Re:Show HN: Automating my 35mm film scanning pipeline
by tristor on Tuesday October 06, 2026 @09:54AM
(#49978544)
> "f/8 and be there"
This is why I love keeping an Olympus PEN-F w/ the Olympus BCL-15 f/8, which is a "body cap lens". It literally slides into my pocket even in tight jeans and gives me all you can expect out of a solid m4/3 camera with fixed aperture. It's not super-sharp, but so what, it's there and it captures interesting images. I really make an effort to only use my phone camera for taking pictures of receipts to submit to Concur, but I totally get the temptation, for those momentary snapshots a phone camera is so good these days, but since you like m4/3, thought you should know that things like the BCL exist.
From a utilitarian, “f/8 and be there” perspective, my iPhone today is way way better. I always have it with me and it handles pretty much any light condition I encounter, including near darkness.
And I took a 4/3 mirrorless digital body with a zoom lens to Africa recently, and got tons of sharp, well-exposed photos of wildlife.
But a slide is a picture, in a literal physical way. There’s no format or device needed. I hand it to anyone, and they can hold it up to a light and see the picture. It is a piece of art the way a sculpture is a piece of art; it embodies itself. I can keep it like a book, hand it over, pass it on. That is very cool, and looking through my old slides is satisfying to me in a way that opening up my laptop and scrolling through pixels is not.