Mood & Memories With Film Point & Shoot Olympus Mju ii

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I’m a digital baby! From finding my comfort zone in digital publishing and discovering a whole world of photography through digital cameras, it’s most definitely my happy place and where I feel I can reach my creative goals. But of course, having grown up with analogue I do like to answer its nostalgic call every now and then…

And like a dog with a bone, I’ve been looking for a film camera that I can get on board with. I tried twice now, with a super retro Canonet and Olympus Trip, but I don’t know, we just didn’t click. Maybe I just needed something a bit more of my own era. Enter the very 80s looking Olympus Mju ii, but actually released in 1997, which is testament to quite how 80s we were still being the 90s!

35mm with a 2.8 aperture and battery powered automatic wind-on, the Mju II is pleasingly small, super easy to load up and described by some as the ultimate Point & Shoot, but not in the ‘advanced 35mm compact’ category like the Rioch GR1 ( I have one of these) or Contax 1’s (I don’t have one of these!).

I got my first two rolls developed this week after I opening my lovely eBay Christmas present. I wanted it to be something to capture moments on, so we’d have something to flick through that would evoke family memories, photo technique and quality thrown to the wind. Well, that is definitely what we got! I snapped away, using flash (which I usually abhor), let Gus have a go and took pictures in lighting situations that I never normally would. Basically I used it with my photography head thoroughly off!

So not surprisingly the results were a mixed bag! Some a complete waste of film, some just what I was after. I thought I’d share a few of my favourites here. I got them developed at our local Snappy Snaps (£12 per roll!) and had them email me the digital files as well… These pictures are more family and personal than I would normally share, but I wanted to demonstrate a different kind of photo-taking than I normally do! Hope you enjoy them! 🙂


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Free Snapping

As you can see, even in this edit of my faves, there are loads of badly thought out blurry shots, and yet they still achieve the purpose of evoking a feeling and a memory. And they just feel wonderfully old school.

I’ve always loved trawling through my parents’ photo drawer, some in albums, most just loose in the photo packet, a wonderful way to leaf through the past, remembering places, birthdays and holidays. I love creating beautiful, perfect images but I also love the messy reality of spontaneous snaps with no particular purpose. More to come!

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2 Comments

  1. Ah, I miss go old family photos. I like developing mine and feel I could collect cameras. I’ve still got a camera (Canon, I think) that takes different sized pictures. When I think about it now, it was inconvenient as the bigger ones didn’t fit in an album.

    I really enjoy your photography and only wish one day I’ll be able to get my head around taking easy on the eye pictures.

    1. Ah thankyou! That’s so lovely to hear 🙂 oh goodness I am sure you already do 😉

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