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Or “A walk in the Park”
Or “My first Film in 10-Years”
Or “Grandad’s Camera – Takes Pictures”
Take your pick…. But this is it.
#01 NIKON_DLate 1950’s (Probably ‘58/59) Kodak Retinette 1A – with the Schneider-Kreuznach Reomar f3.5 50mm lens and Pronto shutter.
And as mentioned was my Grandads. A gift, he was incredibly fond of while he was stationed in Uganda. He left in 1961, and was either given it before his last tour, so about 1958, or just before he left. And to HIM, it was a prized possession, and a ‘quality’ camera. For quarter of a century, he derided whatever Japanese fantastic his kids or kids mates or kids spouses or spouses mates or who-ever waved around with through the lens light metering, automatic exposure, or pentaprisms and such. This was a piece of precision German Engineering. 35mm! None of that ‘antique’ roll-film rubbish, or cheap and nasty cassette things! And pre-60’s consumer boom, this was a pretty respectable amateur camera.
But it’s a View-Finder camera. It has no means of ‘positive’ focus, like a ‘Range-Finder’, SLR or TLR, where there is some mechanism where-by you can see your subject in the view-finder and confirm that the lens that takes the picture is actually focused on it! But neither is it a zone-focus camera; exploiting smaller apertures and greater depth of field, to allow focus by icon on faces, people, or mountains!
Oh no… this is precision German engineering. It has ‘fast’ apertures and a distance scale on the fiddly focus ring, and hyper-focas marks for the aperture around it…. and you’re left to figure it out!
I seem to recall, when my Grandad used this camera he had a diddy little accessory shoe mounted range-finder to slot on the top, that always frustrated him taking indoor family group shots… we don’t have many family group photos… by the time he’d given up trying to range find, guestimate, and gone and hunted out a tape measure, his subjects had all drifted off to make a cup of tea, watch telly or down the pub or something! But For some reason, when the camera turned up, that didn’t…. so I have to guesstimate! This could be ‘fun’! OK, well lets do something with it.
First thing is to see if it functions. My Grandad died in 1997, so it hasn’t been touched for 15 years, and since he had glycoma, I doubt it had been used for ten years before that! Fifty year old camera, not used for quarter of a century! But, appature ring seemed to click through all the stops smoothly, and the shutter? Well it clicked. Very softly, but it clicked…. I think, at all four shutter speeds. Meter? Selenium cell. Needle moved when waved around in the light, which looked promicing. Scale was still legible, and the calculator wheel present. Few test readings in and around the house, compared to what I got through the Nikon, showed it was still pretty accurate, so we’ll go with that then.
Next thing, Film. Not bought any for a decade, but half the reason for this little project, is because my daughter, discovered and claimed an old Zenith SLR on top of my wardrobe, and announcing that she has opted to take GCSE Photography at school, and grumbled that they don’t let them use ‘proper’ (ie film) cameras, insisted that I could teach her. So I have bought a pack of 20 rolls of out of date Kodak Gold 100, off e-bay, from Greece, left over from the 2002 Olympics! So, before she got all disillusioned, wanted to try a roll, and see how it came out.
OK, so we have a camera, we have some film, now we need something to point it at. And it’s been pretty grim lately. Its THAT time of year, the dead-time between Christmas and Easter, when the weathers lousy and there’s nothing open or going on. Other-Half has been immersed in work, and moaning about being too tired on days off…. And then her son & grand-daughter turned up, on Saturday… and THE SUN SHINED! So I suggested taking the toddler to the park! That’s got to be good for photos! Also gives us something of a theme, in Grandad’s camera taking pics of Granddaughter.
So… we have a camera that was, even when brand new… a little hit and miss and ripe with opportunities for failure, from glance & guess light-metering, to point & guess focusing, that’s fifty years old, and not been used for half that, that may or may not work at all… some pretty dubious old film, some glorious if rather stark and contrast early spring light, and… a turbo-charged tot to try and not get too blurred…. Hmmm… challenging! Lets see how I got on shall we?
