I'm shocked at how (relatively) sharp some of these near microscopic formats are! I'm always blown away by how much detail film can capture. Also, I have a Pen FT too. It's one of my favorite cameras, a world class SLR and lens system in a tiny package.
Not that I dislike grain but if you can cut your own film, microfilm is the secret to getting the most out of subminiature formats. The lack of grain can make for shockingly good results considering the size.
With some of the german stuff (adox?) you could likely get half frame quality on minox... And full frame sharpness on half frame... Of course, it also means iso 50 or 100 and likely developing with some specific deceloper for the film
Subminiature formats became more popular in the latter 1950s, as finer grain films and developers (B&W) were formulated in response to a general abandonment of larger roll film formats in favor of 35mm for consumer use. The compromise I preferred was 16mm on the larger format size adopted by Minolta after moving on from the early Minolta 16 models shown in the video, Of those, my preference was for the MG-S. This has a smaller, rounded case, built in Cds metering, auto exposure with user override, and fixed focus (10 feet) with supplemental lenses for other distances (depth of field covers most needs), and a selection of color filters and close up lenses. If you cut down your film as noted in the video, it is fully usable today, particularly as we now have the advantage of finer grain, sharper films and developers for every occasion. The only thing you simply have to lose to enjoy using these cameras: They can with care make surprisingly good photos up to 8x10 inches if you have the vest enlarging equipment, but Ansel Adams never used them, and you aren't making exhibition prints with them. The biggest issue with using these cameras is holding them steady during exposure.
Minolta 16 MG-S and QT (1970-72) were the last of the cameras sold new. Also using the 12x17 mm format were Gami, Rollei 16, 16s and Edixa using a cartridge needing the film to be wind back into it after all exposures like 35 mm cameras. Minolta, Mamiya and Minox among others used a double cartridge with a tke up chamber. The Kiev based on the Minolta 16 I added a focusing lens and increased the negative size to 13x17 mm using a modified Minolta style cartridge. Tessina uses a cut down 35 mm strip in a special slim cartridge for a 21x17 mm negative making it the easiest subminiature to still use today (you can load your own in a dark bag with scissors to cut it).
Last year, I picked up a bunch of exposed Disc Film discs that my dad shot between 1982 and 1985. When returned from Kodak's development lab back in the day, they came packaged inside of a little cardboard sleeve, so all of the negative discs still are in pristine condition (they are all Kodacolor HR or VR). It's honestly surprising how good the 3.5" x 4.5" prints that were made from those negatives look. Now I just have to make an adapter fixture to scan the damn things -- am hoping to avoid cutting out the hubs from all of them.
@@neal3k such a small format on a flatbed yields very poor results in terms of sharpness. For me, flatbeds are good for 120 and up, and some people find good results with 35mm on them. But if you're able to get things to your liking, more power to you.
On the 110 front I love my little vivitar point n' shoot. It's fixed everything, but if you choose a subject at least 5 feet away and just use flash on every single shot (including outdoors as a fill flash) it's surprisingly competent.
I really love my Pen-FT. Fortunately, it's in better condition, but one thing I like is how easy it is to make scenery with it. Diptychs are the format to shoot there imo, you don't even need to line the shot properly (well, I can't do it properly) but it's easy to make a scene where first frame is leaning to the wall or the door and second is what on the other side of it.
I've read "Submarine photography" and was expecting submarine military cameras or something throughout the video and only at the end heard "subminiature" and like 💀
Thats why medium format is what it is. 35 is miniature, medium is, meh, medium... And of course, only actually good photography is done on gigantic closets on tripods, with huge sheet film. Or in other words, large format.
I think the aps format also has a digital layer that stored information about the exposure so the developer machine reads the information and make adjustment according to the information on the film. Something you can not replicate in a normal lab. Didn't know you can still buy 110 film, as a Pentaxian I go grab one.
I do quite enjoy my Pen FV, it has a great feature that you can swap out the mount with a PL mount and therefore use PL lenses on it, provided they don't protrude more than like 25mm past the mount.
