steve_mareno1

Love those Isolettes in your post Bill, especially with their colorful bellows. They were always one of my favorite folders. Even the bottom line Agnar triplet is capable of taking wonderful shots, and the polished aluminum finish on these cameras is prettier to me than the somewhat gaudy Zeiss folders. The Agfas had iffy bellows on many of their models, but their folding lens/strut assembly was one of the sturdiest in the business. My preference was for the Agfas that had no rangefinder because they were such simple cameras. Just guesstimate the distance, stop it down and shoot. Is there a reason you don't like the rangefinder cameras Vincent? They can be quite small and light, but I agree, nothing beats seeing the image come into focus on a SLR. You just have to be OK with carrying a larger, heavier and often noisier camera.

It's more of a Leica thing. I used to use one finger a lot when I went shooting with most of my FSU cameras, but you don't want to know which finger......great lenses, but cameras only a masochist could love.

You could look at the pictures in it I guess Dieter. Or read the articles. I always bought Playboy just to read the articles :)

Robert Frank was indeed one of the giants of photography, and not just street photography. Very strong work, and he had a great eye. Can't see enough of his work. This is apropos of nothing, but all the forums I used to go to have really dropped off in terms of people participating. The one exception is probably Reddit, but if that's what it takes to get lots of posts I'd rather have a blank screen.

The only way to do this is to just go out and take lots of photos. Reading a book won't help, nor will taking a class or a course. I could describe what a watermelon tastes like until doomsday and you would still have no idea what it tastes like, but take one bite and then you know. Most of life is like this, some things more than others. I would rather have brain surgery from a surgeon who had successfully operated on many people than have it done by the guy who had never done it, but graduated at the top of their class. We learn by doing. Don't over think it, and better if you don't think at all but go by your intuition. With street shooting, if you take the time to think, the shot is long gone. Don't worry about people getting riled either. You learn to be invisible, and it works. Just blend in, be confident, and work quickly. A fast 85 or 100 lens can be your friend on the street because you stay out of people's space. Practice, practice, practice! Have some fun with it and don't sweat the results. Le bon ton roule! Or as they say here in New Mexico, deja que los buenos tiempos pasen!

"If you're looking for a single lens medium format camera, then why not get a folder or a TLR?" That's what I would do as well. They're much easier to tote around, and yes, the image quality is as good or better than the Bronica, AND you get 6x6 negs. The first shot below was taken with a Rolleicord (cost $120) that had my favorite TLR lens, the 3 element Triotar. The shot below it is from an Agfa Isola ($30) tube camera, and the last shot was with a Zeiss Ikonta w/ another of my favorite 3 element lenses, the Zeiss Novar (camera cost was $150). There isn't much to choose between them in terms of image quality, and all the cameras can take very nice portraits because you can crop a 6x6 neg and still have a lot to print. The cameras aren't quite as capable as a medium format SLR, but they are much easier to shoot, and you can take them places you couldn't take a Bronica. TLR's always get a smile from people when you take their picture, and these cameras have very quiet shutters. Film was Tri-X in D76 and scanned on an old Epson 2450 flatbed. Sorry about the large photos. I just started using Imgur to host them, and can't yet figure out how to make them smaller. No matter what size I upload, so far I get the same size photos to post.

For 20 years, where I went the camera went. Learning to develop my own negs was a worthwhile learning experience because I could get just what I wanted and didn't have to depend on a lab. Then I taught myself to print in my darkroom in my mid 60's. Had a few shows in coffeehouses and the like, and have a stash of what I'd guess to be a hundred "keepers" that look OK. This year I have largely given up photography and moved back to drawing and printing. Painting is next. My preference now is to work in the light, and not in a darkroom or peering though a camera's little viewfinder. This change has been liberating, and now the camera stays at home while the sketch book comes with me again. Pottery has been a new passion, and working in 3 dimensions instead of 2 has been very challenging. Making images is fun again. Even when you're shooting film and old manual focus cameras, you're still dealing with a machine, and making the enlargements means using another machine. Now I work with my hands and minimal tools, and it's what I see and not what the camera sees. It's more "real", whatever that means. Nothing I have made with pottery is that good, but here's 3 plates, and the first large drawing (17x14 charcoal) that I've made in two decades. That one I'm sorta happy with, so I'll post it.. https://i.imgur.com/S8wzMV7.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WCytVjv.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AYL2yrw.jpg

Buy an old Rolleicord with a clean lens. You'll be much happier, and take better photographs. I used to shoot a Bronice S2. The camera is HUGE and HEAVY. They have the loudest shutter known to humankind.............. Ka POW! Sounded like a gun shot. Mine had a Nikkor lens that was wonderful, but the whole package was just too big and heavy,

The shots look nice and sharp with a lot of clarity John. My experience with the German MF tube cameras was with the Agfa Isolas. Your camera looks like it has better build quality. The film has a sort of grayness to it, probably because it's not a true B&W film, but overall I'd say you did a great job with a camera that is simply made and simple to shoot. Especially like your last shot of the locomotive-like tractor What a beast!.

