berk_sirman2

You could try E100GX.

 

For 35mm Kodachrome 64 (and 200) has long been my favorite cloudy day film. High contrast prevents dull pictures with no definition, the realistic saturation keeps the colors the way they are (well, almost) Plus, you can shoot portraits without garish skin colors. Something you cannot do with Velvia, or E100VS.

I live in Sweden and got my Kodachrome slides back in 9 days. Ironically it used to take much longer before they closed the Swiss lab.

 

What I do is to mail the envelope directly to Switzerland and not drop it off at the photo stores here, or mail it to Kodak Sweden. I think that would delay my processing significantly.

 

Processing E6 films here got significantly more expensive in the last two years. Shooting Kodachrome used to be expensive but now it is cheaper now then buying E6 film and having it processed and mounted locally.

It is manifactured by Tomioka, ordered by Cosina to be sold within its product range, hence the name Cosinon. Yashica sold the same lens under the name Yashinon. I do not know whether Tomioka ever sold the lens directly to end users.

 

I found this page about the lens: http://www.tomioka.de/e_55mm-Dateien/e_55mm_cosinon.htm

I got mine for about a twentieth of what the seller on ebay is asking.

 

First impressions:

Bokeh: Usually very nice though I managed to get distracting bokeh in one of the pictures.

Contrast: Lower than the Takumars especially wide open (as expected). Kind of unfair to compare an ultra fast

lens against one of the very best nirmal lenses ever made. Overall a very nice lens but not worth $600.

 

The real problem is finding a screw mount camera with a nice enough viewfinder to rapidly and accurately focus a

f/1,2 lens. The Mamiya 1000DSX I tried had a horrible viewfinder. The spotmatics are much nicer but still not

like my usual Olympus OM2n. Is there an adapter that lets you use M42 lenses with Olympus OM cameras?

Hi

 

I found one of these at an antique market a few weeks ago. It is the variant manifactured for Cosina (Cosinon), the

glass is scratch free (including the huge rear element) and the blades are oil free. here is only a mysterious blue

patch on the very edge as seen from the front that does not effect the pictures. Little barrel wear. I checked ebay to

figure out how much they cost and somebody is trying to sell one for over $600 BIN.

 

Are these actually worth that much? I could not see any recently ended auctions.

 

I have not done any proper tests but I am guessing that the Super Takumar 50/1.4 is a much better performer.

 

Berk

I usually carry more than one camera body in the carry-on luggage. No problem with customs but the security usually makes me take off the lenses so that they can look through them. At one point I carried three old screw mount cameras and it was a hassle to take off all lenses off cameras. lens caps off the extra lenses when there was a very long line behind me full of impatient passengers (as always in the airports)

 

Still, I would carry it with me any day of the week rather than checking them in and worrying about them. Cameras are easy, the real problems start when you start carrying expensive guitars.

I have used both Yashica Tl-Electro and Pentax Spotmatic. Pentax's viewfinder is much better than Yashica's, plus the meter can work with silver batteries. Pentax has much better build quality, too. Go for a nice Spotmatic.

3 is not the reason for 1 and 2 because TL-Electro (unlike TL Electro X) has a mechanical shutter.

 

It seems like your camera needs a proper CLA. Whether it is worth investing in this camera depends on how much you like it, and the camera's cosmetic appearance.

Ken,

 

You have a screw mount camera that most probably uses stop down metering. When you turn on the meter it stops down the lens by the little plate you mentioned near the lens mount that pushes the pin on the lens. Then the lens stops down to working aperture and the camera measures the light on the focusing screen. If the aperture setting on the lens is anything but the wide open (the smallest number) the focusing screen will get darker when you turn on the meter. (That little plate also pushes the pin when making the actual exposure)

 

Some screw mount lenses had the A/M switch. In the M (manual) setting the aperture blades always stopped down as you moved the aperture ring, in the A (auto) setting the lens only stopped down when the pin was puched. The Automatic lenses were a novelty back then. You could set the aperture, focus etc. with the bright screen, the lens would only stop down when taking a picture and metering if you had a camera that could only meter with lens stopped down.

 

All earlier screw mount lenses were manual, then came automatic lenses where you could switch between the two modes. Later lenses only worked in auto mode since manual mode was pretty dated by the time your camera came out. So that may be why the 50mm lens you have dows not have that button. Telephoto lenses generally kept the button until the end of screw mount era.

 

You can tell if your lenses are working well by the following method. Set the aperture ring to 16 when the lens is off the camera. Push the pin by your finger as you are looking through the lens. The lens should stop down immediately and open up when you remove your finger. If it does not do that there's something wrong. This goes for your 50mm lens and your 135mm in A mode. In M mode the lens should stop down whether the pin is pushed or not.

Hi

 

There is a simple way to tell whether it is a problem with the processing or what S.G. mentioned. If you have the frame numbers etc. on the perforation holes then it is what S.G. said. If you don't then you have a problem with processing. Somebody knowlegable about C41 will sure be able to say in that case what the processing problem was.

