Camera Oasis

What do Walgreens and CVS drug stores do with the film negatives that aren't returned? Mystery solved. But hardly satisfying. . I've probed this since my Aug. 2016 post . When I asked Walgreens why they don't return negatives with photofinishing orders, a manager called me. He explained that his store sends all film processing orders to District Photo, a Maryland wholesale lab. They send nothing back to the stores -- prints or negs, he said. Image files scanned from negatives are transmitted to the store, where prints are produced and the files are written to a CD. This led me to District Photo, where a polite woman named Ruth informed me that District's contract with Walgreens specifies no return of negatives. That's at Walgreens' request.  District retains the negatives for 30 days, then destroys them. So, Walgreens says it's District's issue. District says Walgreens tells them not to return the negatives. Amid the online finger-pointin

If you shoot film and have it processed at a drugstore, watch out. Walgreens and CVS are trying to steal your silver. By Eastwind41 (Own work) [Copyrighted free use], via Wikimedia Commons That's the only possible explanation as to why they no longer return your negatives when you develop color negative film. Instead of giving you prints with negatives in your photofinishing envelope, they give you prints and image files on a CD. You don't get your negatives back. By SkywalkerPL (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons Why? The film contains tiny particles of silver, which can be extracted and recycled, usually benefitting the photo lab. Companies used to offer kits that allowed labs to recover the silver, and you'd get your negatives back. But that technology likely isn't widely offered, since film processing declined. This page of Kodak's website talks about the process. The labs want to keep the silver. So you don't get your negatives

Rangefinder cameras from the 1970s had fast lenses and enabled you to control the lens aperture. They were quiet. And, if you were confronted by muggers, a weighty Canonet on a neck strap could be used as a defensive weapon. The downside? They used mercury batteries that were outlawed by the 1990s. Their foam light seals dissolved into gunk by the early 2000s. They didn't have built-in flashes. And some owners struggled to load the film correctly. These photos came from my Canon Canonet 28 , shot on very expired Kodak 200 print film. I hadn't seen the camera for years. (The Parkside photos were shot years ago; the flower images are more recent.) The photo processing was questionable, too. See that white squiggle in the price list shot? Dust on the negs.( More on drugstore photo processing another time.) You'll find Canon Canonets on eBay and thrift shops. If the shutter and rangefinder focus work (they don't need a battery), buy one. But, keep these thr

Your iPhone or Android might take pretty good photos. For $500+, it ought to take photos Annie Leibovitz would buy. But it doesn't. It's more like the world's most overpriced point-and-shoot camera.  Compact 35mm film cameras from the 1970s-1990s are my Kryptonite. I find most of them in thrift stores, next to audio devices with old 30-pin iPod docks. Those film cameras have better lenses than a smart phone. Flashes that actually light up a scene. They make me think about composing a picture that tells a story. And if I drop a camera I bought at a Godwill or Salvation Army, I'm out a whole $5 -- not $500 plus a pricey screen replacement. I can live with that.  Here's a brief guide to real 35mm cameras worth looking for when you're garage-sailing or cruising thrift stores. You can go retro for just a few dollars, and see if you remember how to compose a photo with a real viewfinder pressed against your brow. 10. Olympus Infinity Twin - a some

The Oldsmobile of Point-and-Shoot Cameras Olympus Infinity Twin. (c) DKassnoff, 2016 It's a gray brick. Press the shutter button, and you hear the workings of your Aunt Stella's sewing machine. It's a 1988 relic from a time when Olympus believed you only needed two focal lengths: 35mm and 70mm. That's the Olympus Infinity Twin, a thrift-store find that consumed $3.99 and promised a photographic experience comparable to driving my Uncle Arnold's Olds Starfire F-85 around the narrow streets of Bayside, NY. It did the job, but felt clunky in the execution, like the ball joints were shot. The Infinity Twin (known as the Olympus AF Twin in some regions) had a twin-lens design. The 35mm lens was the default, but a button atop the camera activated a mirror that doubled the focal length to 70mm. The 35mm, f3.5 lens was sharper and faster than the 70mm. I'm fond of Olympus' clamshell lens cover design, which first appeared with the Olympus XA film camer

