matthew_stott

June 29, 2011

Nicely done, it is hard to walk by the Hancock tower without taking a photo (same goes for most of Copley square). The Om-G was my very first camera, I had it for all of six months before it was stolen out of a friend's car, but I still remember it fondly.

Matt

June 20, 2011

Enjoy your trip David! I returned from Venice recently, where I spent the week with my Rolleiflex. Like everyone has mentioned, the city is crowded and tight most of the time, so there are few options to zoom with your feet. You cannot back up a few meters to get people into a shot without getting wet (for the most part)- so the wider the angle the better.

That being said, I went with the 75mm of my Rollei and was fine for the week.

Have fun,

Matt

June 17, 2011

Terrific pictures, all of them Rick (once again). I always read your threads for the photos and stories, and usually leave a bit sad, wondering why MY old cameras don't take photos this good.

Nicely done, you have a great eye for composition.

Matt

May 15, 2011

The models 250, 350 and 450 all have the Zeiss rangefinder (not a split screen) on top and take the Fuji peel-apart pack films. There may be other models as well, check out the Land List for a definitive answer

Matt

March 20, 2011

Ton has it- the portraits where he got people off the street are in a book called (in english) "Small Trades".

Matt

March 2, 2011

That is super cool. I have not been interested in half frame cameras- but posts like these make me want to play around with them. And your images are great- using the camera to its strengths works well.

The half frames seem to inspire some really interesting designs. Yashica had many cool models also, like the rapide with pull-tab winding.

pic found on flickr:

<a href="

matt

February 25, 2011

Hi David,

I have some photos from K4A- it should be just about the same setup as your Rollei, though.

The shutter button just floats in the top cover housing. When you press down on the button, the backside of the button presses against the screw "A" in the photo. This screw is adjustable to allow for a faster/slower release. This screw "A" is connected to a lever, which goes over to point "B"- which pushes the next lever (just below "B") that trips the shutter. If the point where the levers at "B" meet slip (meaning they no longer line up) then you will see exactly what you are seeing.

To fix this requires that you remove the front cover of the camera- it can be a bit tricky to get it back together again- but I would be willing to bet that the levers simply do not line up. You can probably just slip them back into position and get it working again.

The fix is easy- getting the cover off then on again is the tricky part. There are a LOT of tiny spacers and shims on the blind side of that cover.

Good luck,

Matt

February 25, 2011

Hey Artur,

I have used plenty of type 57 that was much older than your 2007 batch with no problems. I have always just rated the film at 3000, but you will know right away if you need to slow it down a bit.

The developer is inside the film pack- not the tubes. The tubes are only a coating for the film- they have nothing to do with developing. If you take the photo, wait the 30 seconds (or whatever the time for 57 is)- then peel it apart you will have an image. You then coat the film with the goopy squeegie stuff whenever you get a chance. It is like a varnish for the film, and it can be tough to spread the coating and avoid the bubbles that will appear.

I never bothered to use the coating with most of the type 57 I shot, but I was not really using it for archival purposes.

Good luck and have fun- 57 is a great film.

Matt

February 23, 2011

Hi Peter,

I have owned just about all of the cheaper ballheads. I have not owned the Benro B1, but did own the Benro B3 for a short time (the bigger version). For my money, the smallest photoclam heads support more weight and are much smoother than even the largest Benro heads. I use an Arca Z1 now- but have kept my photoclam on my travel tripod- the 'clam is smoother than even the arca at about 1/2 the weight and a 1/3 the price. It supports my hasselblad 500c/150mm sonnar without issue, but really needed tightening for my 4x5 kit- hence the Arca upgrade for me. stupid name, though.

Botttom line- if I had ~$150 for a ballhead I would get the photoclam.

Good luck,

Matt

ps- the benro head worked just fine for me, i just did not like the feel of it (since I already owned the clam and was comparing it to my pc33). The one thing I really liked on the benro was the plate clamping knob. You can tighten you QR plate on a benro with a quick twist of the knob- the arca/photoclam/giottos and all the rest (with knob tightening) require a few turns to clamp down.

