Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 210

Friday 96 Section 7 Chicago Tribune, Friday, April 29, 1988 CN cameras offer perks to novice and pro alike Qhotography New bridge By Sandy Colton ot so long ago, camera manufacturers set out to woo the amateur photographer away from the 110-size, point-and-shoot camera. The Kodak Ins-tamatic-type cameras and disc cameras were the target First, manufacturers came out with simple, inexpensive 35 mm. cameras with cheap wide-angle lenses. These lenses keep any image relatively sharp from about 4 feet to infinity. There is no need to focus, and the price is very affordable.

Next came autofocus and auto-exposure. Autofocus just manages to get you into a zone of focus close enough to make the picture relatively sharp. Auto-exposure brings the user within the f-stop latitude of most amateur color print films. Film manufacturers cooperated in this process by improving their films, making them faster, brighter and with finer grain. The novice photographer, afraid of all the numbers and things associated with 35 mm.

photography and delighted with the autofocusauto-exposure cameras, forgot about the 110-size camera. The Instamatic is dead; the disc camera is on its way out Now manufacturers want amateurs to move another step LkJi closer to the interchangeable-lens SLR (single lens reflex) camera and to spend more money doing so. They have come out with a new camera, called a bridge camera. With a bridge camera, you can point and shoot, or, with the push of a button, you can use an operating mode similar to what you'd find in a more sophisticated camera. Some bridge cameras have a lot of buttons for a lot of options.

For example, the Ricoh FF-7, which was introduced at the recent Photo Marketing Association show in Chicago, does everything plus a little bit more. At first touch, the Ricoh FF-7 feels like a simple point-and-shoot camera. And it is. It does all those things you'd expect of such a camera just about nice camera," I told a tech rep who was showing it to me, "probably very good for novices, people who just want to point and shoot and get good pictures without worrying about all those numbers and things." I was in for a big surprise. The tech rep depressed a small button on the side of the camera, and a whole range of sophisticated features became available.

It was amazing to find so much in such a small camera. What options does the camera include? First, a panorama mode that automatically sets the lens at infinity, even when shooting landscapes through windows (this usually fools most cameras' autofocus mechanisms). Second, a night photography mode that sets the shutter speed and f-stop for shooting such things as the skyline of a city at night with no flash. Third, a TV setting mode that sets the shutter speed at 130 of a second for shooting pictures from a TV screen without getting the raster lines. "Hey," I asked, "why put something like that in there for an amateur?" The tech rep replied, "Think of all the people with computers today who may want to get a photocopy of a graphic they've created." The camera also has continuous shooting and interval modes.

With the continuous shooting mode, you hold the shutter button down and you have a motor drive that shoots pictures at about one frame per second. Set the interval mode and the camera automatically takes a picture every 60 seconds until you turn it off. This feature might be useful if you want to record the budding of a flower, for example, or birds feeding. Finally, there is a multiple-ex- frame, so don't look for the Samurai in this country anytime soon. The Olympus Infinity" Super-Zoom 300, due in camera stores this spring, has a 35-105 mm.

extended range zoom lens and an advanced autoflash that includes automatic backlight control that senses the need for flash and automatically turns it on for flash fill. The flash can also be operated in a slow speed mode so that the flash illuminates the main subject while the shutter remains open to expose the background. Chinon's Genesis is expected to be in camera stores in May or June. While the Genesis will work as a point-and-shoot camera, it also has some optional, more advanced features, including single or continuous shooting modes (up to three frames at one frame per second), daylight flash synchronization, flash override (for shooting natural light at night) and multiple exposure (up to three exposures on one frame.) The list price is $529.95. Notice those prices? You can blame part of it on the devalued dollar and the rest on all those bells and whistles they've added.

Manufacturers have created the bridge camera in an effort to woo the point-and-shoot photographer into greater involvement with photography, and to eventually step up to the more professional and expensive interchangeable lens SLRs. One added note about half-frame pictures: With recent advances in film quality, half-frame shooting could appeal to many economy-minded photographers because going half-frame means you can get 48 shots on a 24-exposure roll. posure mode that makes it possible to take several different images on the same piece of film the moon in one shot and the skyline in another combined, for example. The beauty of this camera, the tech rep explained, is that a novice can use it like a simple point-and-shoot camera and then move on to the more sophisticated possibilities. The Ricoh FF-7 is just one of the many new cameras being designed and produced by camera manufacturers today.

At least three other new cameras introduced at the Photo Marketing Association show are the shape of things to come: Kyocera's Samurai, the Olympus Infinity SuperZoom 300 and Chinon's Genesis. You can be sure that other manufacturers will soon be playing copycat Since first introduced in the 1920s, 35 mm. cameras have been rectangular boxes, with controls on the upper right for winding and shutter release, and on the upper left for rewind. Now there are new 35 mm. bridge cameras, with their dramatically different look and feel.

The space-age design bridge camera can be held and operated with one hand. One of the most interesting and dramatically different is Kyocera's Samurai. (Kyocera is sold in the United States under the name of Yashica.) The Samurai, now available in Japan, is a half-frame camera. The negative size is 17-by-24 roughly half the size of a normal 35 mm. frame.

The frames run sideways across a roll of film rather than with the length of the film. At present, only a few U.S. film processors are prepared to make prints from a half-size cowu AT SPECTACULAR $AVIK0S! BRING IN YOUR 35MM, 110 OR 126 COLOR SLIDE OR NEGATIVE FOR THIS DOLLAR VALUE SAVER. BxQQ COLOR ENLARGEMENT COLOR ENLARGEMENTS Ask for Details' 5" on nti a Lb (SILK) OR GLOSSY BEAUTIFUL LUSTRE i UfSm fryART II II II II i $2500 I sL I OFF 200 MINIMUM IJt III PURCHASE OF CUSTOM 7 MADE VERTICAL BLINDS -JT wriTiir fa si i i mm "SeS II Elmer SliaeCii-y-AV 61 7 N. WELLS 787-1825 11 II II II II II I I II i in BORDERLESS PRINTS.

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