Even the old Epson 2450 flatbeds will do a great job with 4x5. Those old scanners are a lot better than people think. Mine even made nice 35mm scans once I threw that film holder away and started taping the negs by the edges to the scanning glass. This was Tri-X shot with an inexpensive Canon FD lens and scanned by a 2450. The few 4x5 scans I made were excellent. And the files were huge!

I miss my Trinitron monitors. The clarity, color and sharpness were miles ahead of any other type of monitor that I saw. When I first looked at things on a laptop I thought, what's wrong? Things looked (and still look) fuzzy and low contrast, and their tonal range will block up pretty badly if not angled correctly. People say things have improved, but my eyes don't see it. Specification figures are meaningless if the monitors can't deliver the goods. Hopefully your monitor finds a new home. Unfortunately for you, what Ben wrote is true about prices. I paid $12 for my last one at a thrift store.

I got my negs back from the lab. Turns out the old Sologor 135 is just too sharp and contrasty. It also puts the whole face in sharp focus, while the Makinon gives a pleasingly soft look and renders the eyes and front of the face somewhat sharper than the rest. I prefer the bokeh on the Makinon too. While I have come to the conclusion that a 135 lens is too long for me to handhold wide open in low light, as long as I'm outside it should work well. I bought both of these 3rd party manual focus lenses for under $70 incl shipping, so $35 is a great price for a portrait lens that I really, really like. Now I can sell the Soligor. The camera was a Nikon n8008s. The film was consumer Fuji color 400 and developed and scanned by mu local lab. Can't wait to shoot some TMY 400 and Tri-X w/ the Makinon. The first shot is the Makinon at 2.8, and the second is the Soligor at 2.8. My model was not feeling well, as the photos show, but the last shot taken with the Soligor has her getting back to her old self. As much as I like the last shot, I realize it's subjective because she looked so much better. Judging just the technical details, the Makinon was the winner, a fact I failed to get my model to understand :[ What's really interesting is how the crows feet around the eyes completely disappeared outdoors.

I think dry mounting is the best way to go, but have used the adhesive sprays successfully. The spray I use gives you a second chance to reposition the photo if an error is made the first time. Art supply stores are the best places to buy this stuff, Pretty sure mine was 3M. I don't have any issues w/ the photo peeling from the backing (I use an old fashioned rolling pin to get good contact), but DO have trouble with the mounting board warping over time from hanging on the wall. I finally devised a way to reinforce the back to address this. This was the first one I tried so it looks a little rough.Things look better now that I've refined it, but the basic idea is the same. I had to add three braces to the center in order to make it strong enough to prevent warping over time. Everything is glued to the backing board.

I've never soaked my negs, and everything looks fine. Don't see a need for it actually. I lived in Hawaii too and never saw any difference in the water there compared to the mainland. Your water purity not only depends on which island you live on, but where on the island. On a lot of the Big Island there IS no city/county water to people's homes. They use home catchment, or drive and fill up jugs with county water at one spigot, with long lines of cars waiting to get to it. Truthfully, I never trusted the safety of the water there, and tried to always use bottled water for cooking or drinking. There's too many potential contaminants, and precious little policing of water sources. Most rivers have harmful bacteria and pesticide runoff in them, and there's the VOG from the currently erupting volcano putting tons and tons of dangerous contaminants into the air. That stuff drifts over to O'hau and Maui at least. The reason it's a good idea to use distilled water is because there is no sediment in it to get on your negs. I filter everything through a funnel with a coffee filter inside.

Why even print them? Just have the negs scanned and use your laptop, tablet or phone to go by? I assume you're not going to be copying the look exactly, just using the images as a starting place for your drawings. There really wouldn't be any sense in making copies, you would be better off displaying the photos themselves.You can make an image look like you want it to in an imaging program. I'm not sure how big your drawings will be, but if you just need a way to scale things up large there are instructions on using a smart phone as a projector to make large images on the wall that you can trace. I do that all the time w/ my drawings. First, make a black marker line drawing on anything clear (even an old sandwich baggie) in a small size, then project that image's outlines onto my canvas to paint. Saves a lot of time.

