AJG

Don't expect 1/1250 to be that precise, but I have used it on my Contaxes. I have only shot B&W negatives with these cameras, so any over exposure wouldn't matter that much. Any camera that old and with a mechanical shutter probably will run slower than marked speeds. The post war IIa and IIIa models will sometimes "cap" at high speeds like 1/1250 and 1/500, but the Kiev and pre war Contaxes usually don't have that problem.

Setting the shutter speed on a Contax II/III is the same as the Kiev--not an ergonomic triumph. As for the shutter release feel, none of my Contax bodies feel notchy in that respect. They are quite smooth and predictable. I also have a Kiev from 1972 that feels OK as far as the shutter release goes, so yours must be a problem from the later production period. Internet wisdom indicates that the older the Kiev is the better constructed it is likely to be, although like all cameras, problems are likely to arise with greater age. The body focusing wheel is an acquired taste, since it is really easy to cover the rangefinder window with a finger when reaching for the wheel. With practice it can be done but I find myself releasing the lock with 50 mm lenses and grabbing the lens to focus instead. With wide angle and telephoto lenses the lock on the focusing wheel is overridden when those lenses are mounted on Contax II and later models. On my recently acquired Contax I ( an early one without the lock over ride) it is necessary to release the lock to focus any lens. Zeiss always recommended strongly not to use the focusing wheel for lenses longer than 50 mm since the mechanism isn't really strong enough to move that much mass.

My Contax cameras have all come from eBay but all but one of my 5 bodies (2 pre-war and 3 post war) have been overhauled by Henry Scherer and they too work like new, along with most of my Zeiss lenses for these cameras. I didn't mean to imply that Contax cameras are unreliable since my experience indicates otherwise. But having bought one of those black "Contax" cameras at a much lower price than they want now, I wouldn't do it again. It worked for a month or two and then the shutter died. Shipping it back to Ukraine even before the war wasn't worth it so it is now a shelf queen along with its "Sonnar" lens. The black "Zeiss" lens cap is handsome, though...

I would pass on these unless you could trust the seller to have done a complete overhaul along with the re-labeling. My guess is that such an overhaul isn't happening given the prices that are being asked. The shutter mechanism in these cameras is complicated and unusual, and the later Kiev cameras aren't exactly known for quality control.

It's interesting--I suspect that almost any other manufacturer of a consumer product would be getting rid of something that only sold 5000 units in a year. I think this tells us something about the profit margin for these cameras.

If the lab is dip and dunk then this is most likely to be a camera problem. Make sure that the rollers in the camera are clean and that they are rotating freely.

Both are good. One thing to keep in mind is cost vs. convenience--Dektol will be cheaper but the Ilford developer is a liquid concentrate so that you can just mix it at 68 degrees and go to work while Dektol needs to be mixed at 125 and then cooled down to work with it.

The article is right about the obsession with having the latest and greatest. The irony of the extremely high quality possible with today's equipment is how few images are printed in a large size that would show off that quality. The vast majority of images made today will never be seen on anything other than a phone screen with all of the issues of color accuracy, sharpness, etc. that will result from that. The interesting part about reviews that drool over specs is that they usually don't deal with how functional some of this gear actually is in the hands of an average user. All of the megapixels and lens resolution in the world aren't worth much if the camera is so uncomfortable to hold and use that it doesn't get used. I have had to explain to some of my students that that "P" on the control dial of their DSLRs doesn't stand for professional and that with some knowledge they can get much more interesting results with manual control. I'm not suggesting that all automation is bad all of the time--I'm grateful that I am not coating glass plates with wet collodion in order to make a photograph. But if the latest cameras always made the best photographs then only rich people could be great photographers.

Yes, there is a lot of bad design/choice of materials out there, even from otherwise good manufacturers. Sometimes I think that accountants get more involved with these kinds of decisions than they should...

I had uneven development with 4x5 film with my Jobo 2500 series tank at first when I attempted to use it like a conventional processing tank with inversion agitation. I called Jobo and they advised rotary processing on a roller (mine was from Unicolor) and then taking the tank off the roller once per minute for about 5 seconds and inverting it 3 times within that 5 seconds. They also suggested lengthening the development time to 10 minutes or longer, which I did with a custom dilution of HC 110 arrived at through testing. There were no more issues after that through the 5000+ sheets of 4x5 Tri-X that I developed with that tank and roller combination. These were not the directions that came with the tank, however.

I also used to shoot a lot of theater productions, mostly in B&W, although I did shoot a lot of other events where flash wasn't allowed and color was needed and found the Fuji Press 800 worked remarkably well and could be corrected pretty well for the daylight/tungsten color balance problems. How your film will fare after many years of freezer storage is question that would best be answered by shooting a test roll and seeing what kind of shape it is in.

