Now the news.
Germany.
Extensive investigations have determined the master spy, arrested in Bann
had taken some 700 photos of people and documents within 3 weeks.
For this work,
he used the latest model
Minox
Minox miniature camera.
Hello and welcome back to another analogue adventure.
It was recently my birthday and my better half bought me this..
The Minox 35GT.
Now this video is not going to be a comprehensive review of this camera,
more of a
'thoughts on first impressions video'
But I'll say this: on those first impressions,
the potential that this camera has completely blew me away.
I've only put one roll of film through this camera so I'm
a bit of a novice with this thing but,
I've got some surprisingly good images to show you.
As I said in the beginning of the video
'I think I may have found the one'
What I mean is that I’ve had a hole that I’ve been trying to fill for some time now.
That hole being a camera that is small, light and doesn’t draw too much attention.
Something perfect for clandestine street photography.
I don’t mind being noticed when I'm taking photographs on the street but only after I’ve made the image.
I generally like to capture those moments just before
the subject notices I'm taking a photograph of them.
So the Minox, Meenox, I think it's 'Meenox, Meenox'
The Minox 35GT has just catapulted itself into the frontrunner position on my daily driver street photography camera leaderboard..
Which I.. just made up then.
With that out of the way lets first talk about some of the specs, features, and some history behind this little great imaging device.
The first product to carry the Minox name was a subminiature camera.
It was conceived in 1922, and then finally invented and produced in 1936, by a German named Walter Zapp.
Walter Zapp originally envisioned the Minox to be a camera for everyone requiring little photographic knowledge to use.
From the beginning the Minox also gained wide notoriety as a spy camera.
The Minox 35 GT was introduced in 1981, and continued Minox's successful range of 35mm compact cameras.
Reputedly the smallest full-frame 35mm cameras ever made.
This title may have now been taken by the Olympus XA, although with the lens retracted the 35GT still seems to be the smallest.
Here in Wales travel restrictions were lifted quite recently which means we were able to go somewhere other than Newport to test this little baby out.
So we decided to go to Monmouth and the bank of the river Severn.
As always let me know if you have any favourite images and any other thoughts about the camera or, something I could improve, let me know, cheers.
For me the steepest learning curve was focusing.
The 35GT uses a ‘guess focusing’ system
whereby users estimate the distance to the subject and set the focusing ring to the correct distance.
As I haven’t tried guess focusing before and I’m not very good at judging distance I bought this vintage shoe mount rangefinder.
It was really helpful, although I shot almost every image at f/8.0 to help combat missing focus.
Well here's hoping that that came off.
Overall the automatic exposure system does a brilliant job. almost always nailing the correct exposure.
Sometimes it does miss, as shown here in this image of the butchers, so the angle of composition is important.
I’m not too worried though, it was pretty dark inside the shop and bright outside, it’s a shame though because the butcher looked just as I made the image.
So something quite strange happened here, I did shoot two frames on this bridge but
I sent my film to be developed by an external developer, because I can't develop at home at the moment
and they just didn't turn up, they didn't come back with the scans, they've been lost forever.
Anyway, it was time to head to the banks of the river Severn.
Yep that's it. That is the film finished. Cool.
So after first use what do I think?
Let's go through some pros & cons.
The first thing is the battery.
The Minox 35GT usually takes a PX27, is it PX27?
Yeah PX27 which is a mercury oxide battery.
These are not produced anymore for obvious reasons
The alternative is to use an LR44.
Or more accurately four LR44's
which seems to work well but apparently the power decreases over time,
which leads to a voltage problem, which leads to a shutter speed meter problem.
As far as I'm aware.
So far though, after one use I had no problems whatsoever, it seemed to work fine.
Another con, although I'm not sure I can call it a con is the focusing system
It was a steep learning curve, or at least it was for me, because I've never really done 'guess focusing' before
which is why I used this, the rangefinder.
Urm, however,
when you shoot at f/8, which I did for 99.9% of the shots for this roll, um, it's really no issue.
Yeah, the focusing, especially for street photography
you have to take your time when focusing, so if you want to capture moments that are passing by extremely quickly
this might not be the camera for that sort of street photography, but,
on the other hand, if you're using the fishing technique and you're waiting for the subject to come into frame then this will work really well.
The final con is, I did read online somewhere that if this breaks in any way it's really hard to replace parts because of the rarity, so that's just something to bear in mind.
This camera cost £70 so its not exactly cheap,
it's not too expensive either really, less than £100 is decent.
But for a camera you might not be able to repair for some people that's going to be an issue.
PROS, so pros,
Pros, and we'll start with the obvious one which is size and weight.
It's extremely small, extremely compact, it will fit into a pocket, it will even fit into a jeans pocket
if you don't have a case on it. I got the case that came with it which is a really nice leather case, but
it weighs only 200grams, with the battery as well so,
extremely light, extremely easy to use, you can have this in your hand all day and you won't get fatigued.
Another pro is the image quality, this camera is just, it just blew me away.
coupled with the size and weight, it's just outstanding. Outstanding performance from such a small camera.
The lens is clearly fantastic and I'm excited to use it more.
Another pro is the auto-exposure system, I think it works fantastically well most of the time.
I haven't tried it at night which is something I really want to do, because I read online that this thing handles night shooting quite well.
So I may do a video just on night photography with this thing, we'll see.
Final pro is that this is just such a fun camera to use.
I don't think I've had so much fun with a camera, I mean
the double advance film lever, the flippy lens that goes back in, just everything
is really quite quirky and cool.
To conclude, as I'm sure you're already aware, I’m really excited about this camera.
None of the images I made are gonna win any awards but this was just a test roll.
So I'm really hoping that I can maybe start a project with this thing, or,
It's inspired me!
I sense a very special relationship forming and I expect this to become my primary street photography film camera.
As for my favourite image of the roll? Apart from the portraits of Zhibek it has to be the one with the blue signs, which you may find unusual.
There’s just something about the colour rendition, the sharpness, the overall atmosphere reminds me of something quite ‘Wes Anderson-esque’ if I can stretch it that far!
Y'know, other images I like are the street portrait of the young skaters (thanks for being good sports lads)
and the landscape of the Severn Bridge which connects Wales and England, I really like that as well.
In the next video I’m going digital for a change.
It’s an idea I’ve wanted to do for a while but it’s going to be quite uncomfortable for me to be honest with you..
But yeah, look out for that sometime in the next week.
As always thank you very much for watching and see you in the next one.