terry_scott

Have a care, Mark... :-)

You wrote, 'Could be a mini theme in my collection "The Chrome and the Black".'

I got into that with Pentaxes (although, so far, I'm not doing it with Nikons).

Bought a chrome ME Super. Then a black one. Got a chrome S1a, siimilar to the one I purchased new in late 1963. Bought a black one, just like the one I got brand-new in 1967.

Bought a chrome MX.. So far, no cosmetically-decent MX in sight!

They all work beautifully and, indeed, color in one, B&W in t'other is a darned good excuse! But chrome next to black simply looks very fine.

Mike said, "I'm still looking for someone to process C41 without adding spots and scratches."

It's becoming likewise in (at least this area of) Britain.

A pro lab, to which I used to travel 20 miles round-trip, has got into the act over the past few months.

The nearest photo chain-store, 16 miles r.t., now happily donates dots and spots.

And the nearest Kodak-approved chemist, 20 miles r.t, has been doing ditto for years.

I'm capable of processing colour but no longer have the darkroom of ten-plus years back where I could process at high temperature with confidence. (In today's bathroom, B&W is fine, of course - then I scan it.)

Does the digital boom mean that labs are getting sloppy?

I'd like you to count me in. I'm in Britain and any of those cameras would be fine.

This sounds a great project !

Great idea !

I'm interested. Just as long as it doesn't cost a fortune in Customs duty (into Britain) and mail charges (going out). What we need to know, in advance, is the weight of the camera.

I have plenty of boxes and packing materials, including blow-up air bags.

And I too reckon that it would be a good idea NOT to send a film with it. Shoot our own and post a photo. One picture? Three...? Need to get that clear, too.

I have a Meritar lens which came with the camera when I bought an Exakta Varex IIb. To my surprise, it was/is quite a capable performer. Sharp, nice contrast - main disadvantage, of course, is the fact it's a pre-set.

Indeed: Broadly speaking, going up one or two format sizes makes a bigger difference to picture quality than switching between lenses within a format.

Step sideways a little. Consider a Yashica Minister III. I have one and it has a good, five-element f/2.8 lens (hence "step sideways" for it's not as a fast). But the BIG thing is that it has a selenium cell for its meter, thus abso-lute-ly no battery anywhere.

Mine, bought secondhand a year or eighteen months ago, is close to mint and the meter works well. Only snag is the self-timer, which occasionally hangs up. Answer to that (apart from CLA or DIY): I simply don't use the s-t except carefully.

The Periflex - that brings back memories! Had a Periflex X in 1963. It had a clip-on viewfinder, so it sounds as though you have one of the later Periflexes. In those, there indeed is a screw-out finder front-glass, with the idea of changing the field of view when the lens is changed.

I had just a 50mm f/3.5 Lumax (Lumar?) lens. Could either peer down into the periscope or look through a 45-degree device attached to its top. Shutter speeds on the X were 1/30 to 1/1000th.

Periflexes were made, I gather, in a factory in Northern Ireland(?) owned by one Ken Corfield. Eventually, the remaining stock of Periflex cameras (Gold Star etcetera) was sold by a nationwide photo-store, Dixons.

You might be more likely to see information about the S1a and Sv than the S1.

The Pentax S1a and Sv are the same basic breed o' cat. (In the U.S., that translated as the Honeywell Pentax H1a and H3v.)

The S1a has automatic reset for its frame counter. The Sv has an official top speed of 1/1000th (it also exists, unmarked, on the S1a) and a self-timer. Apart from that, the cameras are very similar.

Can someone tell me why the Leica R4 has a Seiko shutter instead of

the CLS (Copal Leitz Shutter) of the Leica R3 - was there a problem

with the CLS ?

How about a Zorki-4K ? Interchangeable lens, large-magnification viewfinder, coupled rangefinder. But be prepared to have it CLA'd unless you strike lucky and get a good 'un! Standard lens is a 50mm f/2, said to be a clone of the Zeiss Sonnar (but coated).

Or there's the pocketable Olympus XA: c.r.f., excellent lens.

Are you able to (a) try the lens on another camera body; (b) shoot some test picture on your M2 with a different lens?

And thus narrow things down to one piece of hardware or the other (assuming the printing is okay).

Got any friends or acquaintances/colleagues with Leica gear?

Flash sync on the Fed-2 is at 1/25 or 1/30 sec (whichever is the slowest speed marked on your model).

Any focal-plane shutter that lacks a slow-speed gear-train syncs with electronic flash at its slowest speed. Assuming the camera has flash sync...! (But that's another story.)

Reading along brings back memories.

I worked with an employer's Century Graphic in 1968; I think it had a Xenotar lens. We worked with the rollfilm back (rfb) most of the time, in 6x9cm, but also had a 6x7cm.

In 1971, I saw a used Century Graphic in a London West End camera shop and bought it. Beautiful camera.

Already covered in letters above is the fact that there was a button on the lens barrel that opened the shutter for groundglass focusing. And it came with a Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar 100mm f/5.6 lens - amazingly crisp, edge to edge, from full aperture onwards.

The camera had the groundglass attachment, 6x9cm rollfilm back, direct-optical viewfinder, cable release and, of course, coupled rangefinder.

I loved that camera. But eventually someone ("Cor! May I take a look at it?") dropped it and, though it was repaired, I never felt the same about it afterwards. Traded it in for a Canon rangefinder (39mmm) and 50mm and 100mm lenses.

