Yellow Pad Engineering Pty Ltd

on June 27, 2021

Or you may prefer to deal with the Chip Paper Design Bureau. Or the Back-Of-An-Envelope Studio. All fine organisations who take modern concepts and wring them out like dishcloths. Careful they don't drip on you.

Last post we speculated on Nikon's possible retro-styled APS-C mirrorless camera. Interested parties can google off to the Nikon Rumors site and read the details. Beware, however, as the digital images presented may have been done with more hope than science.

Yellow Pad has taken the retro idea and applied it to a mythical camera - one made by the Flapoflex company. It starts with the basic Flapoflex 35mm camera they sold in the old days; the Falpoflex Beulah . This was an almost-Yashica design with semi-Petri overtones and the occasional outbreak of Ihagee-ism. It cranked through 35mm film behind a fixed 45mm lens and was cheap enough to be sold everywhere from Abe's of Maine to Steamer Point in Aden. Innumerable Australian tourists sat with Flapoflex instruction books on their knees on cruise ships or package flights and tried to understand how to load film. The Beulah was a success.

The New-Beulah will also have a 45mm fixed lens but it will be a 30mm one instead - because Flapoflex sensibly will use the APS-C sensor inside. The tourist who uses the New-Beulah will want to show their pictures on the telly at home or print off A4's, and the APS-C is big enough to do this perfectly well.

The eyepiece of the New-Beulah will be on the left hand corner of the body - with no need for fancy EVF or strange switching - it will be a clear through optical window set to accurately reflect the 30mm field of view. A dot will be projected inside to show where the AF is looking - when it has focused, the dot goes from red to green and the shutter can fire.

On the bottom edge will be 5 dots. They go red, yellow, green, yellow, red. Get the green dot to illuminate by turning the aperture ring on the lens or the shutter speed dial on the upper right panel and you're right. Deviate either side as you wish for compensation.

Aperture ring? 1.7 to 22 in clicks, or an A position that locks itself.

Shutter speed? 1 second to 1/2000 second or an A position that locks itself.

ISO? Dial on the back from 100 to 6400 or again an A position that locks itself.

All other controls are inside the back LCD screen on a poke and swipe basis. After all, people have been playing with their blasted mobile phones for two decades now and are trained pokers and swipers.

Chrome or black panels. Black leatherettish rubber-like covering that will not unpeel when you get sweaty hands on it ( and if the mention of sweaty peeling rubber hand grips fits a brand you currently own, wear it...).

And most fun of all - a traditional film advance lever under the right thumb. This doesn't advance film - it drives a small generator inside the camera that adds a tiny bit of electricity to the battery. You can charge the battery as per normal from whatever source you like, but in the field you can flick over the thumb lever to keep the thing topped up. A boon to travellers and to chronic jitterers who need something to do all the time.

If this seems a pretty basic retro picture box that the average Joe or Jane can cope with for about 90% of their amateur needs - without spending 4 grand and carrying a gadget bag the size of a bar fridge - if it seems like the sort of thing that you could take to Bali or Bunbury on the spur of the moment - if it reminds you of the camera you had when you first started...

You're welcome.

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