At $2.99 in the Goodwill thrift store, the Kodak Star 1035Z camera seemed like a great deal. As long as I didn't think too hard. But I thought twice. In the realm of thrift store camera bargains, I could do better. The Kodak had a slow, 38-80mm zoom lens. And a choice of two flash options: auto or auto with red-eye reduction. No flash-defeat button. Still, at $3, with a case and owner's booklet, and a clean, scratch-free body and lens,  was it worth it? NO. NOT AT ALL. Kodak already sold a version of this camera in the 1990s. I owned one. Its auto-focus had all the accuracy of a Trump speechwriter. The zoom lens trudged to its maximum focal length at snail speed. The infant you wanted to photograph would've learned to crawl, walk, and drive a Big Wheel to kindergarten by the time the camera was ready to fire. And the shutter lag -- the moment between pressing the big gray button and getting the shot -- rivaled that of some older digital cameras. Overall

I've lately been shooting with some 35mm film cameras. Partly to determine whether they're worth keeping or selling, and partly because I have rolls of film in my basement that date back to as late as 2006. Kept cool, film can last well beyond the date stamped on the box. But you wouldn't want to risk your pictures from a major event -- wedding, graduation, or vacation -- to film that's out of date. Parkleigh Crystals, Film from 2008 One example: the photo at left: photographed with 200-speed color negative film short-dated from 2008. The camera: Olympus Stylus Epic , perhaps the best fixed-lens compact 35mm point-and-shoot camera ever sold. What does a film camera give you that an equivalent digital camera can't? In a word: soft backgrounds. While most of the colored crystals in this image are sharply focused, the less-important elements are soft and de-focused. This adds emphasis to your main subject, and can help create a mood. You can also get this eff

Had a day to play with a Kodak M583 camera, described in the previous post. A quick summary: Image quality: pretty good, edge-to-edge. Nice handling of low-light/twilight images at 28mm wide-angle. At 224mm full zoom, however, subjects looked softer. OK for general snapshots and travel images in bright daylight. In very low light, the camera could not lock focus on a table candle. Image stabilization (optical) worked well. Camera selected a moderately low ISO 125 for a portrait shot in twilight, and didn't fire its flash, making for nice skin tones and no blowouts. Menus are now so heavily layered that you're really forced to choose your settings in advance, because there's no quick-set beyond the basic "Smart Capture" function. Camera uses a micro SD card, which big-fingered hands will find hard to load and unload. For me, the most challenging feature were the microscopic buttons on the right side of the LCD screen (see the red camera, above). They access menu

Can you spot the difference between these two digital cameras? The black camera is a new Kodak M583, a 14-megapixel compact with a Schneider lens, 8X optical zoom. The red camera is a GE Power Series E1680W, with 16 megapixels and an 8X optical zoom. To me, they appear to have come off the same assembly line, someplace in Asia. Their prices are nearly identical, too. At the moment, Kmart is offering the GE camera at $20 under the Kodak. On the other hand, 16 MP on a 1/2.3 sensor will probably result in less than satisfactory images. GE is one of those drugstore brands that hardly any camera review website takes seriously. Kodak, on the other hand, said earlier this year that they would re-strategize their camera business to sell only profitable cameras. I'm thinking this meant sourcing some cameras from GE's General Imaging business, just as Hewlett Packard appears to have done.

