Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20, Sea of Yellow and Red

Analog Diary: Film photography favorites, image making with a Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20, catching the preps to the Devali.

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I ended up having a roll of expired Kodakcolor 200 negative film in one of my camera shipments recently and wondered how the images would look once the film had been exposed and developed. Just as well, I also have a Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20, a fully automatic AF film camera, in my collection, and decided to match the two for a street walk.

The Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20 is one of the models of the Konica Big Mini series, an iconic low-priced series of point-and-shoot fully automatic autofocus (AF) 35mm film cameras produced by Konica in the early 1990s.

The Big Mini models set themselves apart from other makes of the same genre with a fantastic range of F3.5 Konica lenses that are renowned for being very sharp with excellent contrast rendering. The BM-20 has a 34mm F3.5 lens.

Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20

A 34mm lens (almost the 35mm that many street photographers talk about) is also the focal length for street photography. It is a nice compromise between a nifty-fifty, which street photographers may find a bit tight, and the wideness of the 28mm, which sometimes calls for a fair amount of cropping. Just as well, the lens is just about perfect for both a cramped, narrow street shot and a landscaped vista.

Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20

Going by the specs I found for other models, the BM-20 may include an automatic shutter speed range of 1/80 to 1/250 second, and a lens aperture opening of F3.5 to F16 (not verified). My unit, however, came with a dead LCD panel located on the left of the top plate. I can only assume that the panel is for the film counter and whatever else it is supposed to have.

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