February 9, 2011

Hi Omar,

"The Limited" is a chain of women's clothing stores in the US. That certainly looks like their logo typeface (and their old signs)- so I am guessing that the camera was made as a promotional item for the store or it's employees.

Good luck with the hunt,

Matt

December 29, 2010

Hi Linda,

You need a Fuji PA-145 or a Polaroid 405 pack film holder to shoot the smaller fuji instant films.

The Polaroid 545 holder shoots the individual sheets of film- and you can not pull the sheets out of the fuji packs and shoot them individually.

Matt

December 12, 2010

I have an entire room where the floor must be made of lost screws. My main hobby is watch making (mostly repair)- and the scale of stuff is often very, very small. The good thing about watches- if you are missing one screw then NOTHING will work.

I took up camera reapair as a cleaner alternative to working on my car- thinking the much bigger parts would be much easier to work on. Not usually the case- cameras have lots of blind springs that like to surprise you as soon as a screw is lifted.

Boing. D**N!

As has been said- patience is the key. And a very light touch.

Matt

December 10, 2010

Hi Hin,

I you are feeling brave- here is the general focus adjust for this camera. The taking lens screws into the lens plate all the way. You don't adjust this lens. You get the cd cover to focus on something (infinity distance works best)- then you adjust the focus knob- not the lens. You take the center cover off the knob, then you loosen the center cone screw and the focus knob will spin freely. So, when the ground glass is focused on infinity, you set the focus knob to infinity and tighten it up.

Next, you need to adjust the top, viewing lens and ground glass. The top lens is adjustable. So when you have the film plane and taking lens on infinity, you focus the ground glass on top to infinity by adjusting the top lens.

This is all assuming the lens board is perfectly aligned. If the board needs to be re-set, you have a whole 'nother world of work in front of you.

So- in the bottom lens, everything should be very tight. From your images it does not so much look like a focus issue but more of a lens alignment issue.

Good luck with the camera.

Matt (who is not going to take any Rolleis apart ever again!)

I'm blind!:

December 8, 2010

Good luck with the camera. It certainly looks like the lens and film are not parallel- your images look like they were taken with a view camera with some severe tilt and swing.

You might consider telling people you have the only Rolleiflex with a tilt/shift lens.

Hopefully the lens board plane has not been knocked out of alignment, they are a bear to re-align (at least for me). Check the lens tightness- and that the lenses appear to be screwed in straight.

here is an image from my speed graphic with the front standard fully tilted back, just to give an idea of what an out-of-alignment lens will look like with blur. Only the blur was intentional in this photo. Notice that only the center section is sharp:

December 7, 2010

Hi Hin Man,

Mr Oleson is the man with all the answers- and something is not right with your lens. One quick way to test is to press a piece of ground glass against the film rails. If you do not have a piece of ground glass, you can use a piece of clear plastic (like a CD case) with some translucent tape on it (like Scotch brand tape). Put the taped side of the plastic nearest the lens, then see if you can focus onto the plastic. My guess is this image will also look very soft. I have the exact same camera and my pictures are very sharp- and here is a quick and dirty photo of what the inside of the taking lens should look like. You should have a lens between the film and the aperture blades/shutter mechanisms. Make sure the two retaining rings in there are tight, you may have a loose ring and the lens is sitting at an angle.

Good Luck,

Matt <img src="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/mstott/rolleiflex%20automat%20K4A/rolleilens.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="700" />

November 19, 2010

Here is a photo of an RB back with the top taken off- the red arrow points to the bent plate that is on the "red dot" lever. The lever is still bent in this photo.

Matt

November 19, 2010

It has been a while since I used an RB- but I seem to remember having a similar problem. There is a pin on the back of the camera that pushes out (into the film back) when you take a photo. This pin triggers the red mark in the window. The pin hits a small, flat plate on a lever (which is in a hole in the film back). I have seen this plate bend- so the pin no longer hits it- and I have seen the lever slip off its track so it doesn't reset the safeties.

If you have a second back you could test this real quick-if the problem is in the back or in the camera. My guess is the back- and something to do with the reset lever thingy.

