k5083

October 16, 2012

Here's my report on this from earlier this year. http://www.photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/00a5HJ.

All you need is a cheap set of extension tubes for your camera and some epoxy. Stack the tubes till just shy of the needed focal length,

fine tune by partially unscrewing, glue everything together and you're good to go.

August 29, 2012

The issue that has spurred public interest in this story is the potential for deception.

Photography has, of course, itself been used to present deceptive images of products from the beginnings of its use in marketing. Still, folks feel that photography is tethered to "reality" in a way that gives photographic advertising images at least some minimal veracity unless they have been tampered with. As opposed to the pre-photography days when advertising images of products were illustrations, often quite fanciful compared to the real appearance of the product. CG returns us full-circle to the illustration days inasmuch as the image is created from scratch. But, an illustration can represent a product faithfully, just as photography can represent it deceptively.

July 31, 2012

I think you are right in looking to 120 format here. It is more bucks than the 35mm cameras, but for much more bang. Also, the glass is not as much in demand by the digi crowd. Many of us have picked up some very fine 35mm cameras for next to nothing, and they are fun to use and deliver superior imagery in ways the digirazzi still have trouble comprehending, but the high end 120 systems and even the better TLRs and folders open up a whole new aspect of photography. My personal steals are my RB67 system and some Ikontas but it could just as easily have been a Bronica, Rollei, or whatever.

June 20, 2012

This has been a more enjoyable thread than I expected.

I am happy with the choices right now in b&w and in color neg. Ektar is terrific and the Fujis are good too. I miss Kchrome and Astia, have not found a really good substitute for either. I use Velvia where I used to shoot K and Provia instead of Astia.

Dig is making more inroads into my photography as the gear improves but there is a core type of photo where I'll stick with film as long as I can, and then an even more central core where I'll stick with medium format film.

June 11, 2012

All of these efforts, including the New Jersey incident mentioned in the CNN story which was widely reported around here, end up backfiring. The Japanese always seem to get wrong-footed on this. The conversation always seems to be:

"We've apologized and paid reparations. We now apologize again."

"Thanks. Big of you."

"So can we just stop talking about this now?"

"No. It doesn't work that way."

Over time you can buy a certain amount of forgiveness for something like this, but not forgetting. Nor should you be able to.

June 11, 2012

I agree with you that I probably would decline the assignment.

But, if you take it on, you may want to consult the work of the all-time master (mistress?) of earning subjects' trust and then making them look bad, Diane Arbus. She didn't just use lens/lighting tricks or wait for the unflattering facial expressions we all make several times per day, but took straight shots that looked just the way her subjects wanted/expected them too and often exposed the creepiness of their soul in ways they themselves could look at the photos and never see. She said that she was not trying to make her subjects look bad, but that's like if Adams said he didn't intend to make El Capitan look impressive.

June 5, 2012

I like the equivalent focal length system, especially with point-and-shoots. It allows for quick comparison of the coverage across formats without having to remember that my SX40 has a 5.6 factor, my A590 has a 6.0 factor, etc. The only other lingua franca would be angle of view, but most of us never memorized the angles of view associated with various FX-format lenses and anyway, the FX-format focal length equivalent lends itself to useful rules of thumb like 1/focal-length for handheld shutter speed. I have the CHDK hacks set to show me the FX-equivalent focal length I'm zoomed to at all times. Yes, it's good to have the true focal length in mind too, especially when thinking about depth of field.

Maybe, if the industry hadn't adopted FX-equivalent focal lengths as the common basis for comparing the coverage of lenses across formats, a generation of photographers not reared on 35mm/FX cameras and therefore not biased toward that yardstick would enter the scene, and some other standard like angle of view would have become the norm. But what has happened has happened, and it's even possible to imagine a future where there are almost no FX format cameras on the market because smaller sensors have gotten so good, yet everyone continues to express focal length equivalents in FX even though none of them are using such cameras. It would be far from the first time that an anachronistic technology lives on in such a yardstick; think about the concept of horsepower, for example.

May 29, 2012

When I was a boy scout we were taught the following method of using a watch to find direction. When the sun is out, hold the watch level with the hour hand pointing at the sun (i.e. shadows fall toward the base of the hour hand). Halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock is south.

