Canon IXUS M-1 and Kodak Advantix 200

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“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

9 Likes

isabel_mebarak, meryl, keroro79, girl_named_sue, schemerel, aroninvt, nacarilegea, mcrstar & disasterarea.

5 Comments

disasterarea · 2011-07-04 14:53
I had an IXUS M-1 for a while, and it was amazingly small and light at the time...the perfect pocket camera. I also really liked taking panoramic shots and used it for at least 50% of my shots.

I was never happy with the image quality tho, as the negative was 50% smaller than 35mm in terms of surface area. The only time I ever got pics that weren't grainy-as-hell was by using Fuji Super Fine Grain ISO100 film. You should try to find some if it still exists.

The 50% higher processing cost compared to 35mm was also a big turn off.
nacarilegea · 2011-07-04 20:38
I also had this camera, I think it was a gift for a bank account or something... I liked it , even though the outcome was always a bit grainy. Anyway it was stolen many years ago!
girl_named_sue · 2011-08-12 04:33
I have this camera (labelled Elph LT), and just dug it out a few weeks ago! I also found a few rolls of film I hadn't used. The first one is at the lab being developed now, so fingers crossed.
I loved how easy to use it was, and the different formats were great. The images were not the sharpest -- was that particular to this camera, or an issue with APS?
keroro79 · 2011-09-10 20:52
My then girlfriend (now my wife!) bought me this as my 20th birthday present in 1999. We took it everywhere, although now I can only find the snaps we took in Tureky :/ The quality on them is great - I think I used a bog standard Klick 200iso film at the time (mind you, it was very sunny and clear in Turkey at the time), but I dont remember any of the other photos being bad, quality-wise. In fact, its probably the only camera (pre-digital) that I can remember owning. And we shot the majority of pics in panoramic too - even if the situation didnt warrant it!
sophiejdalston · 2016-07-30 16:17
My first camera that was just mine was APS, a Kodak advantix F600. I remembered the pictures being very grainy and bad quality, but then I checked the scans that I still have on my PC, I only saved the low res versions to my PC and the CD they came from is long lost. The quality, even in low resolution, really is not bad at all and only as grainy as cheap consumer grade 35mm film. I now proudly own several APS cameras, and have a lot of expired APS film from eBay, with a couple of rolls ready to develop. I even have a canon APS SLR, the IX 7. In the UK many places still develop APS. I wonder whether lomography have considered manufacturing it again as they did with 110? Back in the day every supermarket, pharmacy chain and obscure film brand going made APS as it was very popular and is becoming popular again.