kc4fox

I'd be willing to trade the 1/2 dozen broken Kievs I have for such a thing. I was very much hoping that CV was going to show off an adapter at Photokina. had I known of a way to order one, I'd have grabbed one, and I might now still have my Leica, as it would have been far more useful to me.

Me too. Got one with my Prominent for the 35mm lens.

Mamiya Universal comes to mind immediately as you have MF experience, but it's anything but unobtrusive.

 

Go good, cheap, and good optics: Voigtlander Prominent. Good camera, low shake for the leaf shutters and almost manditory two hand hold, quick to focus. Cheap and unwanted underdog in the RF battles of the 50's, the optics were some of the best made, and the Nokton is still considered a decent performer.

I bought the 150mm and had no trouble with focusing it. I did have to adjust the rangefinder on my '7 once in the field, though- and this particular lens is very sensitive to rangefinder adjustments.

 

My 150 did NOT focus past infinity. When the rangefinder was set for infinity with the 80 (my reference) my 43mm AND my 150mm both stopped at the exact same spot- NOT past infinity. If it was the case that the lens would be able to turn a touch past infinity, my only recourse for rangefinder adjustment and calibration would have been to collimate the lens- which I never had to do.

 

I never had an out of focus picture with it, or any of the others, for that matter. Good camera.

I agree with what Al said- that lenses were designed to simply "look good" in an age when perfection, or as close to it as we get, was simply not possible. It's the prime reason for me to use the older lenses I do, when I do.

 

Photoshop might make that all superflous, but for now, I'll take "pleasing images" that aren't perfect.

 

JD

Mamiya Universal 100mm f/2.8.

 

For the Leica? Summicron ASPH 35mm.

J-9 in LTM.

 

Re-assembly is described as like a "Rubik's cube," for those of us old enough to remember such puzzles...

Helios 103 is a Gauss design, not a Sonnar, unlike the J-8. It's resolution numbers claimed by the Soviets are a believable double from the J-8. Not to say the J-8 isn't a good lens, it is.

Have you contacted Mamiya? They have surprised me with a little RF bit for my Universal. Cheap, too.

It's nice.

 

The APO is sharper, but the look of the images on the negatives are pretty, much like the other lenses for the platform.

Mine flared with a filter on it, something fierce. Evening shots were the worst, as the sun was low and the contrast high in some scenes.

 

I got rid of the filter and it helped quite a bit.

Mamiya Universal with the F/2.8 100mm and multiple backs is what I use for weddings.

 

Works well. Preloaded with 220 and 3 backs, I'm good to go for 60 pictures, and minimal delay between back changes. Focuses to a meter, which isn't bad.

 

Pretty look to the lens, too.

Godfried did a test comparing it to the G2's Hologon. It wasn't *quite* as sharp, but with the adjustable aperture, was a far more useable lens. In other words, it's in excellent company, and a good lens at a GREAT price.

Response to Helen, if you get an answer to that, ask Mamiya about the same thing with their 6 and 7 rangefinders. I have an f/2.8 for the UNIVERSAL to die for, but the slow standard lenses drove me crazy on the much (much(much)) more expensive cameras.

I've got a REAL oddball sitting in front of me, my Carl Zeiss Jena "T" 5cm lens- an Eastern German lens, but made of brass (it's rather HEAVIER than my J-3), and it's quite coated, but where the J-3 has a yellow reflection from many of the lenses, much like the other Soviet lenses I have, THIS one reflects magenta, or no color at all (I suspect the rear element isn't coated)

 

Funky beast. I'm going to send it to Henry to be cleaned- there's a touch of haze in it that's obvious with very careful looking- appears to be on the front of the triple group, easier to see when stopped down to f-22.

 

Bought it from a nice fellow in Spain.

 

Takes nice pictures. Even wide open, close up.

Oh, there are good ones, aren't they?

 

Shutter priority automation. Who was it in the 70's that made it seemingly impossible for Canon (on the AE-1) and many others to set shutter speed based on a user selected aperture? Even in my Navy days, just starting out in photography, I did realize the simple uselessness of that automation for any kind of "user" photography.

 

Mamiya 7: Rangefinder is delicate. What were they thinking for charging so much money only to have the users need to carry screwdrivers with them lest they be stuck with an RF that'll go past (or won't reach) infinity in the distant field?

 

Mamiya Universal's backs with wind locks such that a gentle suggestion of a bump to 'em will allow one to wind on. Of course, if you are just checking if you DID indeed already wind on, there's another frame gone...

 

Cameras with dark slides and standard backs sans darkslide holders. Same with standard lens caps.

I'll amplify with the Zeiss Ikonta (Novar) he sold me.

 

I had made it clear that for the $300 he was selling it to me for, it would work well, that it would be complete, and that it would take nice pictures.

 

It had to go back to him 4 times to fix light leaks he couldn't find. He wouldn't replace the bellows, and by the time it came back the final time the camera wouldn't fold shut easily for all the patches in the bellows.

 

The center lens of the triplet had a good bit of coating removed.

 

The rangefinder was delivered in a condition where it was incapable of focusing. A trip to a local shop (I DIDN'T want to send it back to him yet again!) didn't fix it. I personally took the top off and bent the rangefinder mirror stem to a position in which it would work.

 

A $300 camera cost me about $480 with shipping, insurance, and a test roll or two between attempts. This was one example where specifying what I wanted to the smallest detail simply failed.

