Camera Talk

June 14th was the first day that scheduled trains ran on the new Green Line between St. Paul and Minneapolis. I really wanted to take pictures of the event because the Green Line is close to our house and I've been photographing the street it runs on (University Avenue) for quite a while. So I was disappointed that it was a rainy, blustery day. A good time, I thought, to use a bad weather camera-- the Pentax 105WR that I had bought for pennies (unused as far as I can tell) at a thrift store that was getting rid of its P&S cameras. Well, I had it loaded with 200 speed film and when I could deal with the wind and the rain, the Pentax would say it needed flash; all I could do was turn off the flash and shoot blind (as to shutter speed). So another disappointment and discouragement led to a kind of defeatist attitude till the 12 exp. load was finished and we headed for home. I mumbled something about a bad weather camera that you couldn't really use in bad weather (which often includes low light). Well, I got the processed film back recently and I have to say that the Pentax endured and overcame its operator's carelessness-- the photos were pretty good, good enough for the Green Line album after I brightened them up some in PSE. Probably a more capable SLR would have done better, or at least I would have known what it was doing while it was getting wet and worrying me; but, the P&S just plugged along and proved itself. I'll post a few photos from the day. dated to mark the occasion.





Bill Delehanty

You know, I like these. Some of the P&S cameras can be quite good, while some are forgettable.

I like shots of trams, which I just realized.

I don't know why it is, but stuff from Image Shack, and that Imagizer site just take too long to load, or not completely.
I gave up on this post after five minutes.

PF

Mike--Thanks for your comments. I guess that I'd be happy with that Pentax p&s if it gave me a little more information about what it was doing.

Phil--I'm sorry that the images were so slow to load. I think it was my fault--I referenced the full scan rather than a smaller one in the original posting. I've edited it to correct that. I hope that it will work better now. I'm having to do things a different way because Photo Bucket, my usual resource, either has been hijacked or has decided to push the ad interference beyond what I can take. Once I get a routine established with the system on this forum it should be better.

Bill Delehanty

I had no problems in loading the images. It is great being able to capture the line opening!

These P&S were often quite rugged and decent cameras. Good work with the Pentax. The first image has a Rockwell aura, to me.

Still not working for me, Bill. Must be my end of the works, with a DSL line, and still running XP with Chrome for a browser.

PF