I'm a sucker for stretching the limits of 35mm negatives. And, with a little creativity, I get some nice rewards. This week, I'm shooting with a rarity: the Canon Multi-Tele, a 35mm automatic film camera that captures either full-frame or half-frame images. Depending on how you set the selector, you can grab either 24 x 36 or 18 x 24 mm pictures. So a 36-exposure roll of Kodak Portra VC 400 becomes a 72 exposure roll. Why do this? 18 x 24mm is roughly the same size as the sensor in digital SLR cameras, and I'm curious to see if the half-frame images come out with any more clarity or detail than the same-size JPEGs from a Nikon D60. Besides, I get the added satisfaction of driving the photo lab a little bit crazy, as the half-frame adapter required to print "normal-size" prints from the smaller negatives is rarely found. (You can easily create acceptable prints by editing a scan or digital negative). Downsides: the Canon Multi-Tele uses a loud, spring-loaded lens t

Pocket video camera in your future? They've become as popular as most "standard" digital cameras, mostly because of their form-factor. Most pocket video cameras often do less than a digital still camera that shoots HD video. The video cameras usually don't have a zooming lens; almost all digital point-and-shoots have an optical zoom lens. Point-and-shoots offer scene modes for nighttime, portraits, etc., while videocams have only a couple of options: stills or different size videos. And I haven't seen a pocket video camera with a flash or fill-in light, which would help improve still photography. But for all the video choices, I don't understand why so few offer a key feature: dual microphones. Video without audio isn't terrible, but video with poor audio is almost intolerable. Canon and Kodak make cameras with two microphones; the Kodak V1253 pictured above does a pretty decent job, captures HD video, and has a fairly nice feature set in a svelt form fac

Over in Target-Land, I asked the photo department "team member" the difference between a Target Photo CD and a Kodak Picture CD. She replied: "The Kodak CD holds more pictures." Say what? Unless the Kodak CD is actually a DVD, it holds the same 800 MB as every other CD on the planet. Less, perhaps, because Kodak's CD's usually contain viewer software and a file to download and install Kodak's EasyShare photo-editing software. Sure, I could be mistaken. But if there's no premium aspect to the Kodak CD, why is there a $1.50 price premium over the Target CD? Target, are you listening?

I'm going to tell you how to choose a digital camera -- what to look for, and what to ignore. Please pay attention. Many people ask me which camera they should buy. It's easy to suggest one sold by my employer, but different people have different photographic needs. And an $80, 3x zoom camera with a plastic lens might not make you happy if you want to shoot wildlife that's 100 feet away. This isn't to say my employer makes inadequate cameras; it's merely that one size doesn't fit all. I'm currently using a K odak Z950 , which delivers fine performance, feels great in my hands, and costs around $150. First, the items you can ignore: IGNORE "megapixels". Really. If it has more than 8 megapixels, it'll give you the photos you want. If you need a 14-megapixel camera, you'd better be shooting images to display on billboards, because you'll seldom need a 14-MP file. IGNORE "fits in a pocket." Ninety percent of today's cameras fi

KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera I really wanted to try this one out. Sort of an iPod Touch for photography. Great concept. Then the specs were published. The lens -- the most important part of the camera, period -- is a 5X zoom. Starts at 35mm, racks out the 175mm. Not bad. Then I glanced at the lens specs. At the widest angle, 35mm, the lens starts at f4.8. (Translation: S-L-O-W.) On some cameras, f4.8 is the spec for the lens at its farthest zoom, not its nearest. The last camera I had with a lens that slow was a 35mm point-and-shoot Nikon. Compare this with my 3-year-old Canon G6, which has a similar lens length. The lens starts at f2.0. It lets in three times as much light as the Slice's lens. PR people tend to tut-tut people like me for dwelling needlessly on "speeds and feeds." But, in reality, a camera with an f2.0 or f2.8 lens needs less light than a lens that's hamstrung at f4.8 at the start. That means you either need to be closer to your subject, use flash

Seriously: how long did you think camera companies could churn out higher- and higher-megapixel cameras before consumers became fatigued with it all? They're figuring out that a new 12- or 14-megapixel camera isn't a necessity when jobs, hours and salaries are getting cut. That 6- or 8-MP camera most of us bought a year or two ago will do fine, at least until the recession moderates. As a result: Ritz Camera filed for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection this week. Hundreds of stores, stocked with Fuji, Nikon, and Olympus cameras that no one's buying. Most Ritz stores were mall-based, within easy clobbering range of the Target or Best Buy across the parking lot. If you bought a camera from Ritz, I hope you didn't pay extra for a Ritz warranty. Ritz's court filings say they owe Nikon USA more than $20 million. That kind of liability isn't going to make things easy at Nikon. Take good care of that D90 or D300; customer service may get whacked. Olympus downsized a portion

