Ten Years On

A year ago, thinking ahead to February 2021, I decided that I wanted to mark the ten years since I began this blog in February 2011. I've written a number of posts, not every year, but at various intervals using the anniversary to take stock of the state of film photography, writing about new films appearing on the market and some disappearing, and, locally, the closing of shops that I'd patronised over the years. One notable factor in shooting film in 2021 is the price of secondhand equipment: I began the blog around the time that prices of used cameras was low, with the preceding decade seeing digital take over from film, and the smartphone taking the place of most peoples' camera. Part of the reason for starting the blog was due to having bought a few secondhand cameras in the previous three or four years while these were cheap, which coincided with getting a job in which I had access to a darkroom, and the convenience of developing my own negatives for the first time since I had been at college in the mid-1990s, and then subsequently acquiring the necessary kit to develop at home.

During the decade that I've being writing the blog, I've been surprised at how I've taken to obscure formats, mainly 127 rollfilm and subminiature cameras; similarly, the stubborn resilience of the double-8 or 2x8mm ciné film format in the 2020s is also surprising, Super-8's 'foolproof' drop in cartridge system having supposed to have killed it off in the 1960s. Although I've mostly used decades-old 2x8mm film, I have bought some new film from the Film Photography Project, from which I'd buy more if import duties weren't a consideration. I have done much less printing than perhaps I would have wanted (the darkroom print is the ultimate expression of a photographic negative), spending a lot of time scanning negatives instead. I have shown physical prints only on a couple of occasions over this time, in the Documents and Undertow exhibitions; both of these instances have been quite tied to work on and around this blog. Over the past ten years I have gradually turned to more theoretical or philosophical aspects (for want of a better description) of film photography: this has been partly due to starting a part-time PhD half-way through the life of this blog, which is still ongoing, and perhaps moving its focus away from film photography as it develops. This has meant that I have written less than I thought I might in recent years.

Olympus Pen EE-3 35mm half-frame camera

Specifically, to mark ten years of this blog, I decided that I should revisit the subject of my initial post: the Olympus Pen EE-3 35mm half-frame camera. I planned to use the Pen EE-3 over the course of the year, from February 2020, and write a new post. The original piece was not as detailed as some of my posts on cameras have become, and I didn't write that much about the camera in use, and only provided one example image. I did write a little on my own personal history with the Pen EE-3, mentioning how it was inspired in part by the work of Mick Williamson - and just discovering the half-frame format itself, the serendipity of the Olympus Pen EE-3 showing up in the local camera shop window. In 1997, the secondhand Pen EE-3 cost around the same as my weekly rent as a student, although this wouldn't be a good example of the relative costs of secondhand prices then, as inflation in UK housing costs has outstripped any other aspects of household expenditure that I can think of.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus (first roll through the camera?)

I was taken by the idea of Mick Williamson's half-frame diary project (of which I can barely have seen a handful of images from at the time - but it was the idea of it as much as any example), and, although I wouldn't want to compare my work with his, for a number of years after I bought the camera, I carried it with me everywhere. It documented the end of my degree, and then the 'ghostworld' years immediately after graduating, which covered a period of being unemployed through to moving back to London in 1999, and then a few years getting to know more of London than the areas where I grew up and studied in before I'd moved away for my degree. I seem to have used the camera less after 2001, and, absent from my first post, the camera was stolen in a burglary in 2003. I bought another Olympus Pen EE-3 shortly afterwards to replace it and notably used this when travelling, to Copenhagen, to Zagreb, where I took just the Pen EE-3 and a 6x9 medium format folding camera. It also came with me to Paris, Berlin, St Petersburg in subsequent years, but my interest in the Olympus Pen EE-3 waned as I began to use other cameras - subminiature cameras, the Agat 18K - to fulfil the EE-3's 'snapshot' function.

