visualculture

This is a fully manual 35mm film camera. It has a built-in photovoltaic lightmeter that requires no batteries to operate (it is powered by the light entering it). The maximum aperture is f/1.9. The focal length is 32mm.

The Olympus Pen-D is actually a half-frame camera. Each picture is only half as wide as a normal 35mm picture, so two photos fit in the space of one. This means if a roll of film can normally store 36 images, loaded into this camera it will store 72 images.

One thing I like about half-frames is that when the film is scanned, the images are grouped together in pairs so that they fill a full 35mm frame. It's always interesting to see an unexpected pairing.

It can sometimes be challenging to use a fully manual camera because you have to remember to dial in the shutter speed, aperture, and focal distance every time you take a picture. The built-in lightmeter definitely makes it easier. Without a lightmeter I usually use the sunny f/16 rule to estimate the exposure parameters. The way it works is that if you are taking a photo in full sunlight, you can set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/[film speed]. The film speed is the ISO rating of the film you are using, basically how fast it reacts to light. So if you are using ISO 400 film, in bright sunlight the exposure parameters would be aperture=f/16 and shutter speed=1/400. This is the starting point, and then if you are in an environment with less light you make the aperture larger and/or the shutter speed slower.

I found this particular camera on eBay several years ago because I wanted a half-frame camera to experiment with. I liked that this model was fully manual with a built-in lightmeter, so no external equipment or batteries were needed to operate it. When I received it I noticed an inscription on the bottom: 北海道旭川市竜谷高校. Apparently it once belonged to a high school in Asahikawa City in Hokkaido, Japan called Ryukoku High School.

One negative aspect of this particular camera (not the model, but the specific one I have) is that it leaks light pretty heavily. Sometimes this creates a neat effect, but sometimes the leak is so bad that it completely washes out the entire picture.