embrace the grain! ever since I saw someone enlarge their super 8 negs to crazy sizes turning them into these amazing textured abstract forms I have been driven down a similar route searching for textural emotion and I feel like sub miniature formats help loads in this respect. I also shoot subminiature for my typology style projects, shooting on this weird little french camera called a colormundus. gets 300 shots off a roll of double8
Was about to leave a comment saying it would be nice to see how far those formats could be pushed with the finest grain film around, but I see you had the same idea already :) I'd be really interested seeing the minox + cms and of course the 3200 for the memes :D
The beauty of half frame is that it's *easy* -- easy to get film (standard 35 mm), easy to get processing (at least for negs/strips only, anywhere that processes the film type you use -- B&W, C-41, or E-6, though scanning/printing and mounting of half frame is spotty), and nothing you learned for 35 mm is invalidated). The same is true to a lesser extent for 16 mm formats that use a reloadable cassette/cartridge and can work with single perf film, as you can buy 16 mm single perf film for movie cameras at reasonable prices. Processing is harder, because almost no commercial processors will return your (irreplaceable) cassettes or cartridges; you pretty well have to process your own, but if you're doing your own 35 mm and/or 120, you've got almost all the equipment you need (you can buy a 16 mm reel to fit nearly any processing tank, if it won't adjust that close already) and there are 3D printed negative carriers in any format you like available for most of the common enlargers or scanners. Scanning the tiny frames limits your pixel count, but the actual resolution you get will be the same as with 35 mm full frame. It is worth noting that several of the later Minolta 16 cameras used a larger frame, 13x17 (nearly the same as 110). There was also a line of Soviet upgraded copies of the Minolta 16II that had a focusing lens and the same larger frame, with a slightly modified cassette that accepted a longer film strip; these cameras can still use single-perf 16 mm film, or double perf (with one row of perforations slightly intruding in the image frame) but, IMO, are best with slit-down unperforated film. My experience with the Soviet Kiev 30 and Kiev 303 is that they're better than a Minolta 16II because of the combination of focusing lens and larger frame; my results have been comparable with a top-end 110 camera like a Pocket Instamatic 60 (except I can use any film speed I like due to full manual exposure, and I don't need a battery that hasn't been sold new in forty years to make the camera run). And then there's Minox -- the lens quality of a Minox III, B, or C is such that you can get more information out of the 8x11 frame than you can from most 16 mm cameras, but the tiny film absolutely requires a special film reel to process your own, and there are only a couple shops in America that will process Minox for you (though as far as I know, all of them are happy to return your cartridge or reload it for you with your choice of film). The only DIY source of film, however, is either to slit your own from a larger format, or buy pre-slit strips from one of a couple vendors. A slitter isn't expensive, though, and you can get 12 reloads (six 24 frame, six 36) out of a single 120 roll, making the film pretty economical if you're willing to do the darkroom work to slit your own. Printing requires a very short enlarger lens, or a very tall column on your enlarger; scanning is pretty much a digital camera with macro lens/tube only operation (you can't get enough megapixels to more than see what you've got from even a top end flatbed scanner, and few if any film scanners can feed Minox strips). And in my opinion, Disc Film was junk from the start, in large part because it used a roughly Minox-size frame, with optics that would have been at home on a 1950s box camera, fixed exposure and automatic flash, and of course the battery- and plastic life-dependent disc advance system. And never mind that Kodak never sold B&W for it, nor was there ever good support for home processing (one of those probably drove the other). There have been formats smaller than Minox -- look up a Petal camera, for instance. Worked like a Disc camera, but with a different film cut that could be punched out of a 120 roll, had decent optics, but very limited exposure control if any (there were a couple Petal models, they were tiny, but very nearly *too* tiny). Even finding an image that was recorded with a Petal camera is a significant challenge today, because the format became obsolete before 1960 and was never popular. And of course there were the various Japanese 16 mm and 17.5 mm paper-backed formats that get lumped together as "HIT-type" -- short version, don't bother. The only cameras in that class that are worth looking at are the Rubix and Rubina, which used either a 16 mm cassette *or* a 17.5 mm paper-backed roll (in the same camera!), had useful manual controls, and a decent lens -- all the others were cheap knock-offs of those models, made to look like them but as functionally similar as the Time-Life giveaway cameras were to a real 35 mm SLR.
The coolest application for 110 film was model rocketry. Estes made rockets that would snap a picture of the ground when the rocket reached apogee. Back in the day, I shot a lot of 110 and played with rockets a fair bit (as a Gen X, it was like everything else: without adult supervision), but never had a chance to try aerial photography
16 mm cameras have 10x10 (Minicord), 10x14 (most use this), 12x17 (GaMi, Minolta MG-s, QT, Rollei 16S, Edixa). was available but grain was 100 ISO film or slower to avoid grain. 400 ISO was common but grain a problem. Copex and imagelink have the best resolution if you can process and enlarge yourself. When APS film came out it was not available for 35 mm. The resolution of the film made up for the smaller negative in the top models like the Minolta Vectis S1 and Cannon Ixus II and III. Few took advance of the smaller film or provided the features in the APS design. It did not take long for the film to be available in 35 mm cameras taking away some of the advantage. 110 had a larger cartridge than 16mm and pre-exposed spacing frame numbers. The paper back also meant not flat back plate to hold the film flat when taking a photograph. Few cameras were well built and took good quality image. The format only supported a slow and a faster speed film. It did allow for a more automated printing unlike 16mm formats that needed printing by hand in a dark room.
I liked APS, ...there I said it 😮...I had both compact & SLR versions of the cameras. i got some great travel photos from it. Fact it was sealed & you could swap film mid roll & even display the photos via TV was pretty awesome.
The Minox lens can yield much better results if you used any better film with it, say like Rollei RPX25 or microfilm developed properly. Using common 200-400ASA film in it will only give you grains. Always breaks my heart when seeing Minox cameras get criticized on their image quality💔
I can recommend the Minolta 16 automatic and the Steky 16 if you want a submin camera that allows you to modify all the exposure triangle and focus in one package.