If you are on site and know which way south is, you can reverse this method to know where the sun will be at any given hour of the day. Pick a time, figure half way between that and noon, and point that halfway mark of your watch dial south. The hour hand points to where the sun will be at that time. Of course, it also works if you aren't there but have a map.

Remember to adjust from daylight to standard time first.

May 23, 2012

Maybe he was trying to provoke us into following the link. If he'd just said, "Great photography at Framework," we might have shrugged and thought, maybe I'll find time to look at it later. By saying they've surpassed Nat Geo, he got a number of us thinking, "Oh yeah? I'll be the judge of that!" and following his link when we otherwise might not have. Cheap trick but probably a successful one.

May 18, 2012

Welcome Matthew. It is good to hear from another Exakta enthusiast in Westchester county.

You might be interested in <a href="00Smve">this thread </a>I posted a few years ago when I took my Exaktas to the former US headquarters of Ihagee, which is not far from us in Yonkers, for a reunion portrait.

In my thread you'll also find a few lens suggestions. My favorite normal lens is the Jena 50/2 Pancolar. My basic wide, a surprisingly decent performer, is a Mosler 35/2.8. Later I obtained an ultrawide Jena 20mm Flektogon which is a magnificent lens.

To really open up some possibilities with more modern Japanese optics, find yourself a Vivitar T4 adapter for Exakta mount. You can get a whole line of prime and zoom lenses in any length that fit this adapter, and most of the primes, at least, are still pretty good.

The three cameras featured in this thread are still in use although one of the IIa's has developed a lazy shutter curtain that produces uneven exposures at the higher shutter speeds. So far it has not been worth the effort to repair.

May 13, 2012

My vote is for Pete's Yards. I love composing with 200s. You have to pass up a lot of obvious compositions that you

could get by changing lenses, but you'll end up with stuff that others who've trod the same path have not seen.

May 4, 2012

I agree with Rick, those shots have a 50s quality from the high contrast and saturated primary colors. Did you tweak for

that, or did they just come out that way?

May 4, 2012

I'm with those who advise respool or mod the spools rather than convert the camera. Usually you can get away with just

trimming around the end of the spool flange so it ends up no thicker than the film roll, and/or thinning the flanges a little

from the top and bottom, depending on the camera. You might need to use a real 620 spool on the takeup side so that it

engages the winding lug properly, but often a trimmed 120 spool will work there too.

April 25, 2012

A pair of eyes have a view angle slightly greater than 180 (horizontal) and with practice you can learn to perceive all of it

at once, although acuity falls off greatly off center. We can also concentrate on very narrow fields when needed,

equivalent to at least a 400mm lens if not longer.

Most things are considered to be flattered by being viewed or shot at the distance necessary to fill a frame in the 35-85

range because there is a feeling of depth (just another word for a degree of perspective distortion that we consider

pleasing) but not too much perspective distortion. At that distance the cognitive load of correcting the image back to the

spatial relationships we know or expect to be true is not so great as to require conscious effort. Ultra wides are fun

precisely because they invite us not to exert this effort but instead to enjoy the distorted composition for what it is. Long

teles can sometimes do a similar thing but more often are just a second-best alternative to getting closer.

A 28 is a good party camera length because you are shooting several people and no one face is close enough to be

overly distorted; if you shoot a group of 5, each face will look like an individual portrait shot with a 100 or so. When it

comes time to shoot 1 or 2 people at the party you are better off backing up and cropping.

April 9, 2012

Loving it. Excellent tonality. I am similarly hooked on the 50mm Sekor for my RB67 which is the closest match to your lens. It is just great to be able to sweep in all that detail and know that the neg is big enough to resolve it all.

March 22, 2012

Not everyone finds ebay or even yard sales worth the effort to sell their old junk.

Recently I received, gratis, a box from a friend containing some items from his attic or closet, to wit, a Z-I Ikonta 521/16, Konica Auto S2, Polaroid 150 (now there is a scary piece of ironmongery for you -- just the film handling instructions gave me nightmares), Claston Eight movie cam, and rusted out Brownie. If not for my chance meeting with that friend, those items were trash. 99% of the time that must be where they end up.