100ASA is more than enough for taking pics from the airplane window. Actually the slower film the better results you may get. You are shooting through the window(s) so if you have to stop down the lens too much, the dirt or water droplets on the glass may show a little. This especially holds when using wide angle lenses. When you are up there on a sunny day, you need to stop down further than f/11 with 400 ASA film at 1/1000 sec, which is the fastest my cameras can handle. It is alot of DOF. 100ASA film gives you a much better f/5,6 or f/8. Of course if you have a camera that can do 1/8000sec. you are fine with any film.

Oh now I see what you mean. You mean the film ASA ring that gradually blinds the light meter cell on slower ASA

settings. That's what I had thought from the beginning.

Thanks. I know about the ASA dial trick but I was just wondering whether there was a proper way to do it.

 

I use a single lithium cell in my camera rather than two old mercury cells. I read someplace that the exposure on this camera was not voltage sensitive between 3V and 2,7V but that may be wrong. I need to try it with hearing aid batteries before I adjust anything.

 

Winfried, thanks for the tips. The Hi-Matic does not have an aperture ring but the method you said work anyway.

Olympus OM2, Olympus 35RC, Kodak Retina IIa

Hi

 

I need to adjust the lightmeter on my Minolta Hi-Matic F. It underexposes the slides about a stop. Does anybody

know how to adjust it?

 

Berk

 

Check out the instamatic and flash cube commercial. And note how the music sounds like Beatles' Can't Buy

Me Love. But they probably changed it enough to not pay copyrights.

 

I was bord well after the heyday of instamatics but I have many memories of it since my mom used them until

quite recently.

 

I recently saw a Yashica EZ-Matic which is more advanced instamatic camera. Quite a beauty. The build quality

was almost the same as their Lynx series 35mm rangefinders.

Shoot Fuji Astia if you want to have E6 slides that will last the longest. They

are supposed to last almost as long as Kodachrome in the dark, and much longer

that Kodachrome if projected now and then. Plus, it is probably the greatest

slide film on the market. (I normally shoot Sensia which looks like Astia but

much cheaper where I live)

Contact also John Hermanson (www.zuiko.com) He sometimes lists NOS lens elements on his website.

Another difference is that if you use exposure compensation for, say, backlit objects, there is a warning in OM2n viewfinders. In the OM2 this is missing. When I first used OM2 after being used to OM2n, I forgot to set the exposure compensation to zero after using it for a few times.

Contrary to popular belief there is MLU in spotmatic, but a secret one. If you flick, or lightly tap the shutter release button you will see that the lens will be stopped down and the mirror will go up. To complete the shutter cycle just press the shutter release button again. This works very well for speeds 1/30th of a second and slower where you'd need it. But according to a pentax repairman, this method will affect exposure times slightly, more for faster shutter speeds. So I would not recommend it for faster speeds.

 

It was the Yashica TL-Super and TL- Electro X that had proper mirror lock up functions. Both cameras are inferior to Pentax Spotmatic in build quality. Getting them repaired are harder too.

 

Bessaflex's faster top speed and faster flash sync is fine. I would not mind the lack of hot shoe either. Actually I prefer cameras without hot shoes like the original spotmatic and Olympus OM2n. The hotshoe hits me in the eyebrows, plus I almost never use flash.

 

However, the real nice thing about the Bessaflex is the viewfinder. According to what I read it is very bright. The spotmatic's viewfinder is pretty dark compared to modern SLR's, or some contemporaries like Nikon F. Yashica's are worse. I read good things about Fujica's but never used them in person. Zenit's viewfinders are catastrophically bad.

 

So, if the Bessaflex viewfinder is as good as some say, it is worth buying.

Thanks Dan. The rear element is coated to so whoever changed the lens at least did not only change the front part. I hope the spacing between the elements are right.

Now it turns out that the distance scale around the viewfinder is not only a reminder, it is also a parallax corrector as it pushes the rear end of the viewfinder up when the scale is set to 1m. Interesting.

I asked Kodak Retina expert Chris Sherlock about this camera. He replied that it was a variant Beltica, made by VEB Belca-Werk, Dresden. And see what I found on ebay:

 

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Belca-Baltica-Falt-Kamera-Balda-Ludwig-Meritar-2-9-5-cm_W0QQitemZ350064853110QQihZ022QQcategoryZ4701QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Though the one sold on ebay seems to have an uncoated lens but more eloberate face plate.

The serial number on the lens is 3452220.

 

The shutter/lens assembly looks like it's postwar but the rest of the camera is too primitive to be so. When I advance the film I have to first push the rewind button and wind on the film by a knob on the bottom of the camera. After 8 sprocket holes the rewind button comes out and prevents further film travel, that's how you know you've advanced one frame. And you need an adapter to use standard 35mm cassette. So it is more primitive than the earliest Retina.

Those films have almost non-existent grain. Maybe your scanner has a hard time determining the exact focus. I use a Minolta Dualscan IV and it has a much easier time focusing on films that have some apparent grain.

 

As others said get a strong loupe and examine film directly to see whether it is the scan or the image itself that is unsharp.