Warbirds of the past in France

[Nico Braas]

I photographed these aircraft  during my vacation in the summer of 1977 alongside the Route Nationale N157 between Vendôme and Blois.
That time I used an Olympus Pen F halfframe SLR camera with negative format 18x24 mm.
Big advantage was that you could take some 80 exposures on a normal 35 mm film of 36 exposures.
Unfortunately this format never became a great success; maybe because people had to wait too long before their film was full.
All I can say that the quality was excellent. These are scans from Kodachrome color slides.....

[No.1]

Interesting info of the film and subjects are also very interesting

[modellius]

excellent pictures, thanks for sharing !

[Nico Braas]

The Olympus Pen F was introduced in 1963 as an alternative for 24 x 36 mm format.
The Pen F was a system SLR camera with interchangeble lenses.
It was at that time a very innovative and daring design!
I purchased it as an alternative for my Petriflex 35 mm SLRcamera and used it for a few years.
It was at that time very expensive; but I could purchase a new one at a sale-out for less than half-price (still a lot of money for that time!).
Unfortunately telephoto lenses were not even more expensive than the camera, but also hardly available.
I finally switched a few years later to a Pentax ES II!
The 'Pen F' name is still used by Olympus for a digital camera with a remarkable similarity in shape of the 1963 'icoon'!
I still have my Pen F.
Had to dig deep, but I finally found it! Think it is now a well sought collectors item.
Olympus also had a lower-priced alternative with a fix-focus lens and automatic exposure.
It lasted on the market for some 10-15 years, but then it silently disapeared.
I believe Olympus was the only company trying the half-frame format camera on the market...

[No.1]

You know more about camera and photography then many others so called 'spotters', who make images of airplanes