Totally unscientific, but kinda fun!

[olroy2044]

Here are two photos of a pavilion in a park close by my place of employment. The colors and structure have made it a favorite subject of mine for informal tests of various bits and pieces of photogear. These were taken from the same spot, about 5 minutes apart, with very different equipment. Results were-----interesting. The weather was solid overcast and light was weak and very soft.

This one was taken with the little 110 Pentax, on Kodak 400 print film, with the 70mm lens.


This one was taken with my srTmcII, a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 zoom, Superia 400. The zoom was set at just a tick shorter than 150mm, in an attempt to match the coverage of the little telephoto on the 110.


The dim light forced the 110 to open its aperture up, and audibly slow down the shutter. The lense was probably at or near wide open. I set the Vivitar wide open also. IMHO, the 110 did a remarkable job under difficult conditions, returning a very respectable image, especially from such a tiny neg. The Viv, as expected, was very sharp. No post-processing on either, other than resizing for the web. I'm happy with both. Roy

[GeneW]

Roy, the Viv pic is certainly sharp, as one would expect, but the little 110 shot is amazing. It reminds me of the "little engine that could"! I can see why you're pleased with both cameras.

Gene

[nikonbob]

Roy

The 110 does really well even in comparison to the 35mm shot. Have you done any enlargements, say 8x10 or 11x14 from a 110? If so how do they hold up in comparison to 35mm?

Bob

[kiev4a]

My experience with 110 back when it came out was any enlargement past 5x7 was not too good. Of course, film has improved a lot since then.

[olroy2044]

Good morning everyone. Thanks for the comments on the two pics.
Gene, the quality of the optics on this little Pentax constantly amaze me. I don't know who the design team was on that little system, but they did it right!
Wayne, there have indeed been great improvements in the quality of film, but I had one of these back in 1980, and the results with the film of the day were also very good. The rap on 110 was mainly due to the equipment it was mated to, in most cases. The vast majority of the cameras sold in the format were, in a word, junk, and the results showed it. Minolta and Pentax both built high quality cameras that took advantage of the potential of the film. I prefer the Pentax due to it's size, and available kit.
Bob, I have 8x10 glossy enlargements made from this camera that will absolutely knock your socks off!! The issue now is finding a source for processing. I am lucky in that I know the techs in my local Wally World personally due to the large amount of film that I run thru there, and they follow my instructions to the letter, and they have the skill to go with it. All my film is put directly onto disc, with absolutely no post-processing. I've tried various mail-order houses with results that varied from just OK, to awful. As long as I can get film and processing, the little Pentax is the camera that is always within reach. One caveat---flash pix with anything but the 24mm are lousy! Roy

[Peter S.]

Hi Roy,

I hope You will forgive me for disagreeing: The approach to photograph an object
typical for Your work in order to find out how suited some gear is for Your photographical
needs, seems highly rational for me. ;-)

I tend to think that one should look on a larger representation of an image than 640x400 pixels.
E.g. a crop of just the blue sign or maybe the rooftop. But the first impression of these images is
good. Thus the small Pentax (with its apparently very good lens) should be able to deliver
prints as large as 20x30cm - at least for fine grain ISO 100 film.

But (I do repeat me) I can't deduce this from the small scans You showed us above.

Best regards
Peter