 

He was nice in that on the final trip back (rangefinder still out, mind you) he sent along a Real Zeiss Lens Hood for the camera, but as anyone could imagine, I was done with the deal, and couldn't ever trust the camera. I ended up taking a Oleg Moskva 5 on my European Vacation, and it worked fine.

 

All this could have been avoided if he'd simply shot a roll of B&W, souped it for 7 minutes, cleared it, and looked for the flare spots on the negatives. They were EXTREMELY obvious.

 

I hope he's doing better than he was.

I had one. Got rid of it for a couple reasons.

 

Bought it from Tri-State. BIG Mistake. They "had one in stock" so I purchased from the web. Long story short, they didn't, and couldn't find one, and didn't want to refund my money, so got the credit card company involved, when they came up with a "demo model," carried by a rep for people to look at.

 

Rangefinder was WAY off, and there was a chip in the paint. Tri-State argued with my credit card company for weeks before returning some of my money (I paid for a "new" one)

 

So it had bad karma from the start.

 

Rangefinder adjustment done by the local expert went fine- thought I couldn't figure out how to do it myself.

 

Leica glass ALL focused past infinity. It was a VERY early serial number by all accounts.

 

Pictures with the 50mm it came with were very nice. I liked the automation.

 

Finally, I realized I didn't trust the camera at all, and spent much of my time while using it picking at faults (hard to focus for the low-magnification finder- the left side of the focusing patch would show "in focus" when the right side wouldn't- a slight thing, within a lenses DoF no doubt, but I coulnd't ever quite *tell* when something was in focus correctly), the frame preview lever wouldn't follow a Tri-E, little things like that.

 

Got rid of it to someone that's making far better images with it than I ever could (though I do have a few jewel negatives from it)

 

Indeed it's a nice camera. I'd like to own another, with the f/1.2 50mm.

Apple user since the "shiny keys" Apple ][.

 

Have a G4 600MHz laptop, and a dual dual 1.25MHz MDD G4

 

Sadly, the Dual is an excellent game machine along with being good for everything else, and that did distract me for my first year of ownership...

 

Fun stuff. I'd like a G5 laptop when they come out.

There are two versions of the Polaroid 600 camera- one was a virtual copy of the Mamiya Universal (different incompatible lens mount, different and dremel-modifiable back, but interchangeable lenses and backs) and a motorized push-click-eject kind of thing.

 

One using the older peel-apart film, the newer using the SX-70 like film.

 

With the previous version film, one can do image transfers (looking like watercolor work) or one can lift the entire emulsion off of some films, apply it to a substrate, and manipulate THAT to get the image you want. You then seal the maniulation behind protection of some kind (lacquer, polyurethane, &c.)

 

With the 600 film, pretty much the only manipulation you can do is modify the camera to take the slower SX-70 film, and then maniuplate THAT.

The helical used between the cameras is different, film flange length is the same. All lenses between the two systems that can be fit work fine at infinity, errors showing up the closer one focuses.

 

There's even a chart on Cosina's site describing the f-stop necessary for "acceptable sharpness" from the lenses mounted on the other system.

 

It boils down to any 50mm must be stopped down to about f-8 for close focusing, the 85mm, f-16. Infinity is of course, unaffected by focusing errors.

 

The difference is the degree of extension in the focusing helical per degree of turn of the helical- meaning that the rangefinder gets out of sync with a lens from the other system.

I have a similar problem. The camera has been sent back for repair. All focusing is off, shown with the 90mm worse than all the others, and the degree of incorrect focusing INCREASES with INCREASING distance- I've a shot with a friend on a balcony overlooking her living room, shot from 13 meters away. She's fuzzy (and I CAREFULLY focused on her face) but the wall, extremely detailed candle holder and wrought iron hanger behind her have that painfully sharp look I've come to expect from a prior G2.

 

It's at Kyocera now, as I said, and I'm hoping for the best...

^^ Just a quick comment to the above,

 

I had bought a G2 (replacing one I got rid of a couple years ago- instant sellers remorse) and found that the pictures, in particular with the 90mm, weren't what I remembered for sharpness and clarity.

 

I got out a tape measure and found that the indicator on the top of the camera constantly gave me farther readings than objects on which I focused. I spent a roll or two being extremely careful as to what I focused on and found that indeed the camera was out of calibration. My experience with the last G2 was that I'd have one out of focus shot per roll, maybe. This newer one was several times that rate, so I knew something was up.

 

I sent it to Kyocera in N.J. on the 26th of August (2004) and we'll see how long it takes to get back to me. I'm hoping that all the focusing troubles are fixed.

 

When I go back through scanning my negatives from those early years of me learning photography, the G2 produced by far the best, sharpest, contrastiest, *nicest* looking pictures of any of my 135 sized cameras approaching most closely the look of my Medium Format negatives.

 

I'm glad I have another, and can't wait to take more pictures with it!

Them red-eyes offer a certain amount of intensity to my cat-pictures. The TLA offers demon animals in spades!

It's almost to NJ.

 

Had to send it back. Last roll of film showed the rangefinder being off. Careful compositions at middle distances (20 feet or so) showed the focus clearly on walls behind people (focused carefully on the eyes of the various friends); the most startling example showed the typical 90mm at f/4's level of beautiful detail on an engraved candle holder behind her by a couple feet- the clarity is AMAZING, but of course, wrong.

 

I hope to hear from Kyocera in a few days.