Neither APS or Half-frame 35mm are considered to be subminiture. There are several full-feature submini cameras, just not very many and they tend to be the more expensive models. One that comes directly to mind is the Stecky. The standard lens is fixed focus, but the 135mm telephoto is manual focus.
APS, got an APS SLR (Minolta), check. 110, got an SLR (Minolta Zoom Mark II) for that, check. All the others, not yet. Try again. (But I do use 126 although I know that its 35mm wide. Got an SLR there too) And I shoot double-super 8...
I never liked 400 ASA film until i saw the result from the Minolta 110 zoom Mark II. I was very impressed until I got the same film back from the Minolta Vectis S1. The larger format negative in a camera with interchangeable zoom lenses was even more impressive. To handle and use for weight size it is a lovely camera to use. Sadly no more APS films to buy new. Both 110 and APs along with point and shoot 35 mm cameras with so much plastic parts are bricks when they fail as no one takes them on to repair.
@@geraldmcmullon2465 Yep, got both of those two camera modely myself, I really like them. Unfortuately here in Germany, there are hardly any labs left that can process the metadata from the magnetic strip of the aps film properly which is really annoying when it comes to prints. At least I have the Fuji player, saves a lot of trouble looking at the pictures on a TV, but from time to time you just want a proper print. With the Minolta 110 Zoom Mark II the Lomography peacock is real fun, I shot may cassettes of that stock and had it developed in E5, framed the slides myslef in small 3cmx3cm slide mounts and looked at them with a andequate 110 projector (AGFA-LEITZ). Excellent quality I have to say!
I have a minolta 16 model P and a 100ft roll of fuji 16mm microfilm. While ISO 25 isn't exactly ideal, (ive shot slower but you do need sunlight) I do get the luxury of having nearly 2000 frames worth of film at my disposal. I'll provide an update when i develop my first roll.
@geraldmcmullon2465 I'll consider it. The model P is rather limited f3.5 to f16 aperture 1/100, 1/50 shutter speeds. It'd be a big step up to get a QT or MG-s.
Nice! Have you found a good developer for taming contrast? I’ve shot Fuji HR in 16mm as well and developed in Caffenol, which works alright. But I guess contrast could still be lower. Either way, 16mm and microfilm works nicely!
Seeing these results, it's insane to think that the most high tech government agencies used for information gathering was discrete 16mm film. It even crazier to think that they were able to take photos of documents inside buildings with low iso film on these tiny cameras and film. How technology has advanced.
Basically you dont need midtones when shooting documents, like films for aerophotography, that originally rated at higher exposure index, but with other gamma
Not quite the same, but I have used an old Bolex 16mm movie camera and darkroom printed the frames onto 8x10 paper with genuinely great results, (the film was only about ISO 12 and fairly grain less) So there is really a lot you can get out of/do with miniature film formats.
The auto 110 is such a nice camera, I love using mine but it's just not worth it to me when I can get a roll or 35mm for the same price and use something much nicer
Film and processing pricing is largely what killed these later small formats introduced by Kodak. These introductions were part of a monopolizing business practice Kodak started in the 1930s. Kodak, holding a near monopoly on film production and sales in most of the world, would introduce a "new film format" which either duplicated an existing format (620, 828) or new formats (as per the video) which no one needed, claiming an improvement or added user convenience. Generally, these used much less film, giving ever more reduced image quality, yet cost more per exposure. Often, the film package suffered technical faults which further reduced image quality. For 126 and 110, that was elimination of a film pressure plate (required to use the cartridge designs), resulting in inadequate film flatness in 126 generally and in cheap 110 bodies. Formats still later, smaller than 110, were just a crude marketing effort, relying on the idea that if you tell someone they need it enough times, they will come to believe they do. (Thus, the very short lives of those smaller formats, proving Lincoln's old adage about fooling people some or all of the time.)
This video made me think of trying to cut Adox CMS 20 II down to Minox size and see what kind of quality you can get. Maybe a good experiment? Edit: Should have waited till the end...
also I recommend going to Stonehenge Tower near Council Crest in the early morning after a rain. Its always super foggy there and its such a cool environment for taking pictures
i have a minolta subminature (i think it takes 16mm) that i have no way of loading lmao. i would send it in if you had a way to shoot it. its mechanical and fully manual, i forgot the exact model.
So glad I'm not the only one. With me it's only an issue when I'm streaming to my Chromecast. Earlier today I asked TH-cam support for a solution. Not that I'm actually counting on a solution, ofc...
Well, I got a very kind reply back from YT support. They asked me to test on a different device, and on that 2nd Chromecast all worked fine. So I did a factory reset on the problematic one, and all is well now.
I have the Cadillac of 110 film cameras, the Minolta 110 Zoom MKII, it offers adjustable aperture and exposure compensation, had bulb mode and a great lens with macro. Problem is, it is almost as big as a Minolta XD-5, with 50mm lens. Why buy a 110 camera when you can get a proper 35mm for the same size? It does take great photos though.
