Film Olympus PEN FT

[MoonMind]

I'm opening a new thread because I used the internal lightmeter - for better or for worse ...

travel portraiture on Flickr

passing by on Flickr (no, no photobomb, I wanted him in the frame, just fired off the shot a little early ...)

I learned a lot from reviewing the whole film for scanning - the camera itself is a marvel, a great tool even after all these years; but its meter behaves differently from just about anything else I've ever used - it seems to be evaluative in a very "broad" sense; especially when including the sky in any major way, it tends to underexpose hideously - but now that I know that, it should be avoidable in most cases (adding +1.5 to +2.0, depending on foreground ...). Since the camera is fully mechanical, achieving this shouldn't even slow me down significantly.

M.

 

[tonyturley]

I had an original Pen F with the Gothic "F", and got a lot of nice images with it, but the shutter eventually started jamming. I didn't think it was worth the cost of trying to fix it, so sold it "As Is". Some people are a lot more adept at fixing things than I am.

 

[phigmov]

Yup, have to agree. Its a lovely camera but the metering is a little bit 'iffy'. Generally got great results metering and shooting B&W & colour negative but colour slide was unforgiving. The FV has no meter so I'm putting a roll through with Sunny-16 and a Sekonic external meter - keen to see what my keeper rate is.

Have to agree with Tony on the jamming on the 'F'. Still need to get mine fixed or just write it off and get another one.

 

[Trankster]

It took me a while to take 72 B&W photos, but here is a sampling from my 50+ year old Pen-FT. 15 out of 72 were not keepers, due to operator error . Processed and scanned by a local lab with some minor post-processing.

 

[wiltw]

The Olympus Pen FT was conceived at a time when few TTL metering cameras had anything other than full averaging sensitivity, maybe spot but nothing as fancy as evaluative.

Nikon did not first add evaluative mode until the Nikon FA in 1983.

 

[MountainMan79]

I love my Pen FT. About time I put more film through it, if I didn’t have 3 film cameras loaded that I need to get through first!

 

[MoonMind]

I love my Pen FT. About time I put more film through it, if I didn’t have 3 film cameras loaded that I need to get through first!

Same here - two loaded, too little leisure time. But this serves as a nice incentive - I'll pack both of them today and/or tomorrow

I'd like the get the little PEN FT loaded alongside the Mamiya 6 MF - both are stunning cameras. I hope to do that soon.

Thanks for the reminder

M.