#02 NIKON_L There you go, me, crouched down taking pic of Grand-daughter. Photo by my O/H with her Nikon L310 bridge, on ‘smart’, and cropped in PP.
The Picture I took with the Retinette…..
#03 KODAK Taken at f8 and 1/60th I think. This one is the best of the bunch, and… all told, I am rather pleased with it! Straight scan of neg, with my sheep and chitty neg-scanner. No cropping, no PP. Its better in the print; and after scanning the entire roll, I realised that ASDA’s don’t keep the negs too clean! I have a lot of dust motts in many of the frames, but I was too exited to re-scan.
Ten years….. Light was fading and the little girl was getting tired by half five, so we came home via ASDA to pick up some bits for tea. And I missed the 1hr processing by ten minutes. Got to the counter at ten past 6… counter closed at 7, so had to put them on two-day. Which meant, like in days of yore, WAITING to see the results. I had forgotten the excitement & trepidation!
So, what did we get? Well the first eight frames or so were completely blank. I suspect that that soft clicking shutter, then WAS sticking, but obviously freed off. Exposure wise; I looked at the sky. f-16 sunny? Well, it was pretty bright, and clear blue sky, but late winter, sun’s still a fair way off, and it was low, evening sun. One stop off? Waved the meter around a bit, as we walked to the play-ground, gave me various readings, stop either side of f8@60th for 100ASA, so settled on that as my base-setting, and adjusted a stop or so either way, erring on the side of f8 & f16 to max my Depth of Field, just a LITTLE concerned about this point & guess focusing! I wasn’t far off. About half a dozen, ¼ of shots were a little fuzzy round the edges? Couple of them though could have been too slow a shutter.
Three more pics for this post then….
#04 NIKON_L OH’s shot with Nikon Bridge, over my shoulder while I took…
#05 KODAK As camera… annoyed by the dust mots. Colour’s a little blue too, and and and… well, what might be done in Post-Process?
#06 KODAK Little bit of colour tweek, dab & crop… Hmmm… if anything I think it shows the limitations of my neg-scaner more than anything!
Or “My first Film in 10-Years”
Or “Grandad’s Camera – Takes Pictures”
Take your pick…. But this is it.
#01 NIKON_DLate 1950’s (Probably ‘58/59) Kodak Retinette 1A – with the Schneider-Kreuznach Reomar f3.5 50mm lens and Pronto shutter.
And as mentioned was my Grandads. A gift, he was incredibly fond of while he was stationed in Uganda. He left in 1961, and was either given it before his last tour, so about 1958, or just before he left. And to HIM, it was a prized possession, and a ‘quality’ camera. For quarter of a century, he derided whatever Japanese fantastic his kids or kids mates or kids spouses or spouses mates or who-ever waved around with through the lens light metering, automatic exposure, or pentaprisms and such. This was a piece of precision German Engineering. 35mm! None of that ‘antique’ roll-film rubbish, or cheap and nasty cassette things! And pre-60’s consumer boom, this was a pretty respectable amateur camera.
But it’s a View-Finder camera. It has no means of ‘positive’ focus, like a ‘Range-Finder’, SLR or TLR, where there is some mechanism where-by you can see your subject in the view-finder and confirm that the lens that takes the picture is actually focused on it! But neither is it a zone-focus camera; exploiting smaller apertures and greater depth of field, to allow focus by icon on faces, people, or mountains!
Oh no… this is precision German engineering. It has ‘fast’ apertures and a distance scale on the fiddly focus ring, and hyper-focas marks for the aperture around it…. and you’re left to figure it out!
I seem to recall, when my Grandad used this camera he had a diddy little accessory shoe mounted range-finder to slot on the top, that always frustrated him taking indoor family group shots… we don’t have many family group photos… by the time he’d given up trying to range find, guestimate, and gone and hunted out a tape measure, his subjects had all drifted off to make a cup of tea, watch telly or down the pub or something! But For some reason, when the camera turned up, that didn’t…. so I have to guesstimate! This could be ‘fun’! OK, well lets do something with it.
