Argenticien

<p>Eeeek -- I'm away from my usual computer so downloaded these off my flickr, where I had put them up previously, and then resized them to the requisite 700px with SnagIt Editor (it's what was to hand). Sorry, they look less sharp than <a href="https://flic.kr/s/aHskb1H3qE">they had been</a>.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Minolta SRT102, Rokkor 50/1.7, Delta 100 film (through Rodinal). Handheld at night, probably 1/30 sec and wide open(-ish).</p><div></div>

<p>Bronica S2, Nikkor 75/2.8, Portra 160 film. Handheld 1/125 sec at f/16.</p><div></div>

<p>Three from a recent trip to California.<br> <em>--Dave</em><br> Bronica S2, Nikkor 50/3.5, Ektar 100 film. Handheld 1/30 sec at f/3.5.</p><div></div>

<p>Hooker Falls. In DuPont State Forest, North Carolina, USA. Bronica S2, Nikkor 50/3.5, 1/4 sec at f/22. Ilford Pan F 50. Rodinal 11 minutes.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p><div></div>

"LOL" as the kids say. It's Charlotte, North Carolina. --Dave

<p>Bill, that's no big deal. Few would begrudge you removing the few electrical cables in upper left of that frame. I meant that the two cables passing below the stoplight are surprisingly fine and disappear into the post office building, and that appears to have been the case in the original.</p> <p>I was referring to this kind of nonsense below (admittedly the worst case I've ever seen) as being what you were lucky to avoid... (Picture from about a year ago--Rolleiflex 2.8E Planar, shooting Ektar)<br /> <em>--Dave</em></p><div></div>

<p>Bill, I like the post office in full-frame view, not 8x10-aspect crop. The flashing four-way stop light underscores the main-street feel. Usually I would try to crop out (or preferably compose out) such a thing, but it works in this case.<br> <br />Those are far less obtrusive utility wires than I would have expected in the scene, by the way. There's nothing worse than a beautiful historic building with 17 heavy, drooping utility wires passing by, including the usually fat-black cable television ones. You've been lucky!<br> <em><br />--Dave</em></p>

<p>Bill, a few points stood out to me:</p> <ul> <li>The "nest" of Barnack kit. I can well imagine the ergonomics of a Barnack, already challenging for many people of many ages, are even more daunting if you should happen to have any eyesight or hand-steadiness problems at 80. But the lenses obviously are innocent in all that, and classic in use.</li> <li>The M6 sitting unused.</li> <li>The interest in the A7.</li> </ul> <p><em>If </em>you have no rule requiring the prior major birthday purchase to be retained, it sounds like a solution could be to sell the M6, fund or mostly fund an A7 purchase with the proceeds (depending on which A7 model you get), and get an adapter to bolt on your nice little compact Barnack glass. (I can tell you to <em>not </em>get the Fotodiox LTM to E mount adapter; mine mounts LTM lenses upside-down on the A7, and I'm not the only one, according to buyer comments on Amazon.) This is the wrong forum for touting a digital, but the A7 is great. I have joined the legions of shooters bolting on all manner of old glass via adapters, and almost never use the kit lens.<br> Happy birthday, in any event!<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Interesting, Bill. I figured the streaking is my fault...</p>

<p>Bill: Nice work. Do you find that you get streaks across your 5x4 negatives between where the fingers of the MOD54 device hold the film on each side? (I don't see any above.) I do get that; I'm trying to sort what kind of user error I may be committing to cause such a thing...</p> <p>On to my contribution: From about two weeks ago, at a gathering of film photographers at a local brewery, where we sat outdoors. Mamiya C330 Professional S + Mamiya-Sekor 80/2.8 lens, wide open, about 1/8 or 1/15 sec. Ilford Delta 3200 Pro film souped 9.5 mins in Ilford DD-X. Yes it was very dim out there.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p><div></div>

<p>I'm late to the thread, but surprised no-one has mentioned the original Voigtlander Vitessa (the old folding one, not the later fixed-lens ones like Chuck's). It folds very small, although it is admittedly very heavy for its volume, which is not helpful when I wedge it into the corner of a bag that already has a few kilos of medium-format iron in it. Mine has the f/2.0 Ultron, so is very capable, and I don't think that makes it appreciably heavier than a Skopar f/3.5 model. (The glass is probably the least of the problem as far as weight is concerned.)<br /><br /><em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Great stuff, Tony. <strong>Rick</strong>, no. 7 looks Oz-like to me too, and I've never even been there! In that picture, if I'm not being fooled by the 90mm's foreshortening, it looks like the cars were under the tree canopy, which I've not seen before at car shows. I'm surprised the owners of open-top cars would allow that, given the leaves, bugs, and miscellaneous junk always falling from trees, to say nothing of the risk of guano.<br> I've once in awhile considered Leica SLRs, but always been scared off by the cost and contented myself with other kit (glass, especially) that costs 10% as much and delivers 80% as much performance.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Verifying: Did you mean film speed, really; or shutter speed? I have a 102, not a 201, but I don't remember a film speed indicator in the VF. Anyway, communication inside the top of an SRT is accomplished via a system of threads and pulleys. At least speaking for myself, with my limited repair skills and ample supply of thumbs, I would not lightly undertake futzing with this. I learned of that system by reading about it -- see for example <a href="http://www.willegal.net/photo/srt/srt-reassembly.htm">http://www.willegal.net/photo/srt/srt-reassembly.htm</a> -- I have not actually gone inside my 102, as it came to me working properly.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Tony, beautiful picture! That was well worth expending one of your presumably very precious remaining frames of the lovely but extinct Efke 25 emulsion.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Good work with a nice camera, Rick, and quite interesting. I've never seen AA at an airshow before. One could settle the above dispute about it by noting that if these are mostly Allied planes, and it's an American AA gun, then "it's on our side," so indeed something for fans of the aviation in question. :)<br> Rick, have you got some kind of drought going on down there, or is the field always so dry? That might make things easier for the airplanes, but not for life in general...<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Confederate States of America grave plaque. This graveyard in Greenville, South Carolina, USA (formerly briefly CSA) was full of them. Rolleiflex 2.8E (Planar), Ilford Pan F+ 50 film, 1/125 sec at f/8, developed 11 minutes in Rodinal.<br> <em>--Dave </em></p><div></div>

