Mixed results on my first attempt with my Bronica ETRSI

Tom Pinchenzo

Tom Pinchenzo

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Just got the scans back from my first two rolls of film through my Bronica ETRSI. So shots I was really pleased with - amazing image quality compared with 35mm. Plenty well exposed but missed focus with the narrower DoF and the waist level finder.

Some shots though, came out really bad. Obvious camera shake, presumable from the heavy mirror slap, and they look overexposed. I'm sure that I never attempted to hand hold below 1/125. Which makes me think it could be an intermittend shutter speed fault?? Hopefully it's just user error. Examples below: 1 and 2 are shots I'm happy with (1 had some PP and 2 had none at all) 3 and 4 show the camera shake (with 2 clear images superimposed, suggesting the quick up and down of a mirror?) and possible overexposure (though I thought Portra 160 had latitude for almost unlimited overexposure?). 5 shows the overexposure without the camera shake as it was tripod mounted and I think mirror was locked up.

Any thoughts welcome :)

Tree Venford by Tom Pinches, on Flickr

Hannah by Tom Pinches, on Flickr

Shutter1 by Tom Pinches, on Flickr

Shutter2 by Tom Pinches, on Flickr

Shutter3 by Tom Pinches, on Flickr
 
excalibur2 said:
Over exposure of negative film is rarely a problem, but under exposure is......you should get a reasonable image even with 2 stops under and even 5 stops over.
http://petapixel.com/2015/08/10/how-much-can-you-overexpose-negative-film-have-a-look/
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Yes, that’s what I thought, and I know I wasn’t overexposing by 6 stops!! Do you think it’s an issue with the development?? It went to filmdev who I imagine are quite consistent, but there were some weird white bits going on at the top of some of the frames...
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
Yes, that’s what I thought, and I know I wasn’t overexposing by 6 stops!! Do you think it’s an issue with the development?? It went to filmdev who I imagine are quite consistent, but there were some weird white bits going on at the top of some of the frames...
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Well it's possible filmdev are at fault, but from the link you can see what a neg looks like properly exposed so when you look at your negs if you see some look thin or dense then it your or camera's fault. Also looking at the negs with a loupe you can see if there anything unusual on the neg e.g. tramlines, black parts (light leak) etc
 
Inspect the negs (lightbox + loupe if possible) & compare them with the scans. Apart from a sense of overall exposure, and despite the orange mask, you will be looking for detail in the dark areas of the negs (translating to highlights in the scan / print) and in the pale areas of the negs (translating to shadows in the scan / print).

We need to separate out what's due to you, the camera, and the scanner operation ..

I'm very puzzled by the pale scans, assuming that the norm is for the scan to compensate for density variation. Scanners have exposure settings!

More generally, I'm pretty convinced that the best scans are those you do yourself ...

That banding, though, is weird.
 
droj said:
Inspect the negs (lightbox + loupe if possible) & compare them with the scans. Apart from a sense of overall exposure, and despite the orange mask, you will be looking for detail in the dark areas of the negs (translating to highlights in the scan / print) and in the pale areas of the negs (translating to shadows in the scan / print).

We need to separate out what's due to you, the camera, and the scanner operation ..

I'm very puzzled by the pale scans, assuming that the norm is for the scan to compensate for density variation. Scanners have exposure settings!

More generally, I'm pretty convinced that the best scans are those you do yourself ...

That banding, though, is weird.
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The banding is only evident in the images that are washed out. I’m not using a UV filter. I don’t use them with my 35mm camera and haven’t seen any impact, but maybe the shutter in the bronica is letting in UV light and spoiling the negative? The banding could be a patter from the shutter. It uses a leaf shutter in the lens. Are leaf shutters more likely to let in light than other types? The shake might well just be me trying to use 1/60 hand held...
 
droj said:
Inspect the negs (lightbox + loupe if possible) & compare them with the scans. Apart from a sense of overall exposure, and despite the orange mask, you will be looking for detail in the dark areas of the negs (translating to highlights in the scan / print) and in the pale areas of the negs (translating to shadows in the scan / print).

We need to separate out what's due to you, the camera, and the scanner operation ..

I'm very puzzled by the pale scans, assuming that the norm is for the scan to compensate for density variation. Scanners have exposure settings!

More generally, I'm pretty convinced that the best scans are those you do yourself ...

That banding, though, is weird.
Click to expand...

I will get the negs back in the next few days so will have a peak. They use Fuji frontier which should be better than my EPSON 550!
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
The banding is only evident in the images that are washed out. I’m not using a UV filter. I don’t use them with my 35mm camera and haven’t seen any impact, but maybe the shutter in the bronica is letting in UV light and spoiling the negative? The banding could be a patter from the shutter. It uses a leaf shutter in the lens. Are leaf shutters more likely to let in light than other types? The shake might well just be me trying to use 1/60 hand held...
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The shake is very likely down to the 1/60sec handheld. I shot some handheld stuff with my ETRSi last year at similar speeds and most of them suffered from camera shake.
In comparison, I'd have no problem shooting at that speed with my Yashicamat 124G, but that doesn't have a whacking great mirror and is considerably lighter. The form factor of a TLR also allows you to easily brace it against your abdomen for additional support, but despite having a waist level finder, the size and shape of the ETRSi doesn't allow this technique to be quite so effective.
 
