william_spiropoulos1

<p>My experience with MF has been a Hassy 500C back in college (in Germany, no less), and a Mamiya C330 I used to own.</p> <p>Hasselblad=as I recall, excellent all around but expensive. True SLR so what you see in the finder is what you get on the film. Loads of lenses and accessories available but again really pricy. Since the school owned the cameras I got to shoot them a lot and loved using them, probably the nicest cameras I've ever laid hands on.</p> <p>Mamiya=big and somewhat clunky twin-lens probably best suited for studio use, pretty good image quality, interchangeable lenses a big plus, very good value for MF. Look for the Porrofinder accessory (manufactured by Nippon Kogaku/Nikon, if I remember correctly), it gives you eye-level focusing like an SLR, good for portraits.</p> <p>I have no direct experience with other MF systems, although I've been interested in the Bronica lineup for a long time. Just out of square-format habit I would probably go with the SQ (rightly or wrongly, I've always thought it might be like a poor-man's Hasselblad) but you'd probably prefer something like the ETR** for portraits, rectangular images right out of the box, no need to crop, etc.</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

If you're in an experimental mood and want to get in a bit of black & white on your trip, throw a roll of Ilford XP2 in your bag. You can take it to your local hour lab and have it processed right alongside your color film, although your XP2 prints may come out with a slight tint (when I tried it my prints were slightly blue/purple, like a duotone). cheers Billy S.

I may look up your man Jim if/when I decide to get my FT2 fixed again ; thanks for the tip. If I could afford it right now I'd try to scope out someone here in NJ or in NYC, but any repairs are going to have to wait till after I move back to Columbus. I don't know if Chick is still in business, or any of the other old-school camera repair shops there, for that matter. I could just buy another body as you say, but since this Sherman tank of a camera has some sentimental value to me, I'd like to keep it roadworthy, so to speak. :-) cheers Billy S.

<p>Incidentally, all three of my lenses for the Nikkormat are pre-AI so I know that's not an issue.</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

<p>hi folks</p> <p>A good many years ago I had to jump through certain hoops to make the meter on my FT2 expose correctly; nevertheless I enjoyed using the camera and produced a lot of great photos with it. When I finally took it in to get it fixed (Chick's Camera Exchange in downtown Columbus), ol' Chick informed me that the meter coupling had been snapped at some point and thus the meter was stuck several stops off relative to the ASA setting. (Maybe that was why it had ended up in the garbage when I'd found it!) He had to cannibalize another camera body to repair it and then there were no problems. However, more recently I, like a regular schmuck, mounted a lens incorrectly, and heard an inoffensive little *snap!*...</p> <p>Please tell me that a camera repairman can still, in 2015, find and install an intact meter coupling whatever-it-is in my beloved old Nikkormat. Side-question: although I don't particularly want to do so, is it possible to convert an FT2 to an FT3 with an AI lens mount? That old-style meter coupling, all that tap-dancing you have to do to mount a lens, is the only real pain-in-the-ass of an otherwise stellar camera.</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

<p>hey all<br> Lots of good info here! So the gist I'm getting here is that I can probably do fine with kitchen measures rather than specialized lab glass, plastic is okay, keep each measure/container dedicated to one specific solution, and have a small cylinder or syringe for very small amounts.</p> <p>I also did read somewhere that 2 liter soda bottles are usable for storage, especially if kept out of the light. Ellis--Do you think those brown glass bottles would be available at your typical drugstore, ie CVS or Walgreens? I suppose that if so, and if I ask nicely... :-)</p> <p>Thanks for all the info, guys, I'll keep you up to date on my adventures.</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

<p>hey all<br> Lots of good info here! So the gist I'm getting here is that I can probably do fine with kitchen measures rather than specialized lab glass, plastic is okay, keep each measure/container dedicated to one specific solution, and have a small cylinder or syringe for very small amounts.</p> <p>I also did read somewhere that 2 liter soda bottles are usable for storage, especially if kept out of the light. Ellis--Do you think those brown glass bottles would be available at your typical drugstore, ie CVS or Walgreens? I suppose that if so, and if I ask nicely... :-)</p> <p>Thanks for all the info, guys, I'll keep you up to date on my adventures.</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

<p>hey folks</p> <p>In advance of my eventual darkroom gear shopping trip, I want to try to get an idea for what would be a decent, sufficient set of glassware for typical film and paper processing in a basement lab. I started by asking my friend who's an experienced home darkroomer and she told me she always "got by" with one each of 50ml and 100ml graduated cylinders, which didn't sound quite comfortable. She mentioned also looking for a 1000ml cylinder or beaker. I'm not even sure yet what you'd typically use each cylinder for, and thus what would be a good capacity for each one (when I used to use the darkrooms in school they always had the chems already prepared so I never had to deal with making them). I don't want to spend a fortune on glassware so if I can get away with two or so good sizes I'd be happy.</p> <p>Also, any disadvantages to using poly plastic over glass for measuring vessels in the darkroom? I have my eye on one particular online vendor that caters to homeschoolers and has a pretty good selection of chemistry lab equipment, and their poly cylinders sell for about half of their glass ones (both fairly cheap). Only thing I can see is that the poly is translucent, so possibly harder to see the liquid inside?</p> <p>Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks, guys!</p> <p>cheers</p> <p>Billy S.</p>