I always see half frame being quoted as 18x24, but the negatives from my Olympus PEN FT are 17x24. It doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to noticeably change the aspect ratio - 17x24 crops closer to 5x7 than to 3x4. I'd be interested to know if anybody else has measured any physical half frame negs
Half frame is the future of film, as prices increase. Buy a good half frame camera NOW, guys. I have an Olympus Pen-EE2, great camera and very portable (although a little bit heavy😅)
Ah, Kodak Disc! Ultra fast shooting speeds, ultra fast reloads, ridiculously expensive cartridges and terrible picture quality. I. still miss ours. It was such a fancy little thing.
I'm shocked at the 110 quality. I didn't realize they made high end 110's, the really cheap ones were popular when I was a kid. Then the disc cameras came out. 🤣
SSN was never intended to be a secure thing. And it isn't, it's just date of birth and a few numbers generally not too hard to find. Just another form of ID to ensure you find the right person if the camera is lost and found. When SSN was first created, it was never intended to be something that had any real use other than collecting social security checks. The fact that many places allow you to do bad stuff with it nowadays, like identity fraud has only become possible because social security numbers are these days used in a way they were never intended to. In my country you can find anyone's by pretty much just searching their name, doesn't matter as you can't do anything with just the number here.
the first 10 seconds of the video made me think youtube broke. I use light mode in my browser, so it looked like their was nothing their when youtubes ui went away...lol
I think shooting these formats make the hobby more expensive and give you worse results. I tried 110 film myself, but the results are just so so bad that it took the fun out of the hobby. Don‘t get me wrong, the shooting is still as fun as with every other camera, but when the results are just so poor that they are straight up unusable it is a straight no from me for inconvenience and bad results. For a youtube history lesson on the other hand these examples are excellent.
Using one of the half dozen good 110 cameras could change your mind but few remain working now. Minolta Zoom 110 Mark I and Mark II impressed me. But I would not consdier the camera subminiature or easy to pocket. Rollei A110 and Minox 110S were good cameras with good lenses but mine all failed during the first testing of a roll of film. Cannon 110 Ed and Pentax Auto 110 were fine.
"APS" is "large format"!? How very interesting.;) It's also more dead than 126. (see "Fakmatic" 35mm cassettes.) "Half Frame/Single Frame" is returning, camera by camera. "110" film is still in production, so old cameras are still usable, unlike APS. "16mm" at 10mm X 14mm to 12mm X 17mm with 16mm bulk film available to "roll your own." "8mm X 11mm" used by Minox and the Yashica Atoron continue the "spy camera" genre. Kodak Disc, "8mm X 10mm" is just as dead as APS, these days. Using a Hasselblad cut film back to expose Kodak Disc film sounds so very wrong.;)
APS would have been a better product if it were released in the 80s, not the dawn of digital photography. I've got a Pocket Fujica 350 zoom which is built like a classic 110 camera, but has limited aperture control and manual focus. Honestly, disc cameras a pretty much worthless so you could go out and buy a few and hope at least one works properly.
Film overlord uploaded!
I instantly clicked 😅
honey, wake up! the develop-it-normally-you'll-get-better-results-guy has uploaded a new video
Adox fine grain in minox! Adox in Minox!
CMS 20 II in Minox.
Let's see just how sharp that lens is.
Throw in some Ilford 3200 for comparison!
I'm shocked at how (relatively) sharp some of these near microscopic formats are! I'm always blown away by how much detail film can capture.
Also, I have a Pen FT too. It's one of my favorite cameras, a world class SLR and lens system in a tiny package.
Not that I dislike grain but if you can cut your own film, microfilm is the secret to getting the most out of subminiature formats. The lack of grain can make for shockingly good results considering the size.
With some of the german stuff (adox?) you could likely get half frame quality on minox... And full frame sharpness on half frame... Of course, it also means iso 50 or 100 and likely developing with some specific deceloper for the film
The days when attic darkroom uploads are the best!
tiny negatives = perfect for big foot or nessi
Half frame all the way, I'm still rocking my 1961 Olympus Pen ee half frame camera 📷 taken some lovely photos on it.😊
That Pentax 110 is positvely adorable.
Subminiature formats became more popular in the latter 1950s, as finer grain films and developers (B&W) were formulated in response to a general abandonment of larger roll film formats in favor of 35mm for consumer use. The compromise I preferred was 16mm on the larger format size adopted by Minolta after moving on from the early Minolta 16 models shown in the video, Of those, my preference was for the MG-S. This has a smaller, rounded case, built in Cds metering, auto exposure with user override, and fixed focus (10 feet) with supplemental lenses for other distances (depth of field covers most needs), and a selection of color filters and close up lenses. If you cut down your film as noted in the video, it is fully usable today, particularly as we now have the advantage of finer grain, sharper films and developers for every occasion. The only thing you simply have to lose to enjoy using these cameras: They can with care make surprisingly good photos up to 8x10 inches if you have the vest enlarging equipment, but Ansel Adams never used them, and you aren't making exhibition prints with them. The biggest issue with using these cameras is holding them steady during exposure.
