For quite a while I’ve been looking for a cheap half-frame camera to test out and I finally managed to get one when I was least expecting it in a mixed lot of camera bits I picked up at auction. It’s an Olympus EE-3 which is fixed focus and true point and shoot because apart from the manual aperture settings when using flash, there are no other controls that you can change. The selenium cell light meter is dead on my camera but the shutter works so I decided to test it during a lunch break photo walk around Oxford. With 72 frames to get through on a roll of 36 exposure film I was able to be very instinctive with my shots – see something, point, click, move on. There’s no need to carefully consider the composition on every frame because this camera lets you use it almost without thinking, just like when you blink without thinking about it first, you just do it.

Here’s a selection of pictures from the first test roll and it looks like the camera is working well despite the dead light meter. I assume it’s working at sunny 16.

[Tech info:] Olympus EE-3, Eastman Double X motion picture film, developing in D96 for 7 mins, Pakon scans.