christos_theofilogiannakos

<p>...and the Pentacon is a truly great lens (esp. in the bokeh department) only marginally inferior to the more expensive Pancolar.</p>

<p>Nice images. I too have a soft spot for the all-mechanical Prakticas, but the crappy viewfinder, I could never come to terms with (save perhaps for the MTL-50 which received an upgrade in that department and the VLC models with the interchangeable finders). Also the AA battery thing is a convenient solution, but I'm pretty sure that the lower voltage doesn't permit deflection of the needle across the whole range of the light meter, so it's good for showing correct exposure, but you can't over- or under-expose at will, at least based on the needle (you can always simply go up or down one or two stops by changing speed or aperture ignoring the meter).</p>

<p>It's quite hard to get a manual K-mount camera combining the solid build and smoothness of a K-1000, but you are right that prices have gone through the roof. Speaking from personal experience, I can wholeheartedly recomment the Chinon CM-4 / CM-4S (the latter sports a self-timer which the first one lacks). Small and light yet solidly built, great viewfinder, all-manual and fully mechanical with a vertical shutter which is more accurate, less prone to failure but a bit more noisy than the horizontal one on the K-1000. Also I find it very nice that the LED exposure indicators lie just beside the VF eyepiece which means you can check and adjust exposure BEFORE bringing the camera at eye level to compose or you can just shoot it from the hip at hyperfocal for some covert street shooting, esp. with a wide-angle lens. You can also find them rebranded as Revueflex SC2, sold in Germany and most other european markets.<br> The KR-5 is an option as well as mentioned above, but I find the Chinon cameras smaller, smoother in operation with better viewfinders.<br> Also, the Cosina CT-1 and its variants (there's even one with 1/2000s top speed) spring to mind and they too can be found rebranded as Petri GX-1 and possibly others as the chassis was used by many companies for their basic manual SLR models. People say good things about them but I haven't used one myself.<br> In general, as far as K-mount cameras are concerned, the range of all-mechanical, manual, cheap alternatives to the K-1000 is rather limited, contrary to electronic ones which are as common as grains of sand in the desert.</p>

<p>@Jeff Adler: I wasn't aware a Konica TC-X existed, I looked it up and it seems like it's another Cosina CT-1 spin-off. It's not as good-looking, but it seems like a good alternative, esp. with the AAA-powered meter instead of the two 675 cells required for the TC.</p> <p>@Anthony Oresteen: |I guess the TC is common (and cheap) enough to just get another one hoping it will work, instead of trying to get it fixed. Getting spare parts must also be a problem.</p>

<p>@Michael Howard: Thanks for the feedback, this makes total sense. Film advance resistance is noticeably increased when film is loaded, so increased tension is a plausible culprit. This is also supported by the fact that most missed shots occured in the beginning of the roll where tension is greater. It's a pity really, because the TC is almost the only affordable compact, fully mechanical Konica body to use the Hexanon 1.8/40 with. A T/T3 body negates the size/weight advantage of the lens and the T4 is just too expensive on the european eBay sites. Electronic Konicas (FC/FT/FS) are out of the question due to reliability issues, plus I have made a conscious decision to stick to mechanical cameras only. Funny thing is that although only 9 out of 36 frames got exposed in the first roll, I got 27 exposed frames on the second one. Perhaps I advanced the film more calmly the second time?. Anyway, off to get another TC body!</p>

<p>@Daniel Deary: I own dozens of SLRs, light came through the shutter just fine every single time, on every single speed from 1/8-1/1000, both in full manual and AE mode.<br> @Matthew Currie: The mirror seemed like a possible culprit, but I could see the whole circle of light coming through the lens and the shutter every single time of the hundreds I tripped the shutter both in AE and Manual with the film door open. If the mirror failed to rise at all, I wouldn't be able to see any light coming through. If it rose only half-way, some of the shots would be cut in half or underexposed, but at least something would have registered on film. It is either perfectly exposed images or total blanks, nothing inbetween. For the second roll, I deliberately shot some pictures at 1/1000 and while a couple of them failed to register at all, most came out just fine...</p>

<p>Hi all!<br> I recently shot my first roll with a Konica Autoreflex TC that I got off eBay mainly for the AR Hexanon 1.8/40 it came with. When I got the roll back from development, most of the shots (3 out of 4) were completely blank, as if the shutter didn't open at all. Successful shots were randomly spread throughout the roll and were perfectly exposed. Furthermore, the spacing seems correct, i.e. blank segments between good frames correspond to either single or multiple frames, as indicated by 8 sprocket holes per frame. The Autoreflex TC has a mechanical shutter and while shooting the roll, everything sounded OK, the relatively loud thud of the metallic curtains was there for every shot, without any audible difference from the previous or the next one. Frame counter worked OK and the rewind lever turned OK while advancing the film, The first and last shot registered OK and there were no exposure problems in the successful shots, nor did anything register on the blank frames (no bands, dark corners, half frames, etc) they are just completely blank. Here comes the spooky stuff: While dry testing the shutter in manual mode with the film door open both before and after shooting the roll in question, everything seems OK: I tripped the shutter on every single speed in manual mode for more than 50 times for each speed and it fired correctly every single time. I repeated the same with the lens in AE mode (shutter priority) and every single time the shutter opened correctly with the lens aperture varying as expected between shots, corresponding to what the needle showed in the viewfinder. I shot a second roll with it, taking care to shoot each photo both in AE and manual mode, and the same thing happened: Some shots are completely blank in random order, sometimes both AE and manual versions of the same shot registered OK, sometimes one is missing, sometimes both are missing. I'm really baffled by this, as was my camera repair guy when I described the problem to him on the phone. Any ideas? Is it possible that the presence of film somehow causes the shutter to fail randomly?</p>

<p>So I checked the negatives and the leaks are definitely coming from the front, as they all stop at the sprocket holes and do not extend beyond them. So I checked the interior of the shutter box for shiny parts or reflective surfaces and compared it with the same areas on my other (not leaking) mju II and everything is identical, even when the lens is extended (I did the trick of taking out the batteries at the right moment to keep it extended, as described on the link given above by Lex Jenkins). The only difference I observed is on a ring just behind the shutter leaves, it being solid in the non-leaking camera (red arrow) while it appears to have some identations (or is something completely missing?) in the leaking camera (green arrow). Also there is something there (encircled in yellow) which is absent from the "good" camera. I hoped the culprit would be easily identifiable and maybe corrected with some matte paint, but there's nothing abnormal upon close inspection compared to the non-leaking camera, apart from this ring inbetween the lens elements which is obviously out of reach.</p><div></div>

<p>@Lex Jenkins: This guy seems to have similar problems. The white color and the repetitive pattern at exactly the same place on each photo lead to some problem in the shutter box. I will try to check my camera for exposed shiny parts and I will try to cover them with black matte enamel paint, left over from my modelling days. The mju II has a good lens but I don't really like it, it handles like a wet bar of soap being so small, light and curvy. </p>

<p>Thanks, that makes sense. I don't have the negatives at hand right now, I will check them first thing tomorrow. If it was a problem with the shutter box, wouldn't it be present in all photos?</p>

<p>However, one or two pics came out alright: </p><div></div>