General Photography

There is also what is becoming universally known as a "diopter" knob for focusing the viewfinder to the user's eyesight and a Panorama switch, which masks off a strip on the top and bottom of the film and in the viewfinder. I have yet to try this out because it seems a bit silly to obtain a bigger picture by reducing your negative size. At least, with a 28mm lens position, the feature makes a bit more sense with this camera than with the more usual 38mm semi wide lenses.

The 928 autofocuses continuously down to just under two feet without the need for a separate macro mode switch and for which the 90mm setting with its f9 maximum aperture is useful, as is the positioning of the viewfinder directly above the lens. The lens, a Pentax SMC (super multi-coated), has proved to very good indeed, at every zoom setting at which I have used it, although it's mostly used at or near the wide end.

This is the first Pentax branded camera that I have ever owned and it sometimes makes me wonder what I have been missing all these years, not that anyone can be certain that a camera brand name means anything at all these days, as it is more to do with marketing than place of manufacture, especially with P&S types, and it's quite possible that just one or two factories manufacture all of them to their badge owners' specifications.

Because I want to accumulate some funds to buy a better specified digital camera, this Espio is now for sale at the same price I paid for it, £110, with case, remote control unit and instruction booklet.

This Pentax Espio 928 is the replacement for my useless Olympus AZ-1 with the broken film transport. It took more than a year of reading news group opinions to narrow my choice down to one of two modern P&S autofocus cameras - this or a Ricoh GR1, and as this was the first secondhand model to appear, I bought it. Its appearance is so unprepossessing, however, that I visited it in the shop's used camera showcase four times before finally deciding to buy it.

After exposing eight 36 exp films with it I feel safe in saying that it's an excellent camera for my purposes. While it's not particularly small, one with a just pocketable 28-90mm zoom lens is remarkable in SLR terms and it packs a good selection of useful features. Its drawbacks are common to its type - no cable release socket, no d-o-f scale, no manual selection (or indication) of speed or aperture, and no provision for filters.

The picture left shows the unusually large LCD screen and buttons of the 928, allowing controls to be set without the fiddling and squinting required in most other P&S cameras. Two dabs on the flash symbol switches off the flashgun, more dabs cycle through slow speed and Bulb modes and pressing the mountain symbol toggles through the focusing range of Infinity, Spot AF, Snapshot and back to Multibeam. Two seconds' pressure on the red eye pre-flash symbol brings up the exposure compensation selector - up to 3 stops +/- using the zoom control. Pressing the Timer button cycles through the self-timer and remote control modes, and holding it down prepares for a mid roll film rewind (the film end disappears into the cassette so a leader removal tool is required - or, while the film is rewinding, wait until the counter reaches zero, count 1 - 2 seconds and flip the back open).

Ever since my schooldays I have been an enthusiastic amateur photographer, beginning with an 8-on-120 Kodak Autographic Junior bought from a school friend. Almost as soon as I started work I bought my first 35mm camera, a fairly simple Regula L, and a few years later bought my first single-lens-reflex camera, an Aires Reflex 35 - a Japanese version of a Zeiss Contaflex.

An impulse buy of a second-hand Olympus Pen S began a ten year enthusiasm for half frame photography which ended when I sold my esteemed Pen FT half frame SLR. Even today I can not easily come to terms with the extravagance of using slide film in a full frame 35mm camera.

In the early 1960s I worked in several photographic shops where I discovered that photography could be more enjoyable using cameras other than the much vaunted SLR. I was disappointed with my purchase of a Nikkormat FT and three Nikkor lenses and delighted to find someone willing to exchange a Leica M2 outfit for it. I built up my Leica outfit, added a Kodak Retina IIIc and for years managed very well without a full frame SLR.

A spell as a wedding and commercial photographer in the 1970s convinced me that 35mm - even Leica - could not reliably produce work up to professional standards, and I reluctantly disposed of my Leica and Retina gear to buy a new Zenith 80 (Salyut) medium format camera with two backs. This, a Russian copy of a 1947 Hasselblad, proved to be ideal for the purpose, but when the studio was sold and my wedding jobs were at an end, I found that it was not a very enjoyable camera for amateur use. By this time, second-hand Leica prices had risen astronomically and there was no prospect of my replacing my old outfit. Affordable, however, was the Kiev 4, the Russian built version of the pre-war Zeiss Contax III, at the amazing price of £29 new, with a range of lenses from 28 to 135mm only £19 each! My use of the Zenith 80 had indicated to me that Russian lenses have an appeal of their own

I was very happy with my Kiev 4 outfit for several years until the appearance of the Olympus OM-1 - at last a single lens reflex that was around the same size as my old Leica M2, that handled as smoothly and with a bright viewfinder. I originally bought the OM-1 to add close-up facilities to my Kiev outfit but later reluctantly sold the latter to concentrate upon a gradually expanding OM system (see my separate OM page), but I missed having a coupled rangefinder camera so bought a second-hand Olympus 35RC, and an Olympus XA, and I still own both.

Many desirable 35mm rangefinder cameras from the mid-1960s have exposure meters dependant upon Mercury battery cells, which environmental protectionists have caused to be phased out. The offered alternatives, alkaline and lead-air are unsatisfactory because of their unstable voltages - and an alkaline 1.5v battery can destroy a meter designed for only 1.3v. For this reason I have added a Kodak Retina IIIc to replace the one I sold almost thirty years ago (it's much heavier than I remembered!) and another Kiev 4, which has grown to seven models of Kiev 35mm coupled rangefinder cameras plus a few Russian-made cameras that take Leica screw-mount lenses. Most of these are Zorki models and a couple of FEDs. Purchased from Russian and other Eastern European eBay sellers, these cameras are a delight to handle, play with or use, and you can have a large collection of them for the price of a single 'real' German Leica.

Although I hadn't intended to buy both an Espio 928 and a Ricoh GR1, when I saw a secondhand GR1 advertised I just had to make an offer, and after some negotiation I bought it.

I'm presently on my seventh film and I am enjoying this tiny camera quite a lot. My prints confirmed the lens's reputation for high quality and sharpness, which is as it should be because the GR1 was advertised at twice what I had paid for the Espio 928 - not that the latter's results appear to be in any way inferior.

What appears to be a moulded grip disguises the minimum width needed to contain the cassette - Yes, it really is that small, and in its "Stealth" black finish it is very unobtrusive.

A design fault of the the Ricoh GR1 is the excessive ease with which it can be switched on accidentally, even in its original case. A later case carries a stiffened strip to help to prevent this happening but I haven't been able to acquire one of those so I have had to solve the problem for myself. I bought a small zip-round pouch at a car boot sale and stiffened the appropriate section of it internally by gluing together two strips of card from a pizza box, gluing them into the pouch and then covering that inside half the the pouch with a piece of velvet material - all using PVA adhesive. It appears to have completely cured the problem.

Because I want to accumulate some funds to buy a better specified digital camera, this GR1 is offered for sale at the same price I paid for it, £180, with pouch as described, instruction book, wrist strap and 2 or 3 batteries

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