Minolta 16 MG-S and QT (1970-72) were the last of the cameras sold new. Also using the 12x17 mm format were Gami, Rollei 16, 16s and Edixa using a cartridge needing the film to be wind back into it after all exposures like 35 mm cameras. Minolta, Mamiya and Minox among others used a double cartridge with a tke up chamber. The Kiev based on the Minolta 16 I added a focusing lens and increased the negative size to 13x17 mm using a modified Minolta style cartridge.
Tessina uses a cut down 35 mm strip in a special slim cartridge for a 21x17 mm negative making it the easiest subminiature to still use today (you can load your own in a dark bag with scissors to cut it).
Last year, I picked up a bunch of exposed Disc Film discs that my dad shot between 1982 and 1985. When returned from Kodak's development lab back in the day, they came packaged inside of a little cardboard sleeve, so all of the negative discs still are in pristine condition (they are all Kodacolor HR or VR). It's honestly surprising how good the 3.5" x 4.5" prints that were made from those negatives look. Now I just have to make an adapter fixture to scan the damn things -- am hoping to avoid cutting out the hubs from all of them.
God's speed to you.
You can leave the disc on a flatbed scanner. I have and it works just fine.
@@neal3k such a small format on a flatbed yields very poor results in terms of sharpness.
For me, flatbeds are good for 120 and up, and some people find good results with 35mm on them.
But if you're able to get things to your liking, more power to you.
the comments on this channel are as enjoyable as the video itself
On the 110 front I love my little vivitar point n' shoot. It's fixed everything, but if you choose a subject at least 5 feet away and just use flash on every single shot (including outdoors as a fill flash) it's surprisingly competent.
I really love my Pen-FT. Fortunately, it's in better condition, but one thing I like is how easy it is to make scenery with it. Diptychs are the format to shoot there imo, you don't even need to line the shot properly (well, I can't do it properly) but it's easy to make a scene where first frame is leaning to the wall or the door and second is what on the other side of it.
"You shoot half frame to make diptychs, I shoot half frame because I'm poor. We are not the same"
I've read "Submarine photography" and was expecting submarine military cameras or something throughout the video and only at the end heard "subminiature" and like 💀
For the really young ones, 35mm was called the miniature format by the Speed Graphics crowd. Hence these are called subminiatures.
Thats why medium format is what it is. 35 is miniature, medium is, meh, medium... And of course, only actually good photography is done on gigantic closets on tripods, with huge sheet film. Or in other words, large format.
I love your shots on the minox
I emailed you asking to do this
I’m glad you’ve posted a video about subminiature formats
Exactly the two filmtypes i want to see in a Minox.
I'm so glad you got the Minox 🤘
Also I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS A FILM CUTTER!! Time to make an order and dust off the Minox 🤝
Next up, Microfiche!
I think the aps format also has a digital layer that stored information about the exposure so the developer machine reads the information and make adjustment according to the information on the film. Something you can not replicate in a normal lab. Didn't know you can still buy 110 film, as a Pentaxian I go grab one.
I do quite enjoy my Pen FV, it has a great feature that you can swap out the mount with a PL mount and therefore use PL lenses on it, provided they don't protrude more than like 25mm past the mount.
The new Lomo 110 has been tempting me since it was introduced.
It's fun, I enjoy the one I bought. The camera is enjoyable to use I just need to remember to focus it.
I love 110 so much, really wish more slide film got cut to 110 size
Great video with great photo samples! 😊👍🏻
embrace the grain! ever since I saw someone enlarge their super 8 negs to crazy sizes turning them into these amazing textured abstract forms I have been driven down a similar route searching for textural emotion and I feel like sub miniature formats help loads in this respect.
I also shoot subminiature for my typology style projects, shooting on this weird little french camera called a colormundus. gets 300 shots off a roll of double8
Was about to leave a comment saying it would be nice to see how far those formats could be pushed with the finest grain film around, but I see you had the same idea already :) I'd be really interested seeing the minox + cms and of course the 3200 for the memes :D
You can also use 8mm cine film in single frame mode 😉
this!
The beauty of half frame is that it's *easy* -- easy to get film (standard 35 mm), easy to get processing (at least for negs/strips only, anywhere that processes the film type you use -- B&W, C-41, or E-6, though scanning/printing and mounting of half frame is spotty), and nothing you learned for 35 mm is invalidated).
The same is true to a lesser extent for 16 mm formats that use a reloadable cassette/cartridge and can work with single perf film, as you can buy 16 mm single perf film for movie cameras at reasonable prices. Processing is harder, because almost no commercial processors will return your (irreplaceable) cassettes or cartridges; you pretty well have to process your own, but if you're doing your own 35 mm and/or 120, you've got almost all the equipment you need (you can buy a 16 mm reel to fit nearly any processing tank, if it won't adjust that close already) and there are 3D printed negative carriers in any format you like available for most of the common enlargers or scanners. Scanning the tiny frames limits your pixel count, but the actual resolution you get will be the same as with 35 mm full frame. It is worth noting that several of the later Minolta 16 cameras used a larger frame, 13x17 (nearly the same as 110). There was also a line of Soviet upgraded copies of the Minolta 16II that had a focusing lens and the same larger frame, with a slightly modified cassette that accepted a longer film strip; these cameras can still use single-perf 16 mm film, or double perf (with one row of perforations slightly intruding in the image frame) but, IMO, are best with slit-down unperforated film. My experience with the Soviet Kiev 30 and Kiev 303 is that they're better than a Minolta 16II because of the combination of focusing lens and larger frame; my results have been comparable with a top-end 110 camera like a Pocket Instamatic 60 (except I can use any film speed I like due to full manual exposure, and I don't need a battery that hasn't been sold new in forty years to make the camera run).
