I have taken a real liking to the idea of carrying a small camera so I can grab those images that present themselves all the time when I’m out and about. I had that the other day when I went over to the National Gallery, where between where I parked and the walk to the gallery there were numerous great ‘images’ right for the snapping.

Well, up until now, going around with the D100 was a non event. As much as I love what the D100 can do, it just is not the ‘occasional’ camera. As a result, I have left behind all those images that I keep on seeing whenever I am out.

Possibly a year or more ago, I saw some stuff on the web about Rollei, as in Rolliflex, making a miniature digital camera in the style of their famous twin reflex camera dating back to the 20’s. Well, in one of those spur of the moment things, I decided to look it up. After a bit of web searching, I found one (I gather they are not in production any longer) for a reasonable price, so of course I grabbed it.

I waited less than a week before it turned up from the US east coast (Air Mail too… what’s up with that?) and I had it in my hands. Not only is it cool, it’s so damn small. Tiny even. While at first I was not sure what to think, I have become quite enamored with it. Total old world/old school stuff, right down to the turning of the lever to forward the ‘film’ to take the next shot!

While the reviews I read made me wonder if buying it was the right thing to do, Flickr revealed to me that though small, basic and limited, the Rollei Mini is capable of taking some really nice shots. Not Ansell Adams shots, not large format print shots but nice, sometimes quirky, images, which is what I want!

As with everything, I’ll be posting my optical musings here, or maybe on Flickr, soon…. I need to get hold of a SD card reader first, as the Mini has no USB outlet. I did say it was basic!

Update: 20th Dec, 2006

So I have used the little camera a bit now, not enough to get used to it but enough to see what it does. You can see the first image here . So what do I think? It’s fun, interesting and a challenge to some degree. It’s totally old school really. You have to be very still, you have to remember to ‘wind’ on the ‘film’ and I am guessing (though might prove otherwise down the track) that you have to ‘play’ with the film prior to ‘printing’… ‘publishing’ in this case. In every way, it’s a total throw back to the days when photography involved human input at every level. I think it’s cool. I’m well over the fully automatic everything in our 21st Century lives. Put back manual, human, input I say!

The shot I took required me to sharpen it a bit in an editor but that was about it. I took it at the normal 1200×1200 size, as I found that the larger 1750×1750 was a tad soft - I wonder what interpollination algorythm they are using…? Maybe the 1750×1750 will work a lot better with image tweaking?

Overall I am well chuffed.

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