lachaine

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<p>In addition to being either harsh or soft, one of the qualities of light as it relates to taking pictures is its direction: front, side, back lighting. Mid-day sun is both harsh and high. There are always <strong>exceptions</strong>, but generally-speaking, whether a person or a landscape, not too many subjects are going to look their best under a bright mid-day sun no matter what you do, simply because they are being lit from above by the harshest light of them all. It's not just the contrast, but rather where the shadows appear. </p>

<p>I bought one of these new in 1976. The K2 was briefly Pentax's top of the line, but it was quickly eclipsed by the compact M cameras, and you didn't hear much about it after that (literally, just months later).</p> <p>On mine, the slow shutter speeds were abnormally slow right out of the box, which was denied by Pentax technicians. It was later confirmed to be slow by an independent technician. I took this picture with it in 1976:</p><div></div>

<p>This could be a light leak you induced when either loading the film or taking it out. Unlike 35 mm film, the only thing that keeps light away from a roll of medium format is that it's wound up firmly. Even then, you're supposed to handle it away from bright sunlight. Also, sometimes the camera itself isn't good at keeping the take up spool tightly wound in the film chamber.<br> I don't think it's the red window in this case, but in future, you should keep a flap of black electrical tape or something over it, and uncover it only during the time it takes to advance the film... and again, away from direct sunlight.</p>

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Old cameras... shutter speeds may not be even remotely accurate or consistent. Sometimes, you think it's working fine, but it's really that whatever actual exposure the camera is giving you or is stuck at just happens to coincide with the lighting you are shooting in. Forget about trying to fix these jpegs. No guarantees, but you might be able to make something useful out of these by rescanning them yourself and working on them as 48 bit color files. Mind you, they still won't look like a perfectly exposed picture would. Black and white film really works best when you are playing and experimenting with the scanner yourself... the same as in the old days in the darkroom. Even so, vintage cameras are hit and miss unless you are really sure about them. Have fun with them, but don't rely on them for really important shots. P.S. I've used plenty of them myself. See my Cargo website.

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