Olympus Pen EF, Images on Expired Film

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, images with a vintage Olympus Pen EF, a compact half-frame film camera with a built-in flash, and a selenium light meter, black-and-whites on a roll of expired film.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

These photos are from an occasion where our small workgroup ended up on a small training project located on a campus site that had been vacated sometime before our arrival. Spaces and buildings were left idle in a state of disrepair, unkempt, and open to the elements.

These are simple and straightforward head-on shots, where a point-and-shoot camera like the Olympus Pen EF might be all that you need. Compact and handy, fun, the EF is a very easy camera to work with.

All you need to do is load the film, set the appropriate film ASA speed, and off you go. Any potentially underexposed image will be blocked by the red pop-up flag system, which you can still overcome with the shutter lock trick.

Olympus Pen EF

The Olympus Pen EF is one of my favorite point-and-shoot cameras (the other one being the Olympus XA1). I have also done a few posts with the camera before this, as well as doing a short write-up on it, and I am sure it will stay as part of my camera collection for quite a while yet. Grab one if you have the chance to own it!

Olympus Pen EF, Vantage Points

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, image making with a vintage analog Olympus Pen EF, eyeing for the best vantage points in 3:4 image frames.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

Changing the vantage point of where you are taking the shot from and the visual level you are at is not only a great way to enhance composition, but it might make your photograph stand out from all of the other eye-level views made of a similar subject.

When you change the vantage point for a shot, for example, in the masthead image above, from an eye-level to a knee-level shot, you are literally bringing in leading lines from almost where you are, across the lake to the lung of green, which is back-dropped by giant monstrosities of concrete. The image, however, just misses out on having a figure or two within its composition.

Olympus Pen EF

On the subject of the half-frame portrait format, with the vision constricted to that of a vertical, viewpoints can play a big part in giving impact to images. And of course, with the half-frame portrait frame shooter, where the camera is held in the normal horizontal position for portrait framing, changing your viewpoints to create more linearity or height in your perspectives is much easier than you think. Have a look at the images posted for a comparison of image impacts taken from differing viewpoints.

Olympus Pen EF, The Landscape

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, images with a vintage analog Olympus Pen EF 35mm half-frame film camera, looking at the portrait format, or the 3:4 image aspect ratio.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

Learning to compose and capture landscape images in portrait format is fairly straightforward, and you will be adept at it soon enough. One of the things you can do is practice composing your image with the inclusion of negative spaces.

This technique will also create a break in the composition, giving your vision a moment of rest before taking in the rest of the composition. Using a wide or ultra-wide-angle lens in portrait framing is another added advantage.

Olympus Pen EF

Though not wide enough for really spectacular wide-angle landscape shots, the Olympus Pen EF, for example, with its 28mm f/3.5 lens, can be a good learning camera to start with. The f/3.5 lens, which focuses from 1.4 meters to infinity, is equally capable of getting the foreground, mid, and background elements in focus throughout the Depth-of-Field. The camera needs only to be held in its normal horizontal position for these shots.

Olympus Pen EF, Image Aspect Ratio

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, images with a vintage analog Olympus Pen EF 35mm half-frame film camera, looking at the portrait format, or the 3:4 image aspect ratio.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

While most of us take pictures in the landscape or horizontal format, half-frame cameras are inherently designed to capture images in the portrait or vertical format, ot the half-frame, in 3:4 aspect ratio.

The 3:4 aspect is an uncommon ratio, seldom mentioned except maybe when talking about images that are a bit too fat, a ratio that is difficult to work with, or image frames that are difficult to fill effectively.

The film format for half-frame cameras is 24x18mm on a regular 135 film, which is half the size of a normal 35mm frame measuring 24x36 mm. With a half-frame camera, one can shoot and capture twice as many images on a standard roll of film - 48 shots on a 24-exposure roll, 72 shots on a 36-exposure roll, and so on.

Olympus Pen-EF

Holding the camera horizontally with both hands is also the norm for taking photographs. The camera will normally rest in the grasp of the right hand, with the index finger used to press the shutter release. On a more complex camera, the left hand will normally be used to focus the lens and make other adjustments, such as aperture and other settings necessary for the correct exposure of the shot.

On a simple point-and-shoot, the left hand will just be a support to hold the camera steady. With half-frames, this is the same stance you will be holding the camera with, the difference being that your image will still be shot in the vertical frame. Rock steady images in a 3:4 image aspect ratio.

The scanned images, which were done by the processing lab, were post-processed on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3) and tweaked with edits including Auto Tone Correction, Brightness & Contrast, Gamma, Hue & Saturation, Sharpness & Blur, Unsharp Mask, Noise Reduction, and cropping of the doubled-scanned images into single images.

Olympus Pen EF, The Portrait Format

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, images with a vintage analog Olympus Pen EF 35mm half-frame film camera, looking at the portrait format, or the 3:4 image aspect ratio.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

I am dedicating this and other posts in this series to the 3:4 image aspect ratio, as photographed on the Olympus Pen EE-S, Pen EF, Pen FT, and other half-frame format film cameras that I have or may collect along the way.

A half-frame camera, also known as a single-frame or split-frame, captures images at half the size (18x24mm) of a standard 35mm negative film (24x36mm). You can shoot twice as many pictures and get 72 exposures on a 36-exposure roll, and 48 on a 24-exposure roll. Most half-frame cameras are manufactured with a vertical film framing setup, meaning that they shoot in a vertical (portrait) orientation as opposed to the horizontal (landscape) orientation of standard 35mm cameras.

Olympus Pen EF

Operating the camera, not unlike any other point-and-shoot, is equally easy and can be done one-handed. Metering is by the standard Selenium 'electric-eye' system with the red pop-up flag that locks the shutter in low light conditions. With the Olympus EF, however, you can override this lock by activating the level to power the flash unit, cute.

The scanned images were post-processed on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3), which includes cropping the doubled-scanned images into single images, and edits with Auto Tone Correction, Brightness & Contrast, Gamma, Hue & Saturation, Sharpness & Blur, Unsharp Mask, and Noise Reduction.

b>.

Olympus Pen EF, Curated Colors

Half-Frames: Film photography favorites, images with a vintage analog Olympus Pen EF 35mm half-frame film camera, curated colors from a roll of expired film.

<< Click on image for enlarged Lightbox display >>

Images from the expired roll of color film negatives, depending on the age of the film, may look rather pale and washed out with muted colors. While retaining them in their original form is the thought for posterity, giving them a few post-process touch-ups could do well for other forms of presentation.

Curating these JPEG images on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3) includes the use of Tone Correction, with its strength adjusted manually; very high contrast on the Brightness & Contrast tool, same with color saturation on the Hue & Saturation tool; sharpened with the Sharpness & Blur, Unsharp Mask, and Noise Reduction tools. The images look pretty strong now. I will probably tone it down later for consistency of colors across my image folio.

Olympus Pen EF

The Olympus Pen EF, 1981, was the last of Olympus Pen's half-frame cameras. It was produced only in black, with white lettering, and had a small built-in flash powered by a single AA battery. The lens is a fixed focus G Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 lens with a focal range from 1.4 meters to infinity, coupled to an electric-eye (EE) programmed lens shutter mechanism range from F3.5-1/30 sec. to F22-1/250 sec. Takes 72 shots on a standard 36-exposure 35mm film cassette.