It's actually more amazing that so many Kodak Tourists and Yashica Electro 35s are still around!

Heck, 2 years ago I pulled a perfectly good 1996 Les Paul out of a neighbor's trash pile, 15 minutes before it would have been crushed to kindling in a garbage truck. Folks throw away all kinds of stuff.

March 20, 2012

Thanks guys. I was able to get the uncoated Tessar to flare badly if I worked at it, but even a hood is unnecessary if you are careful where you point it. I use a homemade phototransistor tester plugged into my PC's microphone jack, and I agree the old Compurs are goodies but I have never seen one this accurate out of the gate, and rarely even after a CLA. I will say that in my experience the prewar ones run better than the postwar.

A 6x4.5 folder is such a handy camera to have. This is almost exactly the 1.5cm shorter than a 6x6 Ikonta that the difference in image size would suggest, and it makes the difference in being truly pocketable. Plus you get the 16 frames per roll and often would have cropped the 6x6 to a rectangle anyway. My prior 6x4.5 was a Nettar that died a few years ago and I'm happy to have a replacement.

March 20, 2012

Having had success with <a href="../classic-cameras-forum/00ZuFk">some minor repair of a friend's Ikonta </a>a few months ago, I decided to keep an eye out for a 6x4.5 ("A") Ikonta that might have a sluggish shutter or other similar issues to rehabilitate. On ebay I found what seemed a good candidate, an early 520 model that was advertised as containing one wooden and one metal spool, i.e., it had not been used for quite some time. It was evident from the listing that it had a Tessar in Compur and some very large Zeiss bumps.

When it arrived, I was so inclined to assume that the shutter would need a CLA that I almost didn't bother to test it first. Curiosity got the better of me and I did so. To my surprise the shutter performed within 0.3 stops of spec at all speeds; the top speed of 1/300 was even a little fast. Contrary to the representations made in the listing, this shutter could not have been sitting idle for decades. Someone has maintained it -- and quite well too, there being no tool marks around the screws etc.

So, to my disappointment, there was almost no work to do except for removing the Zeiss bumps. This was my first time doing that, and it went okay, not great. The leather is not perfectly smooth, partly because the bumps distorted it, partly because my work could have been neater. Looks better than before though.

The other thing that it needed was to address possible light leaks around the red film windows. These have no sliding cover and this is one of the early configuration Ikontas with one of the windows located over the film feeder spool where light leaks are often a problem. I used a modified version of Cliff Manley's mod described in <a href="../classic-cameras-forum/00PJJQ">this thread</a>, but with smaller pieces of foam and paper than he used. I also keep the windows covered with electrical tape which I peel up only when advancing film.

It occurs to me that another good way to avoid light leaks with this model of 520 is to avoid uncovering that corner window at all, and use only the center one. This is possible if you are using a brand of film that has the right sort of markings on the backing paper. Most Fuji films that I've used have a series of dots that give you warning when the next number is coming up, and the first of those dots in the 6x9 sequence (which is used by 6x4.5 cameras like this one) is almost exactly halfway between the two numbers. So you can learn to position that first warning dot in the center window such that you only need to use that one. But this doesn't work with Kodak films, which have no warning markings until you are almost at the next frame number.

Anyway, I used both windows for my test roll, because I wanted to see if my light seal system worked. And it did. So here are the thoroughly banal test shots taken in New York and on a trip to Chattanooga (yes, that would be the choo choo).

I'm a little disappointed not to be able to post a thread crowing about how I fixed up this camera, but in spite of the seller's false representations, I think I may as well keep it.

March 2, 2012

The Balda originally focused as close as 2 metres and I was able to push that to about 1.5 metres by removing one of the

two stop posts. At 105 mm that's close enough for a pretty tight head shot.

Another nice thing about the Balda is its has 10 aperture blades shaped in scythe-like curves, as many of these old

shutters do, so out-of-focus highlights are nice and round.

Also, people smile when they see it. Almost as good as wearing a clown nose.

