taken.
== Photo quality and verdict ==
The Canon Snappy LX doesn't pretend to be a sophisticated device, and it certainly isn't that. It's very easy to use, therefore, but you do have to be aware of its technical limitations. The results I got with it (via Boots, who are usually quite reliable) were frankly pretty poor as a rule, and not up to the standard of what I'd expect with even a budget digital camera today. Colours seemed rather washed out and edges weren't very sharp. On the plus side, the lack of much electronic wizardry does mean that a pair of alkaline AA batteries lasts for roll after roll of film!
You can tell how unloved film compacts are today by going into a few charity shops. Sooner or later you're bound to find a couple looking forlorn on an unregarded shelf, most probably near the VHS videos and audio cassettes. Even a fiver would be expensive; half that is more the going rate, despite the brand name. It works, it's simple to use and if you're not fussy about results then it does do a job... but it's nothing like the high-quality device you'd expect from a camera bearing the Canon name. Only for collectors, I think.
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