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Apparently my current mid-life crisis is manifesting itself as an urge to use more and more basic cameras. I just bought one of these on eBay:
Bessa L
- a scale-focused camera with a 15mm lens and viewfinder. You focus by guessing the distance and setting it on the lens. Not a problem with wide angles, but almost certainly a sign of insanity on my part.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sat Mar 15th, 2008 at 05:52:32 PM EST
Buy a tape measure. All old movie cameras mark the focal point of the lens, and some even had a hook to attach the tape measure to  ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 07:34:58 AM EST
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Heh. That'll help with candid street photography!
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 08:27:12 AM EST
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For several years I used a Nikonos V as a main camera when motorbiking (weather proof :-) ), with a 28mmm and a 35mm.
You had to guess the distances too :-)
After some first rolls not being great, I got used to that "guessing" thing... Of course, f5.6 was the lowest I would go !

With that one it shouldn't be to hard :-) But then I've never went so wide on film !

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 07:43:40 AM EST
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That can't have been easy with a 35mm!
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 08:27:44 AM EST
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Mind you, right now, I'm trying to work out why this is happening:

That's the second roll where I've managed to fog up the negatives at some stage, probably loading the film.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 08:31:32 AM EST
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Those of you who were just about to say that the fixer was exhausted or mixed wrong are of course right. Sorted now.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 10:13:23 AM EST
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Well, it makes for an experimental solarization :-)

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 04:42:27 PM EST
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Refixing in new solution sorted it out: I must have mismixed the fixer in the first place.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 04:43:37 PM EST
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I have the bad habit of being in hurry when developing negs. As I use powder chemicals (ID 11), they are mixed at a temperature, and sometimes, to cool them down more quickly, I put the opaque, thick plastic bottle in the fridge !

Once, I even put it in the freezer part... For what I thought was few minutes. At the end of the developer pouring in the tank, I heard and felt a "thunk"... Looking in the bottle, there was a white pancake of the active solution that couldn't go through the bottle neck... The film was already wet with something that was mainly water!!!
In a frantic move, with a screwdriver, I broke the pancake to smaller bits, took them out, shoved them in the tank (in full dark), agitated... And invented on the spot a development time that neared tin-foil nerdism !

Those negatives was an important work and there was 6 rolls in the tank... Some time after, and after the fixing part, I got the negatives  out with trembling hands... And they were far from perfect but usable under the enlarger (with some work) !

The client was happy and I learned a lesson :-)

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 04:56:10 PM EST
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My first camera was a Russian
FED-4

It definitely wasn't cool.  But it was a real camera for more-or-less the price of the fixed-focus, fixed-exposure plastic boxes my friends had.

I definitely got better pictures than they did.  But as I became a short-sighted and glasses-averse teenager, my speciality-and priority-became adjusting the settings to get maximum depth of field...

by Sassafras on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 08:57:00 AM EST
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Not at all crazy. Given the price of Leica lenses these days (actually, they've always been expensive), plenty of Leica M users have a pocketful of the nice little Voigtlander lenses--especially the wide ones.

I'm still saving for an Elmarit 24mm ASPH, but at the current rate I'll be dead first...
http://en.leica-camera.com/photography/m_system/lenses/2179.html

by asdf on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 12:52:48 PM EST
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They could have choosen a better example then the leaning bridge one :-)
What do you have, as a body, to put that lens on ?

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:01:31 PM EST
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My main camera is an 0.58x M6TTL, and I use an old Summilux 35mm lens almost exclusively. I fall squarely in the camera fondler category.

It looks very much like item 19 on this list (although the picture is of an M4).
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.leicaphiliosis.com/Leicap21.jpg&imgrefurl=http ://www.leicaphiliosis.com/thecollection.htm&h=591&w=816&sz=40&hl=en&start=4& tbnid=sbINjMoadDYDEM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=144&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsummilux%2B35mm%26gbv%3D2%26h l%3Den%26safe%3Doff

by asdf on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 06:36:20 PM EST
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Yes, I had the older non TTL version and at x0.72 :-)
The 35 summicron, the 50 summicron and the 90 summicron !

I had to sell all of it at that time, as it didn't cover my needs ( macro, reproduction, models, etc.) and I got an F4s Nikon (big change in size).

Now I'm more in the M mood (or Bessa or...), but, even if I had the money (ah, those grown-up kids and their studies :-) ), I would still hesitate between an MP or an M8, i.e. between a film or digital variant !

I still need to have the pictures for work quickly and in a digital format, not to speak of the sheer quantity of "out of interest" pictures of a building or of a site, to keep track of details for future work...! A P&S would do it too, but then I would loose the habit of having a "good" camera with me and would revert to sloppy pictures (I'm already lazy enough :-) )!

My seasoned D200 is good with my old lenses, and I'll keep it that way until something changes (Loto, prices going down, unexpected inheritance, etc.) :-)

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman

by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 07:20:38 PM EST
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I have been resisting the change to digital, simply because with film I'm forced to have an archive in the form of the original negatives. I know way too many people who have huge collections of digital photos on the computers and not backed up anywhere. Just recently a friend lost 2 year's of digital images due to a disk failure--and he's pretty paranoid about backups. (Not paranoid enough, though.)

I get my pictures developed at the local drugstore, which does a fine job of developing the film, a mediocre job of printing, and a barely-adequate-for-the-web job of scanning. But at least I have now a good backup. So my shoeboxes full of unsorted pictures from last week and from decades ago are sitting there in the closet waiting for me to get some enthusiasm for sorting.

Where will everybody's digital pix be in 30 years?

by asdf on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 07:45:53 PM EST
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I think I'd rather buy a Voigtlander body - an R2A I think - and the Leica glass.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:22:23 PM EST
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Have you seen the Zeiss Ikon reviews ?

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:35:51 PM EST
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Yes, but it's much more expensive, isn't it? I'd really rather keep money for glass: so long as the camera meters accurately enough, mounts the lens properly and keeps the light out of the film, I'm not too pushed.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:38:18 PM EST
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R2A is £295, Zeiss Ikon is £840, Leica M7 is £1826.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:41:22 PM EST
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Quite a difference, indeed ! :-)
Better to put it in glass, you're right !

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:45:48 PM EST
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Now to persuade Sam that because I'd saved all that money on not buying an M7 I could spend it all on lenses...
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 01:48:43 PM EST
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Didn't I see an approval wink :-)

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Sun Mar 16th, 2008 at 04:35:25 PM EST
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Or you could find an old M6, which will do all the required metering, and still have money for a lens. It's a tough tradeoff. I was only allowed to buy a new lens when we had a new child, so the struggle was even harder. That's why I only have two "new" lenses (plus the old ones I inherited from my grandfather and the one I had before I met my wife)...
by asdf on Mon Mar 17th, 2008 at 10:07:34 AM EST
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Have you seen the prices for M6s? They're not much less than an M7.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Mon Mar 17th, 2008 at 10:45:59 AM EST
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Used M6s go for around $1000 over here...
by asdf on Mon Mar 17th, 2008 at 09:49:04 PM EST
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