L☥fe with Jordy Photography: Kodak Ektar 100

Wednesday 23 October 2019

Kodak Ektar 100 - Konica-Minolta Dynax 40

The Konica-Minolta Dynax 40 is a landmark camera in my collection. It was my first eBay purchase.

I bought it before the 're-surgence' of film photography started to push up the price of vintage cameras for a massive AU$30 plus postage! It was in perfect condition and seriously; what a bargain!

A 35mm SLR, it was introduced in 2004 as a consumer level camera. In some other countries it was sold as the Dynax 30, Maxxum 50 or a-50. It boasts pre-programmed settings for portrait, landscape, night portrait, macro and sports modes. It also comes with aperture and shutter priority, and full manual mode. It has a pop-up flash but also a hotshoe for external flash units. Flash is synched at 1/90 sec and shutter speeds from 30 seconds to 1/2000 sec.

It came with the standard auto focus kit lens 28-100mm f3.5-5.6. It offers 4 focus points, spot, left hand side, right hand side and the combination of all those three to give a good focus spread.

Apart from a Pentax point and shoot, it is the lightest camera in my collection and is a great size that can fit into my man bag easily.

I have been shooting with a lot of expired film recently and wanted to get back into something that was not past its use by date! I had 2 rolls of Kodak Ektar tucked away in the fridge door!

I am usually never without a camera! When I go for a walk during a work break; my camera is in my hand. If there is something happening like the town show, a street festival, car show, I always have a camera handy.

I don't really need to talk about the lovely Kodak Ektar 100; so much has been written about that film that, if you haven't heard of it then you can't be a really serious film lover!

Some of these are taken at my favourite lunch time hangout, Newcastle Beach. Others are taken further north at Nobbys Beach. Kim & I visited the quaint village of Broke in the Hunter Valley for the Broke Village Fair in late September where there was lots of yummy food stalls, live music, some Cosplay artists and, some very nice vintage motorcycles and cars. There was also a ton of dry dirt just hanging in the air thanks to a current drought the country is experiencing; really fine dirt that puffed up into the air with every footstep. The night photos are from a work break safari around Newcastle at a very late nightshift hour.

My preference for shooting is Aperture Priority. I know how to shoot in manual mode but I like that when using Aperture Priority I can control Depth of Field and trust that the camera will work out the rest. I also don't have to spend time mucking around with the light meter; I can get a quicker shot in. I also prefer to shoot at box speed, unless I am shooting an expired film. It takes some of the worry out of how a film might turn out. Film Photography is expensive enough at times to be caught experimenting and nothing to show for it!

If you see something you like, it might be for sale! Contact me!