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Tom Pinchenzo said:
I will get the negs back in the next few days so will have a peak. They use Fuji frontier which should be better than my EPSON 550!
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While Filmdev still have the negatives, why not ring them up and have a chat? I've always found them very helpful. They can give you their assessment of the issue, and can re-scan or re-process if you both agree that's merited.
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
The banding is only evident in the images that are washed out. I’m not using a UV filter. I don’t use them with my 35mm camera and haven’t seen any impact, but maybe the shutter in the bronica is letting in UV light and spoiling the negative? The banding could be a patter from the shutter. It uses a leaf shutter in the lens. Are leaf shutters more likely to let in light than other types? The shake might well just be me trying to use 1/60 hand held...
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UV light doesn't enter the camera in the way you suggest, so the filter is designed to compensate for the amount of UV in the atmosphere. More info in this article.
 
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It could be the scanner has had a hissy fit, but until you get the negs back (or speak to the lab if they've not posted them yet) then you won't know. That's the good thing with AG Photolab using their images on CD option, the disk arrives back with the negs, so no waiting a couple of days or so to do any trouble shooting. The downside is that you don't get the results back until the day after they've been processed and scanned... unless you opt (and pay) for both digital download and CD as a custom option (if indeed AG will do that combination).
 
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Looking at the photos again, I don’t think it’s a problem with the dev or scanning - the issue affects individual frames independently and fairly at random. I’ll run another roll through it and see what happens.
 
Do you have more than one lens? The shutter is in the lens so any shutter problem will be confined to one lens. If it is with more than one lens, it is not the shutter.

You say that it is your first attempt with this camera. It is an old camera (nothing wrong with that, my ETRs is still a very good camera) and could have lain unused for years before you got it. With any new to me camera, I will dry fire the shutter repeatedly for perhaps an hour to get the mechanism moving nicely.
 
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john.margetts said:
Do you have more than one lens? The shutter is in the lens so any shutter problem will be confined to one lens. If it is with more than one lens, it is not the shutter.

You say that it is your first attempt with this camera. It is an old camera (nothing wrong with that, my ETRs is still a very good camera) and could have lain unused for years before you got it. With any new to me camera, I will dry fire the shutter repeatedly for perhaps an hour to get the mechanism moving nicely.
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So do you think shutter is a likely culprit. It makes sense that the shutter is occasionally firing slower than it should as there is always motion blur with the overexposed shots. Also, the camera shake looks like much more than what you’d expect for 1/60, which, although I can’t remember the speed I used for which shots, I certainly wouldn’t have attempted anything longer than 1/60.
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
So do you think shutter is a likely culprit. It makes sense that the shutter is occasionally firing slower than it should as there is always motion blur with the overexposed shots. Also, the camera shake looks like much more than what you’d expect for 1/60, which, although I can’t remember the speed I used for which shots, I certainly wouldn’t have attempted anything longer than 1/60.
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Have you tried dry firing it at all the shutter speeds? No idea how hard this is with an ETRSi, but the sound alone can often give a hint to some problems.
 
ChrisR said:
Have you tried dry firing it at all the shutter speeds? No idea how hard this is with an ETRSi, but the sound alone can often give a hint to some problems.
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I think I’ve found the problem. I’ve taken the back off and dry fired it at all the speeds. The shutter was definitely not firing at the correct speeds. At 1/500 it was open for going-on a second. Not sure what can be done. I wonder if it’s just the lens, or whether the problem is the communication between body and lens. Unfortunately I don’t have another lens to try....
 
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Try taking the battery out of the body. With no battery, the shutter should fire at 1/500 regardless of the setting on the shutter speed dial.

If it runs consistently at 1/500, the issue is with the body.
If it still runs slow, the issue is with the lens.
 
Nomad Z said:
Try taking the battery out of the body. With no battery, the shutter should fire at 1/500 regardless of the setting on the shutter speed dial.

If it runs consistently at 1/500, the issue is with the body.
If it still runs slow, the issue is with the lens.
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Battery out, it’s still running slow... lens it is! I guess there’s not much that can be done about it other than an expensive repair?
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
Battery out, it’s still running slow... lens it is! I guess there’s not much that can be done about it other than an expensive repair?
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Have you checked that the T setting switch on the lens is working properly?
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
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These paler ones look like it could be extreme overexposure. Colour negative can handle a lot of exposure, but it has its limits. Here's one below that I seriously overdid the exposure on and it too turned pale and had weird patterns/marks. UK Film Lab scanned the image and they commented that it was so overexposed that they couldn't do any more to save it. I also include below it a properly exposed image from a few minutes later in the same light in the same place for comparison.

Roll 438 (5 of 12).jpg
Roll 438 (9 of 12).jpg


Tom Pinchenzo said:
Battery out, it’s still running slow... lens it is! I guess there’s not much that can be done about it other than an expensive repair?
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I had Miles Whitehead service my Bronica PS 80mm f/2.8 for the SQ series which had stopped working. I think it cost about £60 or so about four or five years ago.
 
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Tom Pinchenzo said:
It's on the A setting. Should I test to see whether the T setting works??
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Apologies for the dodgy phone photo, but here's the section from the Bronica book, particularly the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs. Has to be worth shifting it a couple of times to see?

20200116_220611_resized-tp.jpg
 
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