<p>I thought I'd chime in here...some years ago I found an unopened box of Ilford Multigrade in a *bookstore*, as in on the shelf among the books, for very little. So I've had it sitting around in storage against the day that I set up my own darkroom (which hopefully won't be too long) and still haven't opened it. I will guess that the paper is still fine, although the sensitivity or properties might have changed somewhat from all that time sitting. Assuming it's late '90s or early '00s vintage, what do you think I can expect compared to factory fresh paper?<br> <br />cheers<br> <br />Billy S.</p>

<p>Greetings folks<br> It's been some time (8 years, to be precise) since I've posted to photo.net, and in fact I'd almost forgotten that I even had an account here until I recently steered my mind back toward film and remembered that I'd posted a couple of knuckleheaded questions about the Bogen enlarger I'd picked up dirt cheap at a Volunteers of America thrift store back in Columbus...ahh, but that was a long long time ago, before I'd moved to New Jersey and allowed my photography hobby to lapse...<br> Visual arts wise, my background is in both traditional art and graphic design. I got the photo bug in college, when I took a class using my brother's Yashica Electro AX (great lens, so-so camera) and then my Nikkormat FT2 which I'd rescued from the trash. I've always been a film die-hard and before film became hard to find easily and cheaply I was happily shooting rolls and rolls of the stuff all the time--mostly street scenes and around my house, but I always got a lot of joy finding ways of making even the most mundane subjects look somewhat interesting. Along the way I've owned the Nikkormat, two Pentaxes (a K1000 and a ZX5), a Mamiya C330, a Canon QL17 GIII, a Sea & Sea Motormarine II (for a couple of dive trips I took), a number of assorted bits of extra gear, and even had the pleasure of using a Hasselblad 500C in a full studio setup for the semester I spent studying in Wiesbaden, Germany. The peaceful hours I spent in other peoples' darkrooms back in the day were some of my fondest memories, an almost meditation-like experience which I'm sure many of you are very familiar with.<br> Life then happened. I won't go into all the details, but I had to unload the Mamiya and the QL17 for emergency cash, I found myself with less energy, time, disposable income to spend on taking pictures, and this new thing called digital photography came along, which I was ill equipped to indulge in. I did manage to get my hands on an Olympus Camedia (C-2000?) and kept shooting, but the overall experience wasn't the same, the camera was flimsier than my trusty old manual machines and harder to get to do what I wanted, and in any case when my PC self-destructed I lost a good percentage of the stuff I took with it anyway. When I moved to New Jersey, there was nothing like my beloved Columbus Camera Group (which I used to live two blocks away from) or Midwest Photo Exchange to supply cheap film, the old standby hour photo labs started drying up, and there really wasn't any local community of photographers to speak of other than people snapping selfies with iPhones. From working with film and rugged mechanical cameras at my leisure, I've gone to wringing whatever interesting photos I could from my LG Android phone. Some of which are not bad, but it is indeed a different world now...<br> This is all about to change, though. The circumstances which led me to my self-imposed seven year exile have changed. I recently decided to move back to dear old Columbus, which has resulted in a sea change for me in many ways, one of which is that I intend to dive headfirst back into photography. Fortunately I never got rid of my core three cameras (the Nikkormat and two Pentaxes) or the rest of the incidental gear, and I want to try to take it seriously this time, perhaps even to branch out into fine art photography or other more serious work that I never got around to when I was still hung up on trying to focus on a graphic design career. I'm excited to soon be back near my best friend who was and is also a photographer (a superb one) and one of my biggest inspirations, not to mention the vibrant local arts community in Columbus which includes a lot more interest in photography than this backwater outpost of New York City has. 2016 will be an exciting year!<br> Although I eventually want to finally get and *keep* a DSLR (I had to immediately sell the brand new Nikon D50 body I bought in 2008 for...you guessed it, rent money), my real love is still good old film, and I'm overjoyed to find that film cameras are dirt cheap on eBay, so I may actually be able to move back into medium format sometime soon. I'm also looking forward to finally having a basement of my own again, so I can finally, finally take that old $10 Bogen 67 Special and set up my own darkroom around it. It's been patiently waiting, in the attic of my old house, for me to come back, you know.<br> And so, a fortuitous half-remembered question about that enlarger leads me back to photo.net, where I hope to be a lot more in the months and (hopefully) years to come.<br> cheers<br> Billy S.<br> ps--All this talk about film and I haven't even mentioned my preferences. I've mostly gravitated to Tri-X for black and white, although I remember really liking Ilford films the few times I've tried them; I really loved the look of Plus-X too. For slides, it was mostly Ektachrome/Elite Chrome, and Fuji Sensia; I was actually underwhelmed by the couple of rolls of Kodachrome I tried (Kodachrome? What's that?). Color print film was usually whatever I could get my hands on cheaply, but there I generally preferred Kodak over Fuji which always looked green and yucky, which was probably also the fault of the crappy hour labs I used.</p>