19th February 2020. Olympus Pen EE-3 with Eastman Double-X

Resolving to use the Pen EE-3 for a year from February 2020, the first intimations of the seriousness of Covid-19 were then making themselves apparent. The first roll I used was Double-X, and among the shots on that roll was one of a mannequin in Berwick Street that, retrospectively, feels prescient. For a second roll, I shot a 36-exposure roll of Agfaphoto APX400, which I began in February, which documented something of the UCU strike that affected my studies, into early March, and then the UK went into lockdown. I didn't finish this second roll until May, mostly then shooting on my allowed daily exercise, usually cycling around my local area; in the middle there was a gap during which I wasn't taking many photos other than the lockdown projects. I subsequently shot a roll of Kentmere Pan 100, and Ilford FP4 Plus during the summer, when coronavirus cases were low, and restrictions were being lifted, although I personally took little advantage of this at the time.

22nd February 2020. Olympus Pen EE-3 with Agfaphoto APX400

My plan for shooting with the Olympus Pen EE-3 for the year was curtailed when the camera developed a fault: I had noticed that when advancing the film, there was occasionally a grinding sensation, different from the usual 'ratchet' feel to winding on the film; while out on the Bank Holiday in August, this was much worse, and the cause became apparent. The lens-shutter unit had worked itself loose - the shutter still fired, but advancing the film caused uneven frame spacing - without the lens held tightly against the body, the film would just keep winding. I wasn't aware at the time, but this looseness of the lens also meant that the focus was now off. I did think that perhaps I could repair the camera, or replace it to continue my year of using the Pen EE-3, but I was back to work the very next day, in person for the first time since March, then my enthusiasm waned with the disappointing results from this roll once developed, the pressures of work during the pandemic and the rising second wave, and then contracting Covid-19 itself, and experiencing various symptoms for many weeks afterwards disrupted many plans. Shooting a year with the Olympus Pen EE-3 was one of these.

I had intended to write 'In Praise of the Olympus Pen Part 2' but this problem with the EE-3 complicated matters. I would have said that the Pen EE-3 was generally a reliable camera: I had my first secondhand Pen EE-3 for six years without any issues; the second one lasted more than double that time, both being decades old to begin with. It may have been the vibrations of cycling with the Pen EE-3 in a case attached to my belt over the course of the few months I used it last year that caused the lens-shutter unit to work loose; there are four screws visible inside the camera behind the lens which would appear to hold the lens-shutter assembly but all four of these are tight, so presumably the problem lies elsewhere, and I have yet to investigate further.

However, having shot with the camera for six months, and having explored a few aspects of using the Pen EE-3 which I had wanted to do to write a fuller post, it's worth making a few comments on a few specific aspects that I had wanted to write about. When I began to draft a post on the camera, I was unable to find a manual for the EE-3 online, which seemed odd for a camera produced for at least ten years, and in relatively high volume. The manual for the Olympus Pen EE2 is available; the EE-3 differed from the EE-2 only in the settings for the dedicated GN14 flash, in distance markings from 1 to 4 metres around the lens in a sequence that mirrors the aperture settings for a non-dedicated flash. I haven't used a flash with the camera very often, so it was not one aspect that I wanted to explore. Instead, one function of the camera that I wanted to test was that, due to how the 'electric-eye' exposure system works, it's possible to use this as an 'exposure lock': partially depressing the shutter release opens the aperture blades for the designated exposure before the shutter fires with the release pressed further. The three shots below in sequence demonstrate this: the first exposed for the sky, then the second shot with the camera pointed in the same direction, partially depressing and holding the shutter button before moving the camera down to take the shot, and then the third shot taken normally.