And then there's Minox -- the lens quality of a Minox III, B, or C is such that you can get more information out of the 8x11 frame than you can from most 16 mm cameras, but the tiny film absolutely requires a special film reel to process your own, and there are only a couple shops in America that will process Minox for you (though as far as I know, all of them are happy to return your cartridge or reload it for you with your choice of film). The only DIY source of film, however, is either to slit your own from a larger format, or buy pre-slit strips from one of a couple vendors. A slitter isn't expensive, though, and you can get 12 reloads (six 24 frame, six 36) out of a single 120 roll, making the film pretty economical if you're willing to do the darkroom work to slit your own. Printing requires a very short enlarger lens, or a very tall column on your enlarger; scanning is pretty much a digital camera with macro lens/tube only operation (you can't get enough megapixels to more than see what you've got from even a top end flatbed scanner, and few if any film scanners can feed Minox strips).
And in my opinion, Disc Film was junk from the start, in large part because it used a roughly Minox-size frame, with optics that would have been at home on a 1950s box camera, fixed exposure and automatic flash, and of course the battery- and plastic life-dependent disc advance system. And never mind that Kodak never sold B&W for it, nor was there ever good support for home processing (one of those probably drove the other).
There have been formats smaller than Minox -- look up a Petal camera, for instance. Worked like a Disc camera, but with a different film cut that could be punched out of a 120 roll, had decent optics, but very limited exposure control if any (there were a couple Petal models, they were tiny, but very nearly *too* tiny). Even finding an image that was recorded with a Petal camera is a significant challenge today, because the format became obsolete before 1960 and was never popular.
And of course there were the various Japanese 16 mm and 17.5 mm paper-backed formats that get lumped together as "HIT-type" -- short version, don't bother. The only cameras in that class that are worth looking at are the Rubix and Rubina, which used either a 16 mm cassette *or* a 17.5 mm paper-backed roll (in the same camera!), had useful manual controls, and a decent lens -- all the others were cheap knock-offs of those models, made to look like them but as functionally similar as the Time-Life giveaway cameras were to a real 35 mm SLR.
Love Your work
i love 110, the low res grain is awesome. I badly would love something that can actually make some decent scans of it.
The coolest application for 110 film was model rocketry. Estes made rockets that would snap a picture of the ground when the rocket reached apogee. Back in the day, I shot a lot of 110 and played with rockets a fair bit (as a Gen X, it was like everything else: without adult supervision), but never had a chance to try aerial photography
YEAAAAAAH! YEAAAAAAAAAAH MINOLTA MENTIONED!
9:28 EGG VAN SPOTTED!
16 mm cameras have 10x10 (Minicord), 10x14 (most use this), 12x17 (GaMi, Minolta MG-s, QT, Rollei 16S, Edixa). was available but grain was 100 ISO film or slower to avoid grain. 400 ISO was common but grain a problem. Copex and imagelink have the best resolution if you can process and enlarge yourself.
When APS film came out it was not available for 35 mm. The resolution of the film made up for the smaller negative in the top models like the Minolta Vectis S1 and Cannon Ixus II and III. Few took advance of the smaller film or provided the features in the APS design. It did not take long for the film to be available in 35 mm cameras taking away some of the advantage.
110 had a larger cartridge than 16mm and pre-exposed spacing frame numbers. The paper back also meant not flat back plate to hold the film flat when taking a photograph. Few cameras were well built and took good quality image. The format only supported a slow and a faster speed film. It did allow for a more automated printing unlike 16mm formats that needed printing by hand in a dark room.
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing
I liked APS, ...there I said it 😮...I had both compact & SLR versions of the cameras. i got some great travel photos from it. Fact it was sealed & you could swap film mid roll & even display the photos via TV was pretty awesome.
that disk film shot was cool u should try it again sometime
The Minox lens can yield much better results if you used any better film with it, say like Rollei RPX25 or microfilm developed properly. Using common 200-400ASA film in it will only give you grains. Always breaks my heart when seeing Minox cameras get criticized on their image quality💔
I have A4 grainless prints from Copex using Minox C and LX cameras.
that minox looks like spy stuff
I can recommend the Minolta 16 automatic and the Steky 16 if you want a submin camera that allows you to modify all the exposure triangle and focus in one package.
Neither APS or Half-frame 35mm are considered to be subminiture. There are several full-feature submini cameras, just not very many and they tend to be the more expensive models. One that comes directly to mind is the Stecky. The standard lens is fixed focus, but the 135mm telephoto is manual focus.
APS, got an APS SLR (Minolta), check.
110, got an SLR (Minolta Zoom Mark II) for that, check.
All the others, not yet. Try again.
