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Hi, Just purchased an Agfa Billy Record (6x9) which is in great working condition apart from a few pinholes in the bellows. Could anyone recommend a place/person who would be willing to sell me new bellows for this camera? I'm happy to fit them myself as I've gone through the procedure in the past with similar cameras. By the way, the seller should be willing to ship to the EU. Thanks in advance!

Hi everybody I have owned a Yashicamat 124G for a few months - a great tool overall. The camera worked fine when I purchased it however due to a hazy/mouldy taking lens I decided to send it for CLA. Mark Hama seems to be well known as a repair technician for this kind of camera so it went there. My experience with him was not so great for many reasons (not relevant here). However, he did indeed clean the lens, which is now perfect. Sadly though, I now have issues with the winding mechanism that I didn't have before. Essentially, the problem is that the camera believes there is a 220 roll in it even when there is a 120 one loaded. When I get to the last frame (12), and press the shutter button to shoot the last picture, winding the crank takes me to an (non existent) 13 frame and locks again. It wasn't like this before: the crank would spin freely until I felt no more resistance and could unload the roll. Now, the only way to unload the roll is to continue winding the crank, cocking the shutter and firing a series of imaginary shots from frame 13 to frame 24. When frame 24 is reached, the crank will then spin freely allowing me to unload the film. Any idea what could cause this? Is it solvable? Some additional info: -the film plate is correctly set to 12 exposures, not 24 -the small window on the right side of the camera correctly shows 12ex, not 24ex. Thanks for any help!

I enjoy the unique look I am able to get from my medium format scans. I am not able to replicate this 'look' with digital equipment. I'm sure that somebody more gifted than me with Photoshop or Lightroom might tweak their digital shots to give them the look I'm talking about. I can't do it, and I like to keep the digital part of my workflow to a minimum: inverting with vuescan+colorperfect, cropping/straightening, a little unsharp mask. That's it. Love this simplicity, and love the results. So much so that, In fact, I've sold all my digital equipment. I don't miss it!

I have never owned the Nikkor 35mm but own the Voigtlander 40mm pancake and it is one of those lenses I will never part with. I use it routinely with my FE. Previously, I used it with my digital Nikon (DX) cameras and in a non-scientific test I found it to be far sharper wide open than a nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D I had kicking around. By f/5.6 they were both excellent. The Voigtlander's build quality is outstanding. I love the 40mm angle of view too.

Hi, I recently got an Agfa Isolette 1 folding camera from a colleague, who found it in a loft. It appears to be in good condition overall, good bellows, clean shutter. I'm really looking forward to testing it with a roll of film. However there seems to be a problem with the focusing apparatus. I researched around the internet a bit and it seems many of these camera suffer from the "agfa green gunk" issue, where the middle and front lens element are sealed together by hardened grease, making focusing impossible. My problem appears to be a different one. I believe the outer focusing ring, (the one with the three small screws that need to be loosened to access the front element of the lens) is slipping around the front element brass enclosure without "grabbing" it properly. To clarify I found the following images which illustrate the components of the lens Agfa Isolette 1 lens disassembly | Photo.net What I'm referring to is the "focusing bezel" in this set of images. I do not think I have a problem with sealed middle/front glass elements: while it is somewhat stiff to rotate, the front element does rotate if turned directly with my fingers (bypassing the bezel) and it does unscrew fully, coming off and leaving behind the middle lens to cover the shutter. I was thinking of cleaning and de-greasing the helicoid between the middle and front element, to see if this makes the front element encasing rotate more easily. However I fear that the 3 screws in the focusing bezel might be simply worn and unable to grab the lens for focusing. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone who has experienced this problem would like to offer suggestions to fix it.

Thank you for commenting. Fundamentally, I agree with you. However there are (rather expensive) aftermarket gimmicks that are being sold as being able to extract the last drop of resolution when scanning transparencies using flatbed scanners. I think it's useful for many people to discuss flatbed scanning baseline resolution to understand if these aftermarket solutions are a waste of money or not.

Thanks Raymond. Would anyone else like to comment? I'd be interested if anyone can tell apart the picture scanned on the epson holder vs the one held flat on the scanner with a piece of museum-grade glass.