Olympus Pen EE-3 exposure lock test

Of course, it's also possible to override the automatic exposure by choosing a different ASA setting to over- or underexpose a shot, but knowing that the EE-3 essentially has an exposure lock may be useful in a number of scenarios. I also wanted to explore the limits of the fixed-focus lens. This is a D. Zuiko f3.5 28mm lens, which should give a reasonable depth of field at most aperture settings, dependent on the lighting conditions and the speed of the film. It is, however, set at a nominally hyperfocal distance, not at infinity. The manual to the EE-2 states that focus is from 1.5m/5 feet to infinity. At the time the Olympus Pen EE-3 was produced, most users would be receiving 6x4-inch lab prints from their negatives, and any softness to the focus would be within acceptable limits at this scale. In revisiting the Olympus Pen EE-3, looking through photographs taken with both cameras I've used, I did wonder whether the current camera I have had started to develop problems sooner than I realised; when I had my first EE-3 in the late 1990s, I almost entirely relied on lab prints (I did develop a few rolls myself when I first bought the camera, but only printed contacts in the darkroom). Having developed the first roll of film from the EE-3 in February 2020, having not used the camera for a few years, I was a little more circumspect about the subjects I was photographing, and did choose to photograph things a bit closer to the camera than I might otherwise have done (of course, this wasn't exclusively the case, but it did make me consider taking a step or two closer in a number of circumstances). Aside from any focus issues the camera may have had, when using the camera last year, I bought a close-up filter for the camera, which halved the set focus distance to essentially 0.75m or a little under three feet. Apart from a couple of tests, I didn't have time to utilise the close up filter, but this may be a useful accessory to have.

Top frame with close up filter; bottom frame without

In preparing this post, I did scan a number of negatives shot with my first EE-3; comparing the scans, and being aware of the limitations of the resolution of flat bed scans, perhaps the second EE-3 was always a little off in its focus before the lens became loose: notably, the four screws inside the camera behind the lens look to have been painted black by hand, which suggests the camera may have been worked on in some time in the past before I bought it. However, my appreciation of the results from my second camera have always relied on scans from negatives in comparison with physical prints from the first camera, and seeing these enlarged on a computer screen invites greater scrutiny than a 6x4 print. At the time, most labs coped fine with the half-frame format; I did make sure to inform them that the film was half-frame when handing it in, and almost always got full-sized prints: on just a couple of occasions, with the very first colour film, and one other, the labs returned two frames to a print (the first lab then guillotined the prints in half, making a stack of seventy-plus small 3x4-inch prints). In scanning the negatives, there were a few examples when keeping two frames together as a diptych made some kind of sense, and it's a popular form for half-frame scans online.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unbranded colour negative film

Although the use of the half-frame format was economical with film, I seem to remember most labs charging per print on their standard processing charges over 40 prints (allowing, I imagine, for the vagaries of 36-exposure films, with some cameras able to squeeze in a few extra frames); this was probably still cheaper overall than the cost of two 36-exposure films and their development in order to get 72 frames. I mostly seem to have used Fuji Superia 200, occasionally 400. Some of the negatives do not appear to have a brand name in the film rebate, and possibly came from Boots or Superdrug rather than a named manufacturer.

With my first Olympus Pen EE-3, generally using colour film and lab processing, I don't remember being concerned with the photograph's grain being more pronounced on the smaller negative size; with my second camera, choice of film and developer became a consideration. Last year's first roll through the camera, Double-X, is a relatively fast film, nominally 250 ISO in daylight, and when I first used Double-X I did find it to be quite grainy for its speed. However, the film I shot in the EE-3 last year was developed in D96 which gave a much smoother appearance to the grain than other developers I've used. For much of the time I shot with the EE-3 last year, I had a roll of Agfaphoto APX400 in the camera; the fact that the EE-3 stops down to f16 in automatic does mean that even a 400 ISO film is unlikely to be overexposed at 1/200th, unless in especially bright conditions, unlike earlier models of the EE range - the original Pen EE in its first iteration had a single shutter speed of 1/60th and a more limited range of ASA settings (although for most films excepting transparency, this would still be within a reasonable range of latitude); as far as I'm aware, unlike the red flag that prevents exposure at low light, the EE cameras do not have overexposure prevention (as an aside, the underexposure prevention means that when the camera is in its case, this works as an effective lock against accidental exposure). Curiously, the EE-3 does have an f22 aperture setting, but this is not used in automatic mode according to the Olympus Compact Cameras brochure, which gives the EV Range at ASA 100 from "EV 8.32 (f2.8, 1/40 second)" through to "EV 17.14 (f16, 1/200 second)."

