Canon IXUS M-1 and Kodak Advantix 200

“Ah, I’ve found a camera.” That seems to be the most heard expression at home lately… followed by it being given to me with a smile and the telling of its story… and right behind that, searching for the appropriate film like a madwoman.

But it can’t be avoided, it’s impossible to resist the temptation to test the new old camera which has fallen right into your hands.

Recently, they surprised me by finding the old Polaroid. Now the last analog camera that came into our house has been found: the modern, at the time, Canon IXUS M-1 (Canon ELPH jr at the USA and Canon IXY 310 at Japan).

This Canon was born at September of 1998 and I don’t think I’m showing off by saying we had it a few months after (we’re a family of photography fans haha, it couldn’t happen any other way!), just before it was replaced by our first digital.

Beautiful, small, and very light.

The Advanced Photo System (APS) was analog photography’s last big revolution. It was officially presented by Canon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Minolta and Nikon the 22nd of April of 1996. Kodak stopped production at 2004.

Luckily, a shop near my home had no problem with finding an APS Kodak Advantix 200 reel (although I had to pay almost €7 for it), a new battery…ready to test it!

The APS reels were much better than everyday users thought. I think nobody knew what we got into our hands.

These reels had status indicators and their width was 24 mm. Here you can see a picture of an APS negative and a 35 mm one:

Besides, they came in three different formats:
.. H for “HIGH DEFINITION”(30.2 × 16.7 mm; ratio: 16:9; typical print size 4×7″)
.. C for “Classic” (25.1 × 16.7 mm; ratio: 3:2; typical print size 4×6″)
.. P for “Panoramic” (30.2 × 9.5 mm; ratio: 3:1; typical print size 4×12″)

The negatives came inside a plastic housing, the reel itself, where they would be preserved at top condition. They would come accompanied by an index copy where we could see and choose our pictures.

So I chose my photographs’ quality, spent them during several days testing things and sent them to develop and develop alone.

What a silly face I had when I opened the envelope and saw nothing more than the casing, the reel alone, really. With no index copy at all. And I wasn’t able to contain my curiosity (neither could my finances, development alone cost me almost €6). Pplease purists, don’t read the following… I broke the casing taking out the negative.

So, I scanned, with some problems, the pictures and we can see the fantastic results offered by the combination of the Canon camera and the APS reel.

At night, in dark, open locations, these were the results:

In closed spaces, with low illumination, without flash:

In closed spaces, with low illumination, with flash:

Under daylight:

On the top of all that, these cameras could add data in every photograph, like date, obturation, exposition time, use of flash or a title, that can be printed on the picture’s back.

Without stopping to think, I’ve seized an eBay offer for 15 APS reels, Fuji this time. I’m going to live this return to the APS to the fullest. And you? Do you remember these cameras or do you have one at home? Don’t hesitate to dust them off and use them again!

They’ll surprise you!

written by isabel_mebarak on 2011-07-04 #gear #review #canon-ixus-m-1-canon-ixy-310-aps-kodak-advantix-200-aps
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