Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Continued from my photography how-to Blog…
The Prod 20 is a retro-looking auto focus compact film camera that was made by Minolta in 1990. But let’s get real: It is nothing more than a gussied up point-and-shoot camera and much to my non-surprise that’s pretty much how it performed. The images below were shot with a roll of expired FujiFilm Acros 100 at box speed and processed by The Darkroom.
The 35mm f/4.5 lens could be best described as relatively sharp with sharpness falling off rapidly well before you get to the edges of the frame in the kind of performance that might be described as Holga-like. I didn’t do a brick wall test on the lens/camera but got the feeling it would fall into the “marginal” category at best. It might be and that’s a big “might” that with faster film, smaller apertures it might improve…or not. The funny thing is that Minolta knows/knew a thing or two about optical performance. The design and creation of the legendary MC Rokkor 58mm f/1.2 and Rokkor-MD 50mm f/1.4 lenses demonstrably show that.
How I Made These Shots: Because of it’s geographic location, no matter what time of year, the Vehicle Vault Cars & Coffee is always a challenge to shoot for both stills and video. The light there during Cars & Coffee hours is hard and contrasty and can create flare as well, as you can see here. The tiny 35mm f/4.5 lens doesn’t allow for the use of a lens hood but to be honest, the lighting looked much worse to my eyes than the final image (above) shows. Because of that flare, the negative was somewhat underexposed, so I used a technique that I typically use for fixing underexposed portraits and it worked just as well on photographs of cars. The Beetle (bellow) was properly exposed because it was parked the other way (East) on the Vehicle Vault ‘s parking lot than the Porsche.
Mary and I have long had a fascination with the VW Beetle. In fact when she was just a baby, her parents owned a 1952 Beetle. Somewhere in my archives I have a photograph of them holding baby Mary and when I find It I’ll display the photograph on this blog. Currently one of the cars in Mary’s fleet is a low-mileage 2016 VW Beetle convertible; you can read about that car here.
If you would like to send me a roll of film to review or any other stuff that could be used for these posts and my videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134