So I have performed some non-scientific testing of the focus on my Epson V550. I have purchased a sheet of "museum grade" (anti-reflective, I believe) glass. I wanted to verify if I could extract higher sharpness from the scanner by placing the negatives directly on the scanner glass, with my sheet of glass placed on top - as opposed to placing the negatives in the Epson film holder. I used two pictures, attached below. For each picture, I attach side-by-side comparisons of 100% crops taken from the two, contrasting the two conditions described above. Film: Ektar 100, 120 format Camera: Fuji GA645i Scanner: Epson v550 NO sharpness mask or similar enhancements were applied on the 100% crops below (which are from 48bit tif files). The 2 summary images are jpegs (45% sharpness mask+levels applied on these two) Do people note a difference between the two conditions in the 100% crops? Image 1: Image 1 - crop 1: Image 1 - crop 2: Image 2: Image 2 - crop 1: Image 2 - crop 2:

Raymond, your experience with the Epson film holders mirrors mine exactly. As for your question - I can't say with absolute certainty whether the fault is with my negative. I should be able to find out more next week, when I take delivery of a 6x6 camera. For the photos above I used an AF camera (Fuji GA645) and couldn't say if the lens back/front-focuses. Papatango - I haven't considered the option because at the moment I do not own a digital SLR anymore. All I'm left with is a Nikon Coolpix A (compact with DX sensor, pretty good actually) that I use on holiday. So the option is off the table.

Thank you for your replies so far. Tom, the scanner is brand new and no, I did not have grain reduction activated in Vuescan. I tend to keep Vuescan's processing to the bare essentials, obtain a raw file and invert/post-process in Photoshop. You're right in that I shouldn't be too bothered by details such as visibility of grain, and clearly I have not chosen to shoot film over digital to achieve ultimate detail. Still I was wondering if somehow my process can be optimized or if I can relax and this is the best I'm going to get. Scanning a precision ruler lifted from one side with a pencil - good suggestion and I'll definitely try it. I have so far tried the following 1. scan MF negative directly on glass - no difference in sharpness of fine details 2. scann MF negative in Epson holder, shimmed with 1 level of credit cards or stacks of two levels of credit cards - no difference in sharpness This again would lead me to conclude that the lens in this V550 has been designed to offer rather broad depth of field to allow for decent sharpness from both raised and non raised material. I guess I'll need to do the ruler test to prove this definitively though. Having said the above, I have to add that maybe I've been too negative with my initial reports. I have since kept scanning my negatives, and have found the the final results can be quite satisfactory. I have also tried the native Epson scanning program, finding the final results inferior in terms of colour and tonality than when using Vuescan. So I have returned to Vuescan for all my scanning. Also, it appears that mild usage of Photoshop's unsharp mask seems to help. Here are some scans. These are from Ektar 100 negatives, scanner in Vuescan at 3200dpi 48bit, exported to PS and resized to 1400pixel (longer dimension) + mild unsharp mask. I will post 100% details of the original when I have some time.

After a few years spent shooting digital, I'm going back to film - I just seem to enjoy the simplicity of the shooting process and a certain ineffable quality of the final product. For 35mm, I seem to have found a satisfactory workflow: I have my c41 negatives processed by a lab and do my own scanning with my old Minolta Scan Dual III film scanner + Vuescan + Colourperfect plugin. The results are, to me, nothing short of amazing and I have no complaints about the procedure. I am just starting to explore medium format and this brings me to my question. Ideally I'd like to come up with a medium format workflow that resembles the one I use for 35mm. This is, however, not feasible at the moment, as the expense to buy a dedicated medium format film scanner is too high (this includes dodgy used Nikon 8000s/9000s on ebay). I resorted to purchasing an Epson V550, which I believe is an updated V600 with minor differences. I set it up and tested it yesterday, with a few 6x4.5 Ektar 100 negatives shot on a Fuji GA645i. On the positive side, my results *far* exceed the poor quality low-res scan that came from the lab together with the developed negatives. It is shocking how poor the jpeg scan from the "professional" lab were - and I thought the culprit was the camera or film or both! On a negative note, I think I'm still not completely satisfied with the V550's output. Using the standard Epson MF film holder, the scanner clearly does not resolve the grain. I can tell that because, while on my 35mm scans from the Minolta Scan Dual even the particles of dust on the negatives are sharp and in focus, on my V550 MF output the dust is blurry and soft. I have tried placing the negative directly on the scanner glass and rescanning in Vuescan: I see no difference in sharpness w.r.t using the Epson holder to scan. I have read that the V550/V600 models have a fixed optics with relatively high depth of field, compared to the better models (V700/V800) which have tighter DOF but allow for higher focus plane fine tuning. Can people confirm this? If this is true, then I'm suspecting that the (poor) sharpness I see is all I'm ever going to get with this scanner? Else, have people used after-market film holders (betterscanning? Lomography DigitaLIZA?) and seen sharpness improvements with this scanner on MF material?