The Yashica ad, by the way, turned out to be from a 1968 issue of Playboy. I've got to get me some more copies of those

old mags. That'll be a new excuse: "I'm just reading it for the advertisements!"

March 2, 2012

I was born in Canada earlier that year and Expo was pretty much the first time I was taken anywhere cool. There are photos of me at the event. My parents were on the cutting edge and had switched to the compact 127 format. I look cranky in the photos, probably because they weren't letting me take the pictures.

March 1, 2012

The weekend before last, I found myself with a little time on my hands and the motivation to tackle a couple of camera projects that I had been putting off for some time.

The first was Pad of Death replacement on a Yashica Electro 35. I got my Electro (early model, no G etc.) off ebay some years ago, and it obviously needed a new PoD, but I had never felt up to tackling the job. The two alternative means of doing the surgery have been well discussed, and I was sure that the minimally invasive "microsurgery" method was for me, so I found myself some suitable rubber (cut up part of an old ice-skate blade guard) and went to it. Without getting into the blow-by-blow, suffice to say the operation was delicate but successful. The most difficult part, actually, is making sure you've got the remnants of the old pad completely cleaned away, because you can't really get a good look at the surface where the old pad was. Anyway, after the surgery and incidental cleaning of the viewing and rangefinder glass, the camera made that firm Yashica clunk -- probably a bit firmer than usual, because the rubber I used was more unyielding than most.

You've all seen plenty of cheesecake shots of Electros so I won't post another, but while googling for tips on the repair, I came across an ebay auction for camera porn of a different sort. I never buy old magazine ads, but this one, I had to spring for. Be sure to read all the text on this one, especially the paragraph under the camera.

After reading that, I actually felt a little dirty just picking up the camera. Often when I'm testing a newly acquired or repaired camera I shoot a few photos of some women friends whom I see on my commute -- just head shots, we're all happily married. But I couldn't do it with this camera after reading that ad, it would have felt weird.

So all I have for example shots are pedestrian images -- literally, in the first case -- that do little more than prove to my satisfaction that the auto shutter now works as it should.

So, that's one more of these fine old cameras brought back to life.

The next project was a little more exotic. Having tinkered with medium format folders for some years now, I've accumulated quite a few spare bits from my less successful projects, including some serviceable lens/shutter assemblies that have been orphaned from their camera bodies for whatever reason. I've always wanted to convert one of them into a lens for a 35mm camera. So this, too, I set out to do.

The lens comes from a prewar Balda 6x9 folder. It's an uncoated 10.5-cm, f/4.5 triplet simply labeled "Anastigmat", in an unidentified but modest shutter. It was nice and clean and I liked the deco front plate. I epoxied it to the front of a $7 set of Nikon mount extension tubes, fine-tuning the collimation by partially unscrewing the tubes and then cementing them in place when the focal length was just right. The whole process was really pretty simple. When shooting, the shutter is left open with the T setting, aperture and focus are handled on the front of the lens, and the camera is operated on manual or stop-down aperture-priority mode. I made a jig with my son's Legos to get the lens square.

Besides just being a fun process, the resulting lens is actually worth using, especially as a portrait lens. It's the right length and it is plenty sharp, especially considering that the 35mm camera uses just the sweet spot at the center of the 9-cm image circle the lens can throw. The contrast and the way it renders color are soft and subtle, again good for portraits. It's slow, but you wouldn't open up past f/4.5 at portrait distances anyway, because you couldn't get the model's nose and ears both in focus. I walked around town with it a little and liked the way it performed.

February 15, 2012

It's true. That wart is really on the right side of his lip.

February 12, 2012

Truly wonderful. It is nice when someone else takes the trouble to do the initial break-in of your camera.

February 6, 2012

My version is older than yours -- it calls itself a "30 cm" rather than "300 mm" and has the old-style widely spaced focus ring knurls. I'm sure the coatings are generations less advanced but it is still a sharp lens.

February 6, 2012

Just lovely, Rick -- camera and pics both. There were a lot of fine compact, zone-focus point-and-shoots with 38 or 40mm lenses made during that era, but this one obviously has a lot more style than most of them.

Sign In

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Events

Downloads

Gallery

Store

Posts posted by k5083