My newest digital camera (a Pentax K 1) came out in 2016 so perhaps I am using older tech by your lights, but I have no desire to go back to my earlier DSLRs with their small buffers and mediocre high ISO results. I never found anything magical about CCD chips although I know that some photographers swear by them. I still shoot B&W film in Contax RF cameras from the 1930s and 1950's for personal enjoyment but I haven't shot film for a client for over 15 years, and I can't imagine that that would change. There will always be nostalgia for older anything so I suppose it isn't surprising that the early generations of digital cameras evoke the same reactions. And to Sanford's point about buying new cameras, I think it is fair to say that digital cameras have reached a point of being a mature technology where buying a newer comers doesn't necessarily get you significantly better results.

Halloween Leftovers: Pentax K 5 and 50-200 Pentax zoom

Yes, equipment is important, but the photographer is more important. When film was the only option I shot a lot of work for one client that involved live animals from squirrel monkeys to dogs, cats, iguanas, roosters and many others that I don't remember at this point. All of these were successfully shot on 4x5 transparency film with a monorail Toyo view camera, which makes a Canon 5 D look like an absolute speed demon. Would it be easier now with recent DSLRs or mirrorless? Of course.

You would have to bypass the heat sensor somehow. White Lightning had no problem doing that with my X series monolights, but it sounds like Norman is going to be harder to service.

How noisy are the fans? That might explain why they are only supposed to come on when the temperature gets to the point of possible damage. With my X series White Lightning monolights I had the factory set them so the fans came on whenever they were turned on, even though they had heat sensors to turn the fans on when necessary. I don't mind the noise and I have had far fewer repairs since I did that.

Not that I know of--I've never attempted to use it that way and I haven't looked at the manual in decades, so it's possible that it can. I almost always use it as an incident meter with studio flash so I've never needed or wanted that capability.

I would agree that a smaller angle is better. For zone system work I have long used a Soligor 1 degree spot (not a flash meter) and I have a 5 degree attachment for my Sekonic L 718 which does work with flash. The finder for the Sekonic 5 degree attachment is a bit vague but it works well enough. Incidentally, if you're tired of burning through batteries for your Minolta, my older Sekonic meters run for months at a time on AA alkaline batteries with frequent use. L 718 meters in decent condition generally run around $100 or so in the usual places, and my experience with Sekonic meters has been excellent.

I can't evaluate your calculations but I do remember lots of ads for White Lightning monolights back in the 1980's and 90's comparing their flashes favorably with a thinly disguised Novatron flash outfit for light output and generally higher quality. I bought the White Lightnings then in part because they were monolights so that I wouldn't lose all of my flash units if one power pack went out, as well as avoiding more cables to trip over in my studio. Thirty+ years on, I've been happy with my choice.

The aspect ratio will be 4:3 rather than 3:2 and it will be vertically oriented rather than horizontally the way a regular full frame 35 is.

Some camera porn:

If the weather here were better I would be out shooting with it right now... I did just make an interesting discovery about it which is that with external mount lenses like the 85 f/2 Sonnar that you have to release the infinity lock near the shutter release for the focusing to function. I was afraid that these external mount lenses didn't couple to this camera but I was wrong. This is one time when I wish that my fingers were smaller--there is barely room between the 85 f/2 Sonnar and the winding knob to actually wind the camera. Other lenses should be easier to work with since their barrels are narrower. The Contax I is notoriously unreliable, and obviously repairs are thin on the ground and expensive when you can find them. I'm hoping to get a few rolls through it before it becomes a (handsome) shelf queen. When I get my first roll developed I will post some of the results.

The ergonomics are similarly questionable by modern standards, but the Zeiss lenses leave the Argus in the dust. The knob on the front is how you wind the film and the shutter as well as set the shutter speed. There isn't a lot of room between the lens and the knob for your fingers when you go to wind the camera for the next shot, even without the leather case. The fact that Zeiss never made another camera with the winding knob in that position tells you everything you need to know about that design. But the shutter release feels smooth, the focus is accurate with a surprisingly bright rangefinder and finder (even if it is on the small side) and the shutter is fairly quiet. The later models are definitely a big improvement over this one, even if they still require a weird grip to avoid blocking the rangefinder window with the fingers of your right hand.

My latest--a working Contax I (version 4 per the Hans-Jurgen Kuc book On the Trail of the Contax) with black and nickel 5 cm f/3.5 Tessar. I hope to get a roll shot this weekend to see how accurate the shutter is. The rangefinder seems to be spot on and the film advance feels OK.

You could try this, but I would expect poor results. I have seen many of my students over the years try to pull prints out of the developer when it had become clear that they had overexposed them in the enlarger but I have never seen an acceptable let alone a good print result from this. Extremely long developing times could lead to fogging and loss of contrast due to the safelight beginning to expose the highlights of the print. As for grain, unless you plan on looking at your prints under magnification I can't imagine that you would see it. Print developers are fairly high energy to begin with unlike developers formulated for small format film where grain is an issue.