First thing is to see if it functions. My Grandad died in 1997, so it hasn’t been touched for 15 years, and since he had glycoma, I doubt it had been used for ten years before that! Fifty year old camera, not used for quarter of a century! But, appature ring seemed to click through all the stops smoothly, and the shutter? Well it clicked. Very softly, but it clicked…. I think, at all four shutter speeds. Meter? Selenium cell. Needle moved when waved around in the light, which looked promicing. Scale was still legible, and the calculator wheel present. Few test readings in and around the house, compared to what I got through the Nikon, showed it was still pretty accurate, so we’ll go with that then.
Next thing, Film. Not bought any for a decade, but half the reason for this little project, is because my daughter, discovered and claimed an old Zenith SLR on top of my wardrobe, and announcing that she has opted to take GCSE Photography at school, and grumbled that they don’t let them use ‘proper’ (ie film) cameras, insisted that I could teach her. So I have bought a pack of 20 rolls of out of date Kodak Gold 100, off e-bay, from Greece, left over from the 2002 Olympics! So, before she got all disillusioned, wanted to try a roll, and see how it came out.
OK, so we have a camera, we have some film, now we need something to point it at. And it’s been pretty grim lately. Its THAT time of year, the dead-time between Christmas and Easter, when the weathers lousy and there’s nothing open or going on. Other-Half has been immersed in work, and moaning about being too tired on days off…. And then her son & grand-daughter turned up, on Saturday… and THE SUN SHINED! So I suggested taking the toddler to the park! That’s got to be good for photos! Also gives us something of a theme, in Grandad’s camera taking pics of Granddaughter.
So… we have a camera that was, even when brand new… a little hit and miss and ripe with opportunities for failure, from glance & guess light-metering, to point & guess focusing, that’s fifty years old, and not been used for half that, that may or may not work at all… some pretty dubious old film, some glorious if rather stark and contrast early spring light, and… a turbo-charged tot to try and not get too blurred…. Hmmm… challenging! Lets see how I got on shall we?
#02 NIKON_L There you go, me, crouched down taking pic of Grand-daughter. Photo by my O/H with her Nikon L310 bridge, on ‘smart’, and cropped in PP.
The Picture I took with the Retinette…..
#03 KODAK Taken at f8 and 1/60th I think. This one is the best of the bunch, and… all told, I am rather pleased with it! Straight scan of neg, with my sheep and chitty neg-scanner. No cropping, no PP. Its better in the print; and after scanning the entire roll, I realised that ASDA’s don’t keep the negs too clean! I have a lot of dust motts in many of the frames, but I was too exited to re-scan.
Ten years….. Light was fading and the little girl was getting tired by half five, so we came home via ASDA to pick up some bits for tea. And I missed the 1hr processing by ten minutes. Got to the counter at ten past 6… counter closed at 7, so had to put them on two-day. Which meant, like in days of yore, WAITING to see the results. I had forgotten the excitement & trepidation!
So, what did we get? Well the first eight frames or so were completely blank. I suspect that that soft clicking shutter, then WAS sticking, but obviously freed off. Exposure wise; I looked at the sky. f-16 sunny? Well, it was pretty bright, and clear blue sky, but late winter, sun’s still a fair way off, and it was low, evening sun. One stop off? Waved the meter around a bit, as we walked to the play-ground, gave me various readings, stop either side of f8@60th for 100ASA, so settled on that as my base-setting, and adjusted a stop or so either way, erring on the side of f8 & f16 to max my Depth of Field, just a LITTLE concerned about this point & guess focusing! I wasn’t far off. About half a dozen, ¼ of shots were a little fuzzy round the edges? Couple of them though could have been too slow a shutter.
Three more pics for this post then….
#04 NIKON_L OH’s shot with Nikon Bridge, over my shoulder while I took…
#05 KODAK As camera… annoyed by the dust mots. Colour’s a little blue too, and and and… well, what might be done in Post-Process?
#06 KODAK Little bit of colour tweek, dab & crop… Hmmm… if anything I think it shows the limitations of my neg-scaner more than anything!
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