Last chance saloon

Thought I should let y'all know that 2 superb compact cameras have been discontinued by their manufacturers, and so the only stock left is what is already in the shops.

Ricoh GR1s. 28mm, f2.8. Passive autofocus with manual override for exposure and (to some extent) focussing. This has an amazingly crisp lens that puts most other point and shoots to shame. Everything can be done automatically, but there is manual override for exposure and aperture settings. There is also a very useful fixed length focus setting which illiminates the shutter lag that is sooo annoying on most other compacts. An awesome machine, there is a cult following for these in the US where they don't sell them because Ricoh has moved over exclusively to digital cameras there. Lots of info on the web, e.g. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/the.leighs/#gr1s

http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~kennetht/GR1specs.html

prices around £270. But worth every penny. This camera is being replaced by a GR1v, which has some manual focussing features and auto bracketing, but costs £330.

Yashica T5 Super. 35mm, f.2.8 i think. Features a Carl Zeiss lens, is weather proof, and has most of the usual features of a compact. No manual override. A neat "superscope" viewfinder on the top of the camera makes awkward timer-release shots much easier. the lens is the thing. THe lens on the T5 is better than most consumer grade SLR lenses. And the camera only costs £130 or so. How?

check them out on the web, but realise that time is running out....

Jon
I think Jack has burst through from a parallel universe....

Hmmmm...sounds a bit like an advert!!!

Jon, is this guy for real? Or is he trolling the site trading his wares?

I think Jack's actually being genuinely helpful but has been possessed by the spirit of a bad January sales ad. The Ricoh is supposed to be a really good compact - I've got an R1, the budget version and it's very effective. A snip at the price, just twenty smackers to you guv... Ooops. Everything must go, rollup,roll up... ;-)

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

hey- i'm just trying to be helpful chaps. like, i know nothing (hmmm) about trekking in nepal, so i ask. but know quite a lot about cameras, and see so many people outdoors in beautiful places taking pictures with shitty cameras, and as a consequence getting duff photos back.

also i think it's pretty lame of ricoh and yashica to be discontinuing these two gems, and trying to sell everyone expensive and rubbish digital cameras instead.

although i know how outdoors folks just love to spend spend spend on all the latest kit.....

and no i don't own a camera shop.

anyone have any good experiences with other compacts? is anyone still using the Rollei 35 that used to be popular with mountaineers?

I used to use one of those very basic Olympus manual compacts, the ones that were made of metal and belong to your friends and, I have to say, it made an excellent climbing camera. Now use a tedious Epson digital camera, that I would happily throw off Crib Goch tomorrow, a Ricoh R1 compact for climbing and an old Canon EOS for proper shots. The R1 is actually bloody good and has produced published magazine shots, plus it's tiny, light and has a strange wide angle-panorama feature that does work, up to a point.

Do you know anything about transparency scanners? I'm so sick of digital, that I'm thinking of buying one, so I can use a real camera and then scan the shots in. The Nikon Coolscan IV has really good reviews, but it's not cheap. What are the 100 quid cheapies like? Would they be adequate for the web or just a waste of money? Trannie adaptors for flat beds are a joke btw.

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

Yes, the early Olympus compacts were good. The Mju II with a fixed focal length (35mm or 28mm I can't remember) has a good reputation.

"an old Canon EOS for proper shots" - i trust that you don't use a zoom, however, unless it cost over a grand!

To get the optical quality of a £200 fixed 35mm lens in a 28-80 zoom, you have to spend almost 5 times that. And don't even get me going on the 28-200 does everything zoom. Enlarge beyond 5x7 and your nice picture suddenly looks rubbish.

I think the camera body is just a black box that holds the film. THe exposure meter is important, but basically it's all about the glass. Good glass equals good pictures, all other things equal. THe glass in your R1 is almost certainly better than the basic consumer grade EOS 28m lens!

On scanners, the spenny Nikon coolscans are good. My father is a pro photographer and that's what he uses. I think they even make one that you can mount in your computer, like a CD rom drive. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. But it all depends on how big you want to enlarge your prints to.

You say you want to move over to slides. Why? Shooting on transparencies does have its downsides. It's much trickier to get the exposure right, and you have less lee-way to compensate for poor exposure at the printing stage. This will be more of a problem with a compact as they rarely have manual override (which is one of the fab features of the Ricoh GR1 that i was rather over-enthusiastically banging on about).

you're right that the flat beds with film attachments are a joke

Jon, for the web, the cheapies are probably ok. but probably not up to producing sharp print outs of say, 15x10 inches. My Jessops catalogue shows one of their own brand for £119, with 1800 dpi. You could go in to the shop and ask them to scan a frame and see what the result is like.

Magazines use transparencies, web uses digi. I use Fuji Velvia. Scanning trannies will mean I can use them for both print and web, but not the other way round, if that makes sense. Also, most of my old stuff is on transparency, which is a pain in the butt for web use.

