From what I can gather online, it's a pretty uncommon camera. I must admit when I came across the auction on eBay, I'd never heard of the Bellami. It's actually a pretty nice camera. It's tiny for a 35mm camera. Hopefully you can tell that from the roll of film next to it.
Despite it's size, the Bellami feels really solid. It's heavy for it's size, and it has a full size film advance lever. No little thumb wheels here! Perhaps the most striking feature of the Bellami though are the barn doors that the lens hides behind when not in use. To open them up, you pull back slightly on the film advance, and to close them you push slightly forward. It's a really clever little touch that I love!
The Bellami also comes with it's own little flash that screws on to the side. It's similar to the Olympus XA series in that respect, and it's another neat little feature. The flash can be set to on, off, or daylight sync, which is a pretty cool feature for such a little thing. It only takes a single AA battery so it takes a while to warm up, but it should be usable enough.
Browsing flickr for some sample images, it seems the 35mm, f/2.8 lens is pretty sharp and contrasty. The results look somewhat similar to the Lomo LC-A when loaded with slide film and cross processed. This is a fact which I'm quite happy about, as this camera only costs a fraction of the Lomo, and I'd quite fancied having a go at the whole cross processing malarkey.
Anyway, that's about all I know about Chinon Bellami's for now. I'll stick some old expired slide film in it, and see what happens. I'll be sure to post the results when I have them.
In other news, I'm slowly working through a whole heap of editing from some headshot sessions I did down in that there London. Editing is boring, so the less said about that, the better.
That's all for now.
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