Amateur Photographer - UK (2021-01-16)

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk 85

Tech Talk

SALE

SUBSCRIBE

FOR JUST

£25.99

FOR 12

ISSUES

● Print & digital

access

● Free home

delivery

of every issue

● Pay just £2.04

an issue

shop.kelsey.

co.uk/AP121

Call 01959 543 747

and quote – AP121

*Calls charged at your local

network rate. Order lines open

8.30am-5.30pm, Monday-Friday.

Full T&Cs can be found at

shop.kelsey.co.uk/terms.

Tony Kemplen on the ...

Yashica Mimy

A little half-frame compact camera that provides

a very simple point-and-shoot experience

The lens’s focus is fixed, and

there’sjusta singleshutterspeed

T

he Yashica Mimy is a
half frame 35mm
camera that was
introduced in 1963.
Half-frame cameras were popular
for two reasons, for one thing you
got twice as many photos from
each  lm, and of course the
cameras tended to be smaller.
Whereas conventional 35mm
cameras take landscape format
negatives measuring 24x36mm,
half-frame cameras use a portrait
format at 18x24mm. This means
that with a 36-exposure  lm you
get a whopping 72 pictures per
roll, which can be a bit daunting.
From the point of view of
economy, you certainly saved
money on  lm, but if you planned
to get them all printed, the
savings became somewhat more
modest. These cameras were
aimed at the keen amateur, and
while the smaller negative was
adequate for standard album
prints, it wouldn’t really stretch to,
say, a 10x8in enlargement.
Though the name half-frame
might suggest that the cameras
are half the size of a normal
35mm camera, that isn’t the
case. While the negative is only

18mm across, everything else in

the camera is still needed, such

as the cassette chamber and

take-up spool, so the potential for

size saving is modest. In fact

some full-frame compacts are

smaller than many half-frames.

While there were a number of

more sophisticated half-frame

cameras, the Mimy is  rmly

aimed at the snapshot end of the

market. It really is a point and

shoot, you don’t even have to

focus as the lens is  xed. There

is a single shutter speed, with a

Selenium cell being

used to determine the

aperture depending

on how much light is

available. Depth of

 eld depends on the

aperture, so in bright

daylight everything

from 1m to in nity will

be in focus. In poor

light, at full aperture,

this reduces to 2.3-4m.

The  lm speed is set via a dial

on the top, adjacent to which is a

moving needle with red markings

to show if you are straying into

under- or overexposure. If the

light is insuf cient, a red marker

appears in the view nder to warn

you, but it doesn’t prevent you

from  ring the shutter.

Film speeds range from ASA

(ISO) 10 to 250, a sobering

reminder of how slow earlier

colour  lms were. Indeed ISO 12

Kodachrome had only just been

superseded by an ISO 25 version

when the Mimy was launched.

I’ve got a number of half-frame

cameras, and I enjoy using them.

A favourite technique is to make

an image out of several separate

frames shot sequentially to result

in a grid, in this case one of my

regular tree subjects. Using this

method to make panoramic

pictures has become a bit of a

niche technique which has a

Flickr group under the name

‘Penorama’, a reference to the

best-known series of half-frame

models,theOlympusPENs.

A ‘penorama’

comprised of

six frames

arranged in a

grid pattern

Tony Kemplen’s love of photography began as a teenager and ever since he has been collecting cameras with a view to testing as many as he
can. You can follow his progress on his 52 Cameras blog at 52cameras.blogspot.co.uk.
See more photos from the Mimy at http://www. ickr.com/tony_kemplen/sets/72157632442862065.