Matt

November 19, 2010

Hey Justin,

You got lots of sound advice here- I am not going to add anything else. But there was a recent article in B&W magazine about Bill Jay and his new book "Men Like Me." You may want to check it out, I feel Bill did a great job of photographing people in his neighborhood that he had gotten to know over the years, and the photos are great. Certainly not your usual homeless portraits/grungy street life stuff. The article in B&W was good too.

Matt

November 12, 2010

I agree with the above- and would like to add that the amount of perceived blur may change with distance. Say you have near and distant people in your frame: one person so close that their head fills one side the frame (top to bottom) and another person so far away that their entire body only fills a fraction of the frame.

If there is 1mm of up/down camera shake- or any direction, really- the foreground person will have blurry features. Say their eyeball occupies 2mm of your frame, so their eyes will look very blurry. Now, the person in the background only occupies 2mm of the frame for the entire body- that person will be an indistinguishable blur, the camera is shaking enough to "move" 100% of their body- not just their eyelashes.

So- the motion blurs each subject by the same amount (1mm)- but this will seem like much more blur the further away your subject sits.

Thanks for letting me think out loud.

Matt

October 18, 2010

This made my night! I have a speed graphic and have been trying to figure out a way to develop the film. A friend gave me this same tank recently (found at his parent's basement). I may actually have the nerve to try and load it and fill her up now.

Not sure about the tape though- I may try a silicon gasket. Really like the cork idea!

Thanks for this (the tape made me laugh),

Matt

October 18, 2010

Hi Rick,

As a completely uninformed aside: Bakelite colors (and other plastics of the day) were a bit limited in coloring. You could not make white bakelite; well, you could, but it would turn that beige color pretty quickly through oxidation. So anyone wanting a white, or light color knob or dial would end up with the bakelite-beige that you have here. Browns and blacks were also very common colors, they shifted color less through oxidation (and probably were better at keeping out light).

Just thinking the color similarities are coincidence- you could basically have one shade of white bakelite: the beige color see in your two cameras. And since brown and black went well with this beige- and was traditional for cameras- you had a lot of cameras with this coloration.

Good luck with the research- and thanks for the posts,

Matt

October 13, 2010

Hi Gian Antonio,

Both the Polaroid 550 holder and the Fuji PA-45 holder will take the instant 4x5 films (they are essentially the same holder). The Polaroid 405 and the Fuji PA-145 will take the smaller instant films and fit into 4x5 cameras- so you have 4 choices of backs for instant film on a 4x5 camera.

Now- will they fit into this camera? That is a good question- sometimes they do and sometimes they do not. All four of the above holders are pretty thick- so it all comes down to how much the spring back can be pulled out from the camera. If you had a Graflok back, you could remove the ground glass and insert the polaroid holder with no problem, but the spring and trap backs are a roll of the dice as to whether or not they pull out far enough to accommodate the instant backs.

Good luck, instant 4x5 is a lot of fun.

Matt

October 7, 2010

Hi Igor,

Have you seen or used the Daylab or Daylab type printers? This sounds like exactly what you are looking for. They usually take a slide, negative or a print and project it onto fuji or polaroid packfilm. They are enclosed devices that should work a whole lot better than taking an instant print of a digital projection with a normal camera.

Lots of them on ebay going fairly cheap these days.

Good Luck,

Matt

September 19, 2010

Thanks for all the kind words everyone.

Yes, my grandfather is a very precise man, I try to take some of that away in my daily life and work. He also left me notebooks which record every shot he ever took with the camera. Shutter speed, aperture, flash, location, etc. The documentation is worth as much to me as the camera, I am trying to figure a way to store it properly. I have shot about 6 rolls with the camera so far- it is an incredibly smooth and precise machine. The film advance alone is impressively smooth, much more so than any camera I have ever used.

And yes, the entire first roll is of my grandfather with my new nephew- I just mixed up my chemicals tonight and should be developing some film this weekend, I will definitely post the results.