(But I do use 126 although I know that its 35mm wide. Got an SLR there too)
And I shoot double-super 8...
I never liked 400 ASA film until i saw the result from the Minolta 110 zoom Mark II. I was very impressed until I got the same film back from the Minolta Vectis S1. The larger format negative in a camera with interchangeable zoom lenses was even more impressive. To handle and use for weight size it is a lovely camera to use. Sadly no more APS films to buy new.
Both 110 and APs along with point and shoot 35 mm cameras with so much plastic parts are bricks when they fail as no one takes them on to repair.
@@geraldmcmullon2465 Yep, got both of those two camera modely myself, I really like them. Unfortuately here in Germany, there are hardly any labs left that can process the metadata from the magnetic strip of the aps film properly which is really annoying when it comes to prints. At least I have the Fuji player, saves a lot of trouble looking at the pictures on a TV, but from time to time you just want a proper print.
With the Minolta 110 Zoom Mark II the Lomography peacock is real fun, I shot may cassettes of that stock and had it developed in E5, framed the slides myslef in small 3cmx3cm slide mounts and looked at them with a andequate 110 projector (AGFA-LEITZ). Excellent quality I have to say!
I have a minolta 16 model P and a 100ft roll of fuji 16mm microfilm. While ISO 25 isn't exactly ideal, (ive shot slower but you do need sunlight) I do get the luxury of having nearly 2000 frames worth of film at my disposal. I'll provide an update when i develop my first roll.
Get a working QT or MG-s more features in the camera and 12x17 a big step up from 10x14.
@geraldmcmullon2465 I'll consider it. The model P is rather limited f3.5 to f16 aperture 1/100, 1/50 shutter speeds. It'd be a big step up to get a QT or MG-s.
Nice! Have you found a good developer for taming contrast? I’ve shot Fuji HR in 16mm as well and developed in Caffenol, which works alright. But I guess contrast could still be lower. Either way, 16mm and microfilm works nicely!
@@sebkoch_yt Spur Nanospeed, and Spur Imagespeed
@@sebkoch_yt I developed the roll in rodinal 1+100. The negatives looked very contrasty but I was able to salvage a lot of shadow info in the scans
Seeing these results, it's insane to think that the most high tech government agencies used for information gathering was discrete 16mm film. It even crazier to think that they were able to take photos of documents inside buildings with low iso film on these tiny cameras and film. How technology has advanced.
Basically you dont need midtones when shooting documents, like films for aerophotography, that originally rated at higher exposure index, but with other gamma
I usually use my Hasselblad cut film adapters for little dry plates, never thought of smashing in some disc film to shoot donut-shaped negatives 😂
Hella dope
"The smaller the cameras become, the more compromises have to be made"
_Minox B entered the chat_
olympus pen f mentioned‼️
As soon as you brought out the film cutter I thought, “I hope he runs some CMS 20 through the Minox…” Please do!
I'd love to see you try the minox with - annnd you literally held up some CMS 20 as I was typing this. Part of me wants to see the P3200 more haha!
Not quite the same, but I have used an old Bolex 16mm movie camera and darkroom printed the frames onto 8x10 paper with genuinely great results, (the film was only about ISO 12 and fairly grain less) So there is really a lot you can get out of/do with miniature film formats.
2:26 looking forward to seeing the reassembled camera in the next video.
I think you mean 2:27
Very cool. How do you develop these tiny formats? I still remember how hard it was to find a 110 spool for my tank.
The auto 110 is such a nice camera, I love using mine but it's just not worth it to me when I can get a roll or 35mm for the same price and use something much nicer
Film and processing pricing is largely what killed these later small formats introduced by Kodak. These introductions were part of a monopolizing business practice Kodak started in the 1930s. Kodak, holding a near monopoly on film production and sales in most of the world, would introduce a "new film format" which either duplicated an existing format (620, 828) or new formats (as per the video) which no one needed, claiming an improvement or added user convenience. Generally, these used much less film, giving ever more reduced image quality,
yet cost more per exposure. Often, the film package suffered technical faults which further reduced image quality. For 126 and 110, that was elimination of a film pressure plate (required to use the cartridge designs), resulting in inadequate film flatness in 126 generally and in cheap 110 bodies. Formats still later, smaller than 110, were just a crude marketing effort, relying on the idea that if you tell someone they need it enough times, they will come to believe they do. (Thus, the very short lives of those smaller formats, proving Lincoln's old adage about fooling people some or all of the time.)
This video made me think of trying to cut Adox CMS 20 II down to Minox size and see what kind of quality you can get. Maybe a good experiment?
Edit: Should have waited till the end...
DUDE, THAT BLUE RV. IVE SEEN IT BEFORE. IT WAS IN THE CATHEDRAL PARK PARKING LOT AND I RAN OUT OF FILM RIGHT BEFORE SEEING IT AND I WAS PISSSSSSSED
also I recommend going to Stonehenge Tower near Council Crest in the early morning after a rain. Its always super foggy there and its such a cool environment for taking pictures
Nice! Let us celebrate the grain!
Cms 20, thats good thinking!
