Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20, On the Line

Analog Diary: Film photography favorites, images with a Konica Big Mini Jr. (BM-20), a very portable 35mm point-and-shoot camera with a sharp 34mm f/3.5 lens, praised for its bright viewfinder and accurate exposures.

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Another roll of expired film, and another ride on the Light Rail Transport (LRT) from the downtown central station to my stop. This was the day I went down to do the street shoot of the Divali (Deepavali) Street Bazaar, which I posted about recently. The camera that I took along for the outing was the Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20.

By itself, the BM-20 is a stylish black (or red) box with rounded corners and has a rectangular patch for a lens housing that extends out of the body slightly when it is powered on.

Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20

The camera is small and light enough to fit in the palm of your hand or in your pants pocket, with a wide-angle 34mm F3.5 lens that should take in the vistas and perspectives probably better than most mobile camera lenses.

Konica Big Mini Jr. BM-20

A minor inconvenience of the BM-20 and a whole range of other cameras that were produced during the period is the auto flash, which is very persistent and will fire even at the slightest indication of underexposure. Against the very bright external ambiance as seen from the front carriage of these shots, however, the flash on the camera was rather well-behaved.

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

Analog Diary: Film photography favorites, images with a Konica Big Mini Jr. (BM-20), a compact 35mm point-and-shoot camera with a sharp 34mm f/3.5 lens, praised for its bright viewfinder and accurate exposures.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

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.