<p>Darin, I should have mentioned that mine was shredding film and jamming entirely when I bought it off eBay. As I know I've mentioned here before, the late great Essex Camera CLAed mine shortly before their untimely demise. I never successfully got a whole roll of film through it intact before that CLA. So in comparison to that sorry state, a bit of dodgy frame spacing is not bad, and is a small price to pay for the Vitessa's great optics, compact size, fun factor, and (yes) conversation-starting.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Wow, those are brilliant pictures, Darin. Great salvage operation! This is inspiring me to get my Ultron-equipped Vitessa out again as well. Lately I have been shooting old SLRs instead, as the inability to go wide (28 or 35 mm lens) with a FLRF is a bit of a handicap. But I did like the results I got from the Vitessa when I last used it. I've had slight film-advance trouble with mine, even after a professional full CLA, but usually it is just uneven or overly close frame-spacing toward the end of the roll. I just operate the plunger very gingerly in hopes of minimizing such funny-business. It's tolerable, as I will not be paying to CLA the thing a second time.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Rick, I concur on mirror slap, at least as far as the Bronica is concerned. I'm quite rusty at physics by now, but it seems to me this vibration should be a self-solving problem. The larger FP shutters and mirrors of 6x6 and 6x7 cameras should need larger force to start or stop them moving (as compared to 35mm cameras). But those same MF cameras also have commensurately greater inertia, due to their considerable heft, so the resulting vibrations should work out to be no worse than those in a 35mm SLR (<em>ceteris paribus</em>).<br /> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>I concur in liking the thumb-wheel focusing where I have it (Voigtlaenders Vitessa and Bessa--the old pre-war RF one). Apparently the engineering of the wheel got complex where you had interchangeable lenses (Contax II/II &c.), but for fixed-lens cameras like this Fuji, it's great. As someone who uses many different cameras and lenses, I sometimes find myself having to look away from the VF (or fumble a bit) to find the focus ring vs. the aperture ring vs. (if applicable) the shutter-speed ring on cameras/lenses where all three are near each other. The thumb-wheel focusing avoids that. This Fujica seems to have acres of space on the lens barrel; the Vitessa's tiny lens bezel is already fiddly with just the aperture, speed, and sync settings in that tiny little space; I can't imagine the clutter if they had shoehorned a focusing device in there as well.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Interesting; the helicoid in my S2 has four scales, I think. (I don't have it in front of me.) If you really want to read off distances for a lens that is not included on the helicoid's focusing scale, then in principle you could produce a scale on paper for that lens and tape it onto the helicoid when using that lens. That would require one painstaking session with a ground-glass at the film plane and some targets at measured distances, so that you could mark out the paper scale. (Then make several copies of it, or save it as an electronic file, so that you have backups if you mislay it or it wears out being attached to and removed from the helicoid.)<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>Miami Beach: Rolleiflex 2.8E, Planar, Portra 400, lab dev & scan.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p><div></div>

<p>Brad, I enjoyed your "$10.00" and especially "Straw Bloom Corn" pictures. Your local blumenwalla's setup looks extremely like one at my local farmers' market, right down to the repurposed institutional food ingredient buckets. They do make for good photo opportunities, don't they? Classic glass + Portra = win. I suspect the flower colours could have been a bit over the top with Ektar or Velvia.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>

<p>My mother never explicitly stated a policy that I should be interested in photography, but always seemed to be working in that vein. She gave me an Instamatic when I was six years old, as we were about to undertake moving from Pennsylvania to Florida. I believe my first photo (possibly still in my parents' house) is of an orange Allied moving van. Later I was given a succession of 110 cameras and 35 mm point-and-shoots, then was loaned her AE-1 for a high school photography class. In high school I worked on the school newspaper and slightly the yearbook, writing and editing (not photographing) but was friends with the photographers. Philip taught me the word "Hasselblad" at about age 16, and spent his teenage years lusting for one (while shooting 35 mm for the newspaper) when every other boy wanted a fast car. Emily toted a Nikon of some kind and was the first photographer I knew with serious talent. She and I have coincidentally ended up in the same city (not where our high school was) and remain friends 25 years later. I work hard to get even one "keeper" picture per roll; she continues to stun me by getting better pictures from her casual snaps and iPhone shots than I get from my carefully considered and framed efforts.<br> <em>--Dave</em></p>