Ricoh XR-1s
Oh boy, I’ve gone and done it again. I bought myself another vintage film SLR at our local used camera show and swap meet. This time around I found a Ricoh XR-1s 35mm SLR from around 1979/80 in very good working order for $40.00 CDN, which according to my very basic and quick googling, is about right for one of these beauties. Since it’s a Ricoh, and Ricoh is the parent company of Pentax, it is a standard Pentax K-Mount body so all of my Pentax lenses work with it. Of course, being full manual, I can really only use the lenses I have that are equipped with Aperture rings. No worries, I got a few of those of the “vintage variety (50mm f/1.7 + f/2.0) and a couple of early 90’s bad boys like the 28-80mm Macro and the 35-80mm kit lens that came with my MZ-5 back in the day.
But enough about the gear, let’s see some of the photos I’ve taken with this thing!
For my first outing with it, I tossed in a roll of Iford XP2 400 to see how it handled some black and white film. Here are few of the ones that I really dig.
After I got this roll back from the lab, I tossed in a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 and went to a more colourful location to take advantage of a film stock that specializes in reproducing more vivid and vibrant colours. After getting the scans back, I was more than happy with how they turned out and how this camera handled the film. Now, because it was ISO 400, and I was shooting on a pretty bright, mostly sunny late morning, I did “dumb the camera” down to ISO 200 and put on a variable ND filter to try and maintain a maximum shutter speed of 1/500 while shooting at wider apertures.
I know, I know, enough with the techno jargon, let’s get on with the photos. Here are a few of the ones I’m really happy with.
So all in all, I’m very pleased with my “new to me” Ricoh XR-1s, and combined with my Pentax 50mm f/1.7 manual lens, I think it will be in my regular use rotation as a “slow it down” camera.
Do any of you have any experience with this camera? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Now get after it!