The judgement is currently being appealed. I just assume anything I post is gonna be stolen anyway, but having said that, if I saw one of my images being used in a commercial application w/o my consent, I would go after them..

A Konica C 35 is about as compact as I like. They have so-so build quality, but have very user friendly AE with focus lock, classic styling (it looks like a camera should look), and a sharp Hexanon lens. Great cameras.

This sort of testing could drive someone around the bend :] I generally find lens tests no help at all (sorry). I'm after the best IQ, which is more about character and bokeh. Sharpness means little to me, and generally, the older FD glass has superior IQ, especially with film, but with digital cameras as well. I just go by what my eyes see, as it's a visual thing. For what it's worth, few fast lenses are noted for sharpness, their forte is being able to get a shot in very little light. I wish I could get some of these wonderful FD lenses adapted to my Nikon camera. I prefer Canon FD glass, but also very much prefer the Nikon film bodies. As it is, I have to get by with adapting Leica R glass to the Nikon......fantastic lenses, but FD glass is more for my budget.

Thanks for the correction JDM. It is of course a micro, not macro......and all lenses but Nikons mount and focus backwards :]

I bought a Makinon MC Macro 135 2.8 for portraits, and this is my first macro lens (I think, hard to remember). I won't be using it for anything other than that, but one thing I noticed is that if I rack the lens to its closest focusing distance, I can then twist the front of the lens, where the macro feature is, and get a closer minimum focus. Pretty neat. Is this how these things are supposed to work? Bug shots aren't my thing, but now and then a closer minimum focus distance comes in handy. With a 135mm lens, closest focusing distance is a relative thing, and usually not that close.

"Thank you everybody for your advice and your help to help me get through all of this it took some time some money and some effort but I think I'm going to be a lot happier buying myself a digital camera." This was from the op's original post which started the thread. Looking back, I guess at that point we should have all said thank you too and moved on :] People like conversations though, and I think there were quite a lot of helpful suggestions made, so it was a good thread in my eyes. These things never go where we think they will anyway. Everyone sees things differently, which is the beauty of a forum, and as someone said, as long as things are kept respectful, and it appears to me that they were, then all to the good. I still don't understand how moving to digital is going to help with a focusing issue since a viewfinder is a viewfinder whether or not it's digital or film, unless the reference was to autofocus vs manual focus.

"It would be kind of like building a house to match a nice doorknob." I wonder how many of us (me for instance) use this philosophy for all sorts of important things in our lives, and later wonder why things worked out the way they did? A journey of a thousand miles may begin with but one step, but if that first step is taken in the wrong direction...........

I love it when someone likes my photos enough to copy or steal them! They.re only getting a copy, it won't have the same detail or feel as the original unless they have the negative. And they don't :]

Photographs can be useful because we can't trust our memories to be accurate. Oh, we may SAY that we remember everything, that we have a photographic memory, etc. but the reality is quite a bit different. We remember what we THINK happened, not what really happened, especially if there is some strong emotion about that memory. The old memory test is still valid.....have ten or twenty people recite a very short story privately to each person. Let the first person recite the story in the ear of the next person, then have that person recite the story in the ear of the person beside them, and on down the line. What we get to the end, the story is almost always not at all what was said in the beginning. So if we can't accurately remember something of a short duration, what makes us think we can remember something from decades accurately? We just remember what we remember, not what actually happened. The photograph can be very handy!

Well, there's only so many ways one can look at the subject. I'm sure it's all been discussed, argued about, etc. How much can be said about photography anyway? It's a visual thing, and not about words. The photograph IS the philosophy of the photographer. Just like music. People wonder why no one is writing great classical music like Mozart, Bach, all those folks. The reason is very simple. To a large degree it has all been written. There are only so many notes on a scale, and many of those notes or chords are not harmonious or pleasant to the human ear. You quickly start getting into notes and chords that are unpleasant. Stravinsky is an example of someone who pushed the boundaries of classical music, and trust me, as someone who used to work for the San Francisco Symphony and the National Symphony in Wash D.C., not everyone wants to listen to Stravinsky! Some forms of music, like jazz, stretched the limits of time, melody, syncopation, and discordant chords as far as they could, but after a certain point it just becomes noise. You just can't go beyond Coltrane or Monk, they nailed it and that is that. You can do it differently, but they said all there was to say in that manner. You also can end up with something like Cage on the other end, simply one note repeated endlessly. Or heavy metal....after a while it's all the same song. Sorry about getting off track a little here. As I said, there's only so much one can say about a visual thing in terms of philosophy.