Er...have you thought of e-mailing Zeiss Oberkochen and asking them whether they can recommend a source of tape?

Or am I out of date? Last time I visited Oberkochen was in 1987.

Chris, you mention "the Ilford washing technique". I worked for Ilford Limited in Basildon in 1976-77 and this may have been invented at that time. It was designed to save water as there was a drought that year but it gave effective washing to the film. First tank of water: Invert five times, dump water. Second lot of water: invert ten times, dump. Third and final lot: invert twenty times, dump. (I then make up a fourth lot of water with a tiny amount of wetting agent, invert the tank a few times, leave it for a few seconds, pour the juice away, then hang up the film immediately.)

Reticulation: my earlier comments may have been overtaken by improved emulsions. I certainly remember that reticulation could be produced by not keeping temperatures consistent, one bath to another - but, admittedly, the last time I tried it (to see what would happen) must have been in the Seventies. Nice if it no longer is a problem; by habit, I keep process temperatures as tight as possible. Maybe having done colour processing, too, has something to do with that. Discipline! :-)

Ideally, your developer, stop bath, fixer and wash would all be at the same temperature.

The classic "reason why" is: To avoid reticulation. (Look it up in a book or on a website, hopefully one that has illustrations of its effects.) Gross temperature variations are liable to produce this effect. It can be mistaken for excess graininess.

Small temperature variations should be perfectly okay.

If you can't keep temperature stable throughout a process, it would be better to let it drop, not go up, as you go from one step to another - dev to stop, stop to fix, fix to wash.

This morning, I fired the S1a normally. Then I held it upside down and fired it.

Result: upside down, it took several seconds before the errant mirror flicked back down. That's different!

Tried it around again, normal way up then upside down, and got the same effects.

This does suggest to me that the foam strip is the problem. Any further ideas?

Popular Photography used to be very good indeed. So did Modern Photography, much missed. Well, I saw Pop Phot on the Web some months ago and took out a subscription. Hadn't seen a copy for years as it's not on sale in this part, at least, of England.

My reaction? Disappointment; amazement. Many of the reviews are amazingly brief, features are quick and lack depth, the paper seems thin, the adverts are many - compared with the early version.

Thank you all for your advice. Much appreciated. Agreed: a camera this old would surely benefit from a Clean-Lubricate-Adjust. This morning I exposed a roll of Pan F in the S1a to check speeds, curtain travel and so forth - right now, the film is in a developing tank and I'll be processing it this evening. That will let me consider whether a CLA is vital or simply desirable.

The matter of the second curtain interests me too. With the back cover open, transit seems smooth and sure, though. I'll mark that as a maybe if the next item doesn't work out.

I'm hoping that attention to the foam strip in the top-front of the mirror box will cure things. (Back to the dealer's repairman.) I have a thought as to how this might be checked.

The idea is for me to find a thin piece of paper, cut it to size, and place it over the foam strip to prevent contact between the mirror and the (sticky?) strip when the shutter is fired. Then fire the shutter (camera upside down to keep the paper in).

This should tell me whether the foam strip is the problem. If the mirror flips down as it should... If it doesn't, back to square one.

I've just this morning received a black Asahi Pentax S1a (they were

the H1a in the States) by mail order. Cosmetically, it's very good.

And it works except -- the mirror does something odd.

It goes up as usual but, after the shutter curtains have finished

travelling, stays up for nearly one second before dropping down.

Okay, the camera's 40 years old or so but my other Pentax S1a (a

chrome one) doesn't do this.

Does anyone know whether this is a symptom of something awful yet to

come?

I can reject the camera, return it to the dealer, but would like to

keep it if the dealer can fix it properly. I'd like opinions on

whether, if the mirror were fixed, something else "in back of it" is

wrong that might develop in due course.

I'd appreciate any advice.

Some of the brightest, clearest, simply-the-best viewfinders I've come across are on the Canon A-series SLRs and the Contax RTS II.

And these finders do not achieve brightness at the expense of image contrast - they are simply superb finders. Further, in the Canon A-1, its finder readouts can be switched off at will, leaving a "picture" sitting in a beautifully dark field.

Yes: I tested a range of Makinon lenses for the British "Photography" magazine in 1983.

Specifically, they were the 28-105, 28-80/3.5-4.5, 35-105/3.5-4.5, 80-200/4.5, 24/2.8. 28/2.8, 135/2.8 and 500/8.

Only the 500mm f/8 was worthwhile. The rest were very second- or third- rate.

If you have a chance to get an Olympus 135/2.8 lens, do so!

Yes! It's the Pentax S1a (a.k.a. the H1a). Special camera to me in 1963 - bought a chrome one. Then, in 1967, I purchased a black one. Both got traded-in eventually. But, in the mid-90s, I found a chrome one in great condition, which sits four feet away as I type. It has the unmarked 1/1000 sec and the 55/2 lens has the unmarked f/1.8.

BTW, I also have a Pentax MX, chrome and black ME Supers, several 50/1.7 and f/2 lenses plus a 28/2.8, 100/2.8 and 200/4, as well as other accessories.

Great stuff. Compact, with good handling qualities, all of it. But that S1a has something special. There was an advertising slogan that the importer had here in Britain in the early 60s that said it all: "Just hold a Pentax."