Behold the mighty Kodak Ektar H35 half frame camera! 72 shots from a 36 exposure roll for all you misers, spend thrifts and artists...
Taking one for the team I just bought this sage green version, well, because how many other sage green cameras are for sale?
I'm not going to compare it to my Olympus Pen FT, which basically is a Leica M if Leica made a half frame SLR.. I will very briefly compare it to my Soviet Agat 18K.
The Agat has a very good lens, you can focus it and you can set exposure. So that's at least two things the Kodak cannot do. The quality of the lens I'll find out in the next couple of days.
But, and it's a big but(t), while you can do those things with the Agat, it is very fiddly to set film speed on it, it is awkward to change exposure settings, and the focus is very easy to turn and knock off its setting.
The Agat really is for someone who is experienced even though it looks like a toy. The Kodak looks like a toy, and well has nothing you can set or change apart from turning on the flash (which charges surprisingly quickly).
In build quality I thought the Agat was crappy, but now comparing it to the Kodak it actually is very robust! No jokes. It also has a very cool tethered lens cap that covers the lens and the shutter button, so there's that.
The Kodak is exposed all the time.
Loading the cameras would seem to be an advantage for the Kodak because on paper it is super simple - back just opens up like a Nikon F100. Plastic door latches like a Nikon F100.. But it feels so flimsy and delicate, and the rewind knob and apparatus really feel like they can break so easily. And this is someone with experience using it - a brand new user could easily accidentally end the fun before it even begins. No pressure plate - just a weird corrugated back so I'm not sure how flat the film will be. The Agat has a sprung pressure plate that you lift up to load the film, then press it down. Most probably another reason it gives such sharp results.
The Agat was designed from ground up to be a half frame camera - looking inside the lens box shows that. It's the shape of 24x18. The Kodak is obviously a converted full frame camera as the inside shows the plastic masks taking it down from 24x36 to 24x18. Which leads one to think an interesting experiment would be to remove the mask so it again is 24x36 and see what kind of weird overlapping exposures one can get. Hmmmmm.
The frame lines in the Agat viewfinder are very hard to see. The Kodak has the regular finder masked off to show the half frame format - which is much easier and clearer to use.
Alright - some out of focus product shots (no idea how that happened - blame Fuji's AF) comparing it in size to the incomparable Ricoh FF1. Pics taken with the Kodak will be up in the next couple of days.
Oh one final thing - the flash on/off dial is unmarked apart from the indicator ridge being ever so slightly taller than the other ridges. So I marked it with a Sharpie so I can see where it is.
Taking one for the team I just bought this sage green version, well, because how many other sage green cameras are for sale?
I'm not going to compare it to my Olympus Pen FT, which basically is a Leica M if Leica made a half frame SLR.. I will very briefly compare it to my Soviet Agat 18K.
The Agat has a very good lens, you can focus it and you can set exposure. So that's at least two things the Kodak cannot do. The quality of the lens I'll find out in the next couple of days.
But, and it's a big but(t), while you can do those things with the Agat, it is very fiddly to set film speed on it, it is awkward to change exposure settings, and the focus is very easy to turn and knock off its setting.
The Agat really is for someone who is experienced even though it looks like a toy. The Kodak looks like a toy, and well has nothing you can set or change apart from turning on the flash (which charges surprisingly quickly).
In build quality I thought the Agat was crappy, but now comparing it to the Kodak it actually is very robust! No jokes. It also has a very cool tethered lens cap that covers the lens and the shutter button, so there's that.
The Kodak is exposed all the time.
Loading the cameras would seem to be an advantage for the Kodak because on paper it is super simple - back just opens up like a Nikon F100. Plastic door latches like a Nikon F100.. But it feels so flimsy and delicate, and the rewind knob and apparatus really feel like they can break so easily. And this is someone with experience using it - a brand new user could easily accidentally end the fun before it even begins. No pressure plate - just a weird corrugated back so I'm not sure how flat the film will be. The Agat has a sprung pressure plate that you lift up to load the film, then press it down. Most probably another reason it gives such sharp results.
The Agat was designed from ground up to be a half frame camera - looking inside the lens box shows that. It's the shape of 24x18. The Kodak is obviously a converted full frame camera as the inside shows the plastic masks taking it down from 24x36 to 24x18. Which leads one to think an interesting experiment would be to remove the mask so it again is 24x36 and see what kind of weird overlapping exposures one can get. Hmmmmm.
The frame lines in the Agat viewfinder are very hard to see. The Kodak has the regular finder masked off to show the half frame format - which is much easier and clearer to use.
Alright - some out of focus product shots (no idea how that happened - blame Fuji's AF) comparing it in size to the incomparable Ricoh FF1. Pics taken with the Kodak will be up in the next couple of days.
Oh one final thing - the flash on/off dial is unmarked apart from the indicator ridge being ever so slightly taller than the other ridges. So I marked it with a Sharpie so I can see where it is.