Oh, and leave the poor old zooms alone will ya. Compared to a digital zoom, they are fantastic. Anyone who spends over 1000 quid on a lens, any lens, surely needs their head examining. You could fly to South America and back twice for that and still have some cash left over for the disposable camera. They seem quite good value for money :-)

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

i haven't figured out why magazines still use transparencies.

i hate spending money on kit (as you will have gathered from my nepal queries post), and I like to take good photos. Which is why i don't own a single zoom lens. ;-)

I have an oldish Nikon AF300 (or some such number) which was a direct competitor of the Yashica and probably about as good! My mate had the Yashica (still does come to think of it!) It's a great wee camera for the hill as it is tiny, pretty robust and has a well nice Nikkor lens in it! Lovely!

My bigger camera is a cheap EOS - bottom of the range. Does quite a nice job of things really, even with it's cheapo zoom lens. I like it, and it isn't so expensive that I don't want to take it out and about.

For expedition use I have a Nikkormat FT2 (I think). Solid aluminium body, weighs about 2.5 tonnes and had a few Nikkor lenses - very nice indeed! Most the lenses except the 50mm died in Amazonia though! This is my favorite camera, and I still have it despite it never being used anymore! Maybe a replacement is due soon, something like an old Nikkon F3 would be nice....

Transparancies are top - they are great to play with in the dark room and allow some serious creativity if you can be arsed spending the time and effort to get to grips with them. I don't have a dark room at the mo, but it's something I would like to get back into in the future - and I have a stack of slides waiting to be played about with! At the mo it's Fuji print film that gets fed to the camera!

Zoom lenses are well handy - okay the quality will never be as good as a fixed length lens, but carrying one or two zooms about on the mountains is a lot easier than lugging about a huge array of lenses for any eventuality! That said I think I may borrow the works new digital camera for the next winter trip (Fuji Finepix 6900) as the quality from that is pretty good, and it is very small!

My Kodak DC3800 digital is ok for decent shots out on the hill, although I need to get a bigger flash card to allow me to take more pic's at a higher resolution.

I'd like for it to have had an optical zoom as the digital zoom is crap for all but stills work with the tripod. (Mind you for that it is the bee's knee's.)

I also have a Cannon 60zoom. (38-60mm zoom) and that is great for me too! Mind you it isn't exactly tiny (like the DC3800) but it is small (ish) and takes good clear pics.

At the end of the day, I can't really notice the difference between film cameras (I'm not that techy!), but I do notice the difference between digital ones, especially yours Jon (when we were on the meet in Snowdonia). It did seem a bit slow in taking the shots...how many times did I do that step across Adam and Eve when Sal had borrowed it!!!

And sorry Jack...the first post did seem a bit of an advert! (But like I said I'm not that techy!)

Yeah, that digital is crap. I hate it.

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

i think a lot depends on how big you like to enlarge your prints. with new color ink jet printers it is getting possible to do pro-quality enlargements to A3 at home, for much less money than a lab would charge. Nice crisp negs make good prints.

Alex- i wish i could post you some of the photos from my summer trip in the Alps. We all had different cameras (all compacts), ranging from a disposable right up to a yuppie-special Contax T3 (£700!!). The pix are incredibly varied in quality, even though they;re all of the same mountains, glaciers etc...

Jack, out of interest, what camera and lenses will you be taking to Nepal?

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

I'll be taking my Ricoh GR1. And no more. I've been trying to buy a second-hand Konica Hexar 35 (a line discontinued a few years back) in used camera shops and on Ebay, but without success.

I figured i'm going to be wanting to keep weight to a minimum. When i was walking the John Muir trail in California over the summer i took my EOS with a 24mm and a 50mm, but it really annoyed me having the kit in my rucksack, instead of on-hand. The Ricoh i can attach to my rucksack straps for easy access. I also find it a bit embarrassing to be wielding a big SLR when there are people around.

But it's a shame to be going without a 50mm lens, but i don't think anyone makes a good compact with that lens (apart from zooms - ha ha!) I did consider a Rollei 35 but they're soo expensive now cos people are collecting them rather than using them.

I'm also taking a cool tripod that's small but extends to above waist height. The legs are a chunkier version of a radio antenna. the best landscape photos are taken at sunset or sunrise, and a tripod is often essential if you want to shoot in fading light at the lens's optimum performance aperture (usually f8-f11) .

Oh, and about 20 rolls of Fuji Reala in a lead-lined bag.

I hear you can buy GR1s really cheap at the moment ;-)

What's the tripod btw, and how much does it weigh? I'd seriously think about a down jacket if you're going to be sitting around at altitude as the sun goes down waiting for that 'just so' shot.

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com 

it ain't that they're really cheap. it's just that there's gonna be none left in a few weeks...

the tripod is Velbon VTP815B. It weighs 500g.

and yes, i'm weakening on the down jacket issue. Do you think i'd be able to pick up an ex-expedition one secondhand in Kathmandu? or is it just fakes.

You can get decent stuff, but it's much easier to take your own jacket out with you and, he said encouragingly, they are really nice things to have... Great for festering in pubs during cold snaps or for those impromptu skiing trips.

You don't need some massive expedition thing, something like a RAB Glacier or similar is more than adequate. I don't know what Pokhara's like, not having been there, but you can definitely hire stuff in Namche, so I imagine it's similar there.

The fakes are generally pretty obviously fake btw, things like really badly cut sewn-on badges etc give the game away pretty quickly.

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OutdoorsMagic Editor | jon@outdoorsmagic.com