You still use an OM1?

  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, my OM1 usage was interrupted by a spate of buying, trying, and often selling again, a series of inexpensive point and shoot cameras. This hunt also led me to one of the smallest cameras I have owned, and which I am sure will go to quite a few places where a bigger camera might not get taken. Pictured above on the right is the winner of the "cheap shove it in a bag on a day out" award. The Pentax Pino 35 produces surprisingly good images with very little to get wrong. Set the film speed, set the aperture according to the weather symbol, and click. The shutter speed is fixed at 1/125, and the focus is fixed at 5ft and beyond. It works without batteries, but if you add 2xAA, you get a flash and a "low light" warning light in the viewfinder, useful if you forget to take the lens cap off. These can be picked up on a well known auction site for £10-£20, and I recommend them for those days out where you don't want to take somethi...

 When I first started to get back into film photography c.2019, putting photos up on Instagram seemed a logical idea. I had found a load of other photography accounts, and my daily feed was mostly their output. But then things started to change... Fast forward a few years, and my Instagram feed is full of videos of dodgy football decisions, cars being driven badly, pickpockets in action, plus adverts for all sorts of gadgets I never knew I needed. Where have all the photos gone? Then there was the matter of Instagram's owner being rather close to the political turmoil going on in the USA. I had already left Twitter/X - maybe it was time to move on from here too. So I was interested to hear about the world of Pixelfed, which at first glance looks a bit like Instagram used to - mostly photos and artwork, but without the adverts, videos, and everything else you have to scroll through. It is actually a decentralised product - in effect anybody can set up a Pixelfed server, and link it ...

 It's been a while, but my photographic journey has been taking me into the dangerous rabbit hole of cheap cameras. I have bought, tried, tested, and mostly sold, several candidates for the role of "shove it in a bag and take it anywhere" camera. I think I have finally settled on the Pentax Pino 35, and you can read about it on the excellent 35mmc site here .  But now I am back to the world of the OM1, and they have accompanied me on a few recent trips. The M1 had its first real outing (after a test film when I bought it) to Mevagissey and The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. I can't be certain, but I think the lens for the harbour debris shot was the Zuiko 24mm, and the flowers were shot with the Zuiko 35mm. Meanwhile the all-black OM1 tried to look inconspicuous at an Anti-Racism rally in York. This sort of event is always good for photos, often because of the banners and placards which people are holding. Here are a few of the best from that day. The lens was t...