In my initial post, I summarised the Olympus Pen EE-3's specifications thus:

The Pen EE3 model came out in 1973 and was produced for a decade. It has a fixed-focus 28mm f1:3.5 Zuiko lens, which equates to 40mm in full-frame 35mm format. Exposure is controlled by a selenium cell meter surrounding the lens that matches aperture to one of two shutter speeds, either 1/40th or 1/200th. ASA (ISO) settings run from 25 to 400, and the camera has a hot shoe and PC socket for use with an external flash. If there is insufficient light, a red indicator appears in the viewfinder, and the shutter won't fire. There isn't much scope for manually overriding the automatic exposure, except by turning the film speed ring away from the ASA settings: there are distance markings from 1 to 4 metres for the dedicated GN14 flash, or aperture numbers for a generic flash. Without a film speed selected, the shutter defaults to 1/40th of a second for flash sync.

As mentioned earlier, but not noticed at the time I wrote my original post, it is also possible to override the automatic exposure by using the effective exposure lock function. Having researched further into the EE-3, there is more information online now than in 2011, but I've seen as a result that some inaccuracies appear to circulate, specifically with regards to the shutter speed setting: there are statements that the shutter is set to 1/200th when the ASA settings are used, and the 1/40th speed is only used when turned to the aperture settings for flash. Although I haven't been able to find a manual for the EE-3, the EE-2 manual states that on Auto (the ASA settings), the programmed EE system gives 1/40th or 1/200th depending on the available light. Further, there is a scan of a brochure showing the then-current range of Olympus compact cameras which features the EE-3: this explicitly states "1/40 or 1/200 on AUTO, 1/40 on MANUAL"; presumably, there is a tendency for incorrect information to be copied from one online instance to another, both in how the automatic shutter speeds work, and also what these speeds are.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unnamed colour negative film

When looking through the colour negatives from using the camera when I first had it, I was surprised at how well the camera performed in low light; I mostly used 200-speed negative film, which would have good latitude, and some of these were no doubt shot either with making sure there was a bright light source within the frame to enable the shutter to fire, or simply using the flash setting at 1/40th on the widest aperture setting, f3.5, and hoping the film's latitude would provide an image on the negative. With 72 shots on a roll of 36 exposures, it hardly feels a waste of film to try this.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 400

In summary, I still consider the Olympus Pen EE-3 to be ideally suited to the function of a snap-shot film camera, with all the economies of the half-frame format, perhaps more pertinent now with film prices, the battery-less 'electric-eye' selenium meter controlling the exposure, and the fixed-focus lens, that, for most situations, means that using the camera is, as I wrote ten years ago, simply about framing. In addition, with a little careful consideration of the camera's quirks and limitations, it's possible to use the Olympus Pen EE-3 with a bit more control over its (admittedly simple and effective) near-fifty-year-old automatic nature.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Kentmere Pan 100

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus rated 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus rated 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Eastman Double-X film

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unbranded colour negative film

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 400

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Konica 400

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford XP2 Super

Sources/further reading:

The Olympus Pen series on Camera-Wiki

Olympus Compact Cameras brochure (PDF)

Olympus Pen EE-2 manual

Olympus Pen EE-3 review on Imaging Pixel

Olympus Pen EE-3: The Pen-o-tastic Half-Frame Camera

Olympus Pen EE-3 review on 35mmc

The photo-diaries of Mick Williamson

Magazine article on Mick Williamson from 1993