Thanks for the kind words,

Matt

September 18, 2010

Hi everyone,

I don't post here much, but I need to share this with someone OK, just someone who cares about old cameras and thinks they are cool.

Not sure if this happens to everybody, but once word gets out that I am "in to" something, every person seems to want to clean out their closets of whatever and give their old, often useless stuff to me. Cameras, for example: "oh, I heard you were in to cameras, so here, have a box of my old disc cameras- you will love them!"

About me: getting back into photography after 20 some years without touching anything more than a digital point and shoot. Mostly by accident after finding out that all the gear I drooled over in my youth was suddenly VERY affordable. I am into old, mechanical junk in general- so now I get to hold, pull apart and use some old and very classic cameras for almost no money (well, compared to what the stuff cost new). I saved up for a while and got myself a leica m2 and a very old hasselblad 500c. Both were non-functional when I got them, but that is much of the fun for me: getting to take them apart, see how they work and then fix them up. And this led me back in to photography.

About my grandfather: in the words of my grandmother "He's cheap!" He may have never purchased anything in his life without a coupon. Not sure if he ever purchased anything new- not if it was available used. He is frugal, but he did his research and rarely bought crap.

More about my grandfather: he is a personal hero of mine. He has one of the more incredible life stories I have ever heard. He also owned his own machine shop for a very long time- and most of his history that I have lived through involved watching him make and fix ANYTHING that needed to me made or fixed. The man has some serious skill in the mechanical department.

So I travel for work, and I occasionally get down to Philadelphia, where I usually try and stop in and see my grandfather. He mentions something about hearing my being into cameras and that he had some old cameras he wanted to give me.

Months pass. Years pass.

He comes up to Massachusetts to visit my mother last month, and when I stop by to say hi he mentions he has a bag of cameras for me. I am envisioning a bag full of point and shoot 35mm cameras- the free kind you used to get with magazine subscriptions. I never recall my grandfather having or using a camera, and if he did I cannot imaging it being a very good one.

I open the bag- the first camera is a run of the mill canon 35mm p&s- he mentions it was my grandmother's camera. She passed last year. He also mentions he had brought her a new digital camera, but she needed to finish the roll of film in her camera first. In all my memories of my grandmother she had this very camera with her- and now I had her last roll of film.

OK- so this camera is pretty special to me. I also figured out why my grandmother ALWAYS cut off our heads in photos: the parallax lines in the finder were very low and very dim. So maybe a bag full of cheapo point and shoot cameras can be a very good thing!

After a few more p&s types of cameras he pulls out the big guns. I guess he wanted a camera of his own one day and started searching the newspaper classifieds. He found a photographer selling his old gear. He purchased said gear. He bought some lenses for the gear. He saves everything.

That is when he pulled the as-new Nikon F out of the bag with a 55mm f/1.2 lens attached. And I mean "as new." When my grandfather was finished shooting he would remove the batteries from the FTn finder. Then he re-inserted the batteries into the cardboard battery package (duracell) and dated the package with the last usage stats. He taped the receipt to the battery package- and all this was with the camera he was handing to me. Every lens had a filter- and after each shooting session he would remove the lens, blow off dust, insert it into its plastic bag and then re-package it inside its original box. This is how he gave the camera to me. All original boxes (the ones he had anyway, he bought the camera and one lens used), all original documentation, every battery he had ever used in the finder and how long each battery lasted, the original hand written receipt, the repair/ cla bill, even the original classified ad from the newspaper.

Holy mackeral, I was not expecting this. Even the run of the mill point and shoot camera he gave me is very special. But now he was handing over a camera I have always wanted, but could never justify. I learned photography on a Nikon and have a special fondness for the brand. And the F model is about as good a symbol of the brand and what Nikon stood for as anything.

Anyway, my grandfather just got even cooler in my book. Much, much cooler. And I owe him a big one.

Thanks for reading and being patient, I need to go and develop a whole lot of film now.

Some photos of the Nikon (sorry, no pictures of my grandmother's camera yet):

F

The gear

The receipt (on my grandfather's stationary)

The repair quote and classified advertisement

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