Author name: Photoedontheweb

Canon 50mm F1.8 LTM on A Leica T – by Ed Lara

As much as I enjoy shooting film, I still take the majority of my photographs with digital cameras. That said, I prefer to use cameras and lenses which give me as much simplicity and control as my film cameras. Key to me is to have the option to set the aperture and focus manually. This is why I prefer using and adapting old manual lenses on my digital cameras. They tend to be more compact, and certainly cheaper than trying to buy the modern, native lenses available for my cameras of choice. For the camera bodies, I typically shoot on aperture-preferred on both film and digital, so having shutter speed dials is not a requirement.

Pentax MV-1

Pentax MV-1 & 40mm f/2.8 Review – A Quest For an Ideal Compact Film SLR – Part 1 – by Ed Lara

My GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) setting was kicked up a notch recently as a result of falling in love with the Olympus XA. The XA is a great camera, but despite my small hands, I still find it a bit too fiddly. I remembered how much I enjoyed my Pentax ME Super in college, so went to eBay to find a compact M. Rather than buying the relatively expensive Pentax MX or ME, I ended up with a less well-known MV-1 for a great price.

Olympus XA

Olympus XA – Digital Palate Cleansing – By Ed Lara

As much as I love the immediacy of digital photography, I occasionally get overwhelmed and overloaded by the sheer volume of images I take with my digital cameras or my iPhone. Earlier this year, it got so bad that I packed my already pared down set of digital cameras, and got them ready for sale on eBay. In the meantime, I purchased a pair of classic compact 35mm film cameras which I always wanted to have, the Rollie 35SE and the Olympus XA. The XA, in particular, was one of those mythical cameras from my past, but one which I never had a chance to use.

Olympus OM-1 300mm 4.5

5 Frames at an Airshow with the OM-1n and the Zuiko 300mm – By Ed Lara

The Olympus OM-1 was always my dream camera since I got into photography in seventh grade. It took several more years of borrowing classmates’ cameras and an interlude with a Pentax ME Super before I finally got my hands on my first OM-1n, purchased with my own money in 1983. It has served me well since then, even well into my transition to digital. That said, it’s been sitting on the display shelf mostly over the last few years, so I recently decided to take it along with me to shoot at the 2019 New York Air Show.

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