5 (Vertical) Frames with a Minolta Riva Panorama and Kodak ProImage 100 – By Victor Lopez

This small camera has gotten some highlights on 35mmc over the years. Hamish already has published a really good take, hence, I won’t bother you much with the details. I’ll just encourage you to look through the viewfinder, it will really put you in the mindset of shooting panorama pictures. You get the classic center focus point indicator of myriads of P&S cameras, but the frame lines, coupled with the general width of the viewfinder will really make it kick in:

And then for some odd reason my mind tends to flip it into portrait / vertical mode and be happier with it. So here are 5+ frames with this camera, using Kodak ProImage 100 film, at an escapade when the lockdown eased a little. All processing done at Hilitos Lab, using a Fuji Frontier scanner, I just rotate and crop the black borders out, I’m afraid I don’t share Hamish’s view of the black bars as with his run with Lomography Metropolis and this camera.

On the examples above you can see how the extreme corners are mushy, a known shortcoming of this camera, but they are rarely a factor in this orientation, there is a wide (tall in this use pattern!)  section of sharpness and, at least to me, the portrait orientation forces the eyes to look at the whole frame.

The camera averages out both sides of the scene, using the two circular meter-cell windows to the sides of the lens cover. This was an ISO 100 film, and while I got some overexposed highlights in some cases, there is plenty of shadow detail to work with. The camera has DX-code sensors, but will only choose ISO 100 for anything rated lower than ISO 400 or without DX coding. On the other end, ISO 400 and higher will be exposed as an ISO 400 film, I think the best balance is sticking with ISO 100 or ISO 200 rated film.

If there is an interface gripe with this camera (besides being an all auto P&S), is the flash behavior, there is a flash cancel button on, nicely located where your finger lands to hold the camera, but you have to push it and hold it down, to force the flash not to fire! Its easy to either forget this or not press the button correctly. it has a subtle feedback feeling when you have done so correctly, its somewhat easy to miss it if you don’t anticipate it.

And just a reminder for myself, not all is portrait / vertical business with the Riva Panorama:

Thanks for looking & reading, you can keep track of my other photos here.

-Vic

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