edward_isaac

<p>I acquired a F3 and XD11 (XD7 where I live) at different times. I thought of them as back-ups for my Leica M6 when I didn't want to take it with me for some reason, but now I often take the XD-11 along instead of the Leica. The Nikon F3 is an absolutely solid camera, and the lenses are great. My "problems" with it may seem petty. I don't like focusing the lenses in the opposite direction to all my other lenses, and I'm not crazy about the flash mount and dedicated flash, which is peculiar and unwieldy. I like to use an off-camera cabled fill flash. The XD-11 beats the Leica, there, too, because of the Leica's lousy screw in the flash mount that blocks a cable connector...</p>

<p>This is going to sound weird but the XD-11 is my favourite 35mm camera, and I'm comparing it to my other two main cameras, the Leica M6 and the Nikon F3. I sold my XD-11 and all the lenses before I figured that out. I went back through all my favourite shots over a certain period and realised that 3 out of 4 were taken on the Minolta. Had to go back and buy the camera and lenses back....<br> All of the Minoltas under discussion in this thread are relatively cheap, so go for the XD-11 if you can. Repair is not worth the money, unless its seals and/or the mirror cushions, which you can do yourself. With the Rokkor lenses the XD-11 system is a real gem!</p>

<p>Old thread but I'm just going to add that one obvious situation to try DBI in is when experimenting with custom developer formulations or for example using paper developer to process negs--for which development times are not generally available. Have fun, exercise your freedom and creativity, do it any way you want.</p>

<p>Hi,<br> This just came to my attention, apparently some film shooters are eschewing scanners in favor of using a DSLR with a macro lens to make digital images of their negs. You need to make a number of images that you then stitch together (and reverse them, obviously).<br> This guy's run some tests and claims the results are superior to a V700 scan:<br> http://petapixel.com/2012/12/23/why-you-should-digitize-your-film-using-a-camera-instead-of-a-scanner/<br /><br />This appeals to me because a) I want to digitize only a small percentage of my negs and b) I dislike scanning for various reasons.<br> I'd be curious if anyone has had any experience with this technique.</p>