Kyocera Samurai
After spending some time getting comfortable with the Minolta and realizing how much more frequently I’d like to go shoot film, I decided to look into my options for a half-frame film camera so I can get more photos out of a roll, and carry around something lightweight that’s easy to shoot. I was almost sold on buying an Olympus Pen EE-S when I discovered the Kyocera Samurai. This quirky little camera has a built in 28-70mm lens and flash. Most people think it’s a video camera because of the shape and design. This camera is pretty capable!
I love this car.
These were some of the first photos on the roll of Fuji 400 that I threw in. I bought this camera knowing the photos would be crunchy because it wouldn’t matter when they get posted on Instagram and viewed on a phone anyway. Though, I am curious how much better these would look if I had a higher res scan and a lower ISO film. I might revisit in the future.
I knew this would be the camera I wanted to bring to the Bloodmasters Invitational at Englishtown in New Jersey. The team and I accepted our application and had to be there for the weekend of October 6-9th of 2023. Since I was driving I didn’t want to lug around with the Minolta on this trip.
Strapped in for my second event of the year.. spent most of it unable to figure out what’s wrong with the car. It had just left me stranded a few weeks prior when the MAP sensor died. Loading up I thought I had fixed the problems since it was able to do excess speeds on the interstate just moments before.
I wasn’t really in the best head space for this trip. After spending a bunch of time and money trying to diagnose issues with the car, I was still extremely doubtful of whether or not it would perform for the weekend. It was hard to focus on having fun when I was worried about the car having problems the whole weekend, which it did. It’s always a bummer when the car is making me miss out on driving, especially when there’s a really limited amount of seat time to be had.
Jeff, Albert, and myself.
Lock City showing up with the best looking cars of the weekend.
Scott and his cool “Skyline” police car.
The Samurai does pretty good with motion.
With the conclusion of Bloodmasters, I left not feeling any better about drifting than I did prior to showing up. I’m thankful to see my friends and meet new people at the event, but overall did not have as much fun as I was hoping to. Largely due to problems with the car all weekend. It’s hard to be excited about driving when something goes wrong at every event.
Keen to shoot more of my roll of 74 exposures in the Samurai, I reached out to my buddy Max to check out his new Audi RS3 and take some photos. I’ve never really planned a photoshoot of a car before so I wasn’t quite sure where to go or how to approach the angles.
Settled on posting up at the Hampton Coliseum. Most of the pictures I took weren’t the best. I kept framing the photos like there was something coming out of his roof.
Toward the end of October, I went to a Fall Festival out in the western part of Virginia with my family. Here’s some photos from the corn maze.
and a couple of photos of my little sister.
This camera was a lot of fun to use and it did a great job at capturing October 2023 for me. There will be plenty more to come from this one.
I may end up putting it on the shelf for a while unless putting a different film stock through it and higher resolution scans can make me change my mind.