Yippie 🎉
i have a minolta subminature (i think it takes 16mm) that i have no way of loading lmao. i would send it in if you had a way to shoot it. its mechanical and fully manual, i forgot the exact model.
Yes.... tmz in minox... what could possibly go wrong?
What can I do to disable the ai voice over?
So glad I'm not the only one. With me it's only an issue when I'm streaming to my Chromecast. Earlier today I asked TH-cam support for a solution. Not that I'm actually counting on a solution, ofc...
Well, I got a very kind reply back from YT support. They asked me to test on a different device, and on that 2nd Chromecast all worked fine. So I did a factory reset on the problematic one, and all is well now.
I have the Cadillac of 110 film cameras, the Minolta 110 Zoom MKII, it offers adjustable aperture and exposure compensation, had bulb mode and a great lens with macro. Problem is, it is almost as big as a Minolta XD-5, with 50mm lens. Why buy a 110 camera when you can get a proper 35mm for the same size? It does take great photos though.
I always see half frame being quoted as 18x24, but the negatives from my Olympus PEN FT are 17x24. It doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to noticeably change the aspect ratio - 17x24 crops closer to 5x7 than to 3x4. I'd be interested to know if anybody else has measured any physical half frame negs
Nice! :)
4:16 me when Pen F is mentioned
MY LIFE HAS MEANING AGAIN
I have a canon ix. Its as good as my 35mm slrs but i have two expired rolls. trying to use it.
Half frame is the future of film, as prices increase. Buy a good half frame camera NOW, guys. I have an Olympus Pen-EE2, great camera and very portable (although a little bit heavy😅)
OMG I want digital camera in form of Minox.
1.15 Can I mount an EF-S lens (like 18-55 or 17-85) on it?
seeing half frame and none of the smaller 35mm variants like eighth frame was sad :(
Ah, Kodak Disc!
Ultra fast shooting speeds, ultra fast reloads, ridiculously expensive cartridges and terrible picture quality.
I. still miss ours. It was such a fancy little thing.
I'm shocked at the 110 quality. I didn't realize they made high end 110's, the really cheap ones were popular when I was a kid. Then the disc cameras came out. 🤣
somehow theese photos make me think more of early digital cameras/phones than analaog photos
Funny, I was thinking that they looked like photos from the’70’s…
Why not develop in something more like Xtol?
Shout out to PDX!
what about super8 stills? hahah
3:41 No way. Would that ever have been useful to have on there (ignoring risks)?
SSN was never intended to be a secure thing. And it isn't, it's just date of birth and a few numbers generally not too hard to find.
Just another form of ID to ensure you find the right person if the camera is lost and found.
When SSN was first created, it was never intended to be something that had any real use other than collecting social security checks. The fact that many places allow you to do bad stuff with it nowadays, like identity fraud has only become possible because social security numbers are these days used in a way they were never intended to.
In my country you can find anyone's by pretty much just searching their name, doesn't matter as you can't do anything with just the number here.
the first 10 seconds of the video made me think youtube broke. I use light mode in my browser, so it looked like their was nothing their when youtubes ui went away...lol
The Minolta 110 zoom SLR mk2 is superior vs the Pentax 110 IMO.
These look like cameras spies would use
I have 127 film camera. (Rolleiflex baby)
I think shooting these formats make the hobby more expensive and give you worse results. I tried 110 film myself, but the results are just so so bad that it took the fun out of the hobby. Don‘t get me wrong, the shooting is still as fun as with every other camera, but when the results are just so poor that they are straight up unusable it is a straight no from me for inconvenience and bad results.
For a youtube history lesson on the other hand these examples are excellent.
Using one of the half dozen good 110 cameras could change your mind but few remain working now. Minolta Zoom 110 Mark I and Mark II impressed me. But I would not consdier the camera subminiature or easy to pocket. Rollei A110 and Minox 110S were good cameras with good lenses but mine all failed during the first testing of a roll of film. Cannon 110 Ed and Pentax Auto 110 were fine.
imagine film in a iphone camera
"APS" is "large format"!? How very interesting.;) It's also more dead than 126. (see "Fakmatic" 35mm cassettes.)
"Half Frame/Single Frame" is returning, camera by camera.
"110" film is still in production, so old cameras are still usable, unlike APS.
"16mm" at 10mm X 14mm to 12mm X 17mm with 16mm bulk film available to "roll your own."
"8mm X 11mm" used by Minox and the Yashica Atoron continue the "spy camera" genre.
Kodak Disc, "8mm X 10mm" is just as dead as APS, these days. Using a Hasselblad cut film back to expose Kodak Disc film sounds so very wrong.;)
APS would have been a better product if it were released in the 80s, not the dawn of digital photography.
I've got a Pocket Fujica 350 zoom which is built like a classic 110 camera, but has limited aperture control and manual focus.
Honestly, disc cameras a pretty much worthless so you could go out and buy a few and hope at least one works properly.
Had a disk camera as a kid. Such a weirdly wasteful format shape.
Oh fuck, what's he going to do to those poor cameras...???
Another reminder that Disc cameras suck ass.