Week 9 camera is the Nikon Pronea S that I recently acquired from Ebay. It's an advanced photo system (APS) camera that uses APS film in cartridges that typically come in 25 exposures and sometimes 40 exposures. I used a cartridge of Kodak Advantix black and white 400 from a box of film that I've used previously and find to have a nice grain and contrast. I've tried this film in several different APS cameras and it's come out great in each of them.

The Nikon Pronea S uses two 3 volt lithium ion batteries and automatically advances the film after each frame. It rewinds the film when reaching the end of the roll. The camera has an autofocus 30-60mm f1:4-5.6 lens and can use other nikon lenses.

It was a slightly rainy Sunday afternoon when I took the Nikon Pronea S out to shoot photos. I thought the 400 speed film would work on interior shots at the Civil War Museum in Gettysburg, but the shutter was too slow for hand-held shots in the low light of the museum. After visiting the museum, I drove over to the Evergreen Cemetery close by with the intention of getting photos of the monuments there. The Evergreen Cemetery is notable for being the burial place for Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. I took a quick walk around the cemetery road as it was starting to drizzle, it was lightly raining by the time I got back to my car. I finished the roll with photos around the house using the flash of our pets and my son, Isaac.

Overall, the camera worked well, which was great as the Ebay listing said that it was untested. The Kodak Avantix film was developed and scanned by The Darkroom.

I have not ever used a 110 film camera so for this week's installment of 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks I loaded up the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR camera in my collection to take it for a spin. I acquired this camera in an ebay auction at the too good to pass up price of $6.35 with shipping.

I put the required batteries in and the light meter inside the viewfinder lit up and appeared to be functional with the adjustment of the unusually placed aperture settings. The camera is quite odd looking, being a flat slab typical of 110 cameras with the addition of a manual focus f4.5, 25-50mm zoom lens and the single-lens-reflex prism hump on top. The camera shoots in aperture priority with the light meter on the right of the lens with the aperture adjustment dial built in. In the viewfinder with a slight press upon the shutter button, left or right triangles light up indicating the direction to turn the aperture ring for correct exposure, which is achieved when no triangles light up. There is an exposure compensation slider of +/-1 on top of the camera above the aperture ring. The camera has a hot shoe to enable use of an external flash, though I didn't test the camera with one.

I used a roll of expired Kodak Gold film and not being equipped to develop the roll myself (I don't have a Paterson 110 film developing reel), I needed to shoot the entire roll over the weekend and get it in the mail first thing Monday morning to The Darkroom. I have seen instructions on how to make a 110 developing reel out of a regular Paterson reel, and plan to make one, but that's another project.

I started off with some shots on Friday's lunch hour at work in the Mount Vernon area then down to Westminster, Maryland on Saturday. I finished the roll on Sunday morning. The scans are back from The Darkroom, and I like the way these photos look. I would like to try this camera with Lomography Black and White Orca and the Lomography Lobster Redscale 110.