Blundered into a Wal-mart this week, and found a clerk and a customer in the photo department, sorting through cameras. The customer wanted a camera that would stitch together multiple photos to make panoramas. (Many Canon and Kodak cameras do this, or come with stitching software that makes it a breeze to do it on your computer.) The customer and the clerk were baffled. This feature wasn't in the little camera cheat book that Wal-mart gives its photo departments. Because I've actually used this feature on a Kodak Z1285 camera, I picked up a box. After a good 5 minutes of squinting, I found the "call-out" on the box -- in a type-size that an ant would have trouble reading. I helped sell Mr. Customer a camera that met his needs, and that's a good thing. But here's a word of advice to all camera manufacturers: USE BIGGER PRINT on your packaging! The people buying your products do not walk into Wal-mart with magnifying glasses or photographer's loupes. Want

When you're researching a digital camera, there are many sources of independent, serious reviews: Stevesdigicams.com, dcresource.com, dpreview.com. If you can wade through the tech-geek speak, you'll come away more knowledgeable about your particular camera. Want real-world customer opinions? Try Amazon.com. Semi-professional video reviews can be found on YouTube, although it's sometimes painful to put up with the shaky video quality. But I draw the line when sites such as Buy.com and TigerDirect.com tout their videos as "product reviews." There's no objectivity involved when the video clip features a sales rep from the camera manufacturer talking about the "great features" of his or her employers' camera. In the real world, this is simply an infomercial, and not a good source of objectivity. Full disclosure: I work for Kodak. I like some Kodak cameras, and don't care for others. When I offer an opinion, I try to keep do so with a minimum of

One of my favorite little digital cameras is the Kodak V603. It's nothing extraordinary -- 6 megapixels, 30 fps video, and a pretty standard 36-108 Schneider zoom lens. But it was the right size at the right price, and captured great photos. My one mistake: giving it to my daughter, who dumped the camera into her bag along with her iPod, cell phone, and Lord-knows-what-else. All that jostling around resulted in a problem: loose screws. Cruise around the web, and you find the V603 earned a reputation for losing the screws that hold the metal alloy covers on the camera. Last time I saw that camera, it was held together by yellow duct tape at the corners. Not pretty. Most digital cameras have tiny screws that might work their way out. So, get a set of precision screwdrivers (usually $1 at the Dollar Store). Tighten up any loose screws. Then, place a tiny dab of clear nail polish on any screws that felt a little looser than others. (Be sure to keep the nail polish away from buttons an

Camera companies spend loads o' cash designing cameras. They do studies. They make clay models, churn out non-working prototypes, and show 'em to would-be owners to see what'll work. Everyone wants to have that breakthrough design. So, I'm moseying around the camera universe one afternoon, and I spot: And I've got to ask: was there a saloon in some European city where the camera designers get looped and take home the wrong USB drive?

In my film camera days, a roll of 35mm film gave you a negative of 36 x 24mm. That area was the "recording surface" for the images I shot. Digital cameras today are promoted for having 8, 10, or 12 megapixels. That's not the size of the recording surface; it's geek-speak for the number of tiny recording cells on the sensor. You can squeeze millions of these cells on a sensor. But if the sensor itself is only 7.2 x 5.3 mm -- typically the size found in a pocket digital camera -- you have less overall area in which to capture an image. Add megapixels, and you're just squeezing more tiny cells on a small sensor, which leads to image degradation in the form of "noise." So, when you're looking at different cameras, megapixels are irrelevant. It's the size of the sensor that really determines image quality. There's a semi-technical explanation of this at this web site, and a simpler (and somewhat exuberant) discussion on Ken Rockwell's webs