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This may not be particularly interesting but I wanted to share this.
Short story: I inherited my wife's grandfathers camera. Un-used in 40+ years, it works a treat.
Longer version: My wife never met her grandfather, he passed away just over 40 years ago. Whenever we have visited her grandmother and the bi-annual dusting off of the old vegetable box containing the family photos happens, there is a lot of reminiscing that happens about him, and I always notice that he took some lovely photos. He clearly enjoyed it and took care over composition and framing, much better than the usual disposable holiday snaps that you see in these family boxes.
About this time last year, my wife's mother was having a sort out and came across his old camera that she kept when he passed. Knowing that I use film cameras she offered to post it to me which I took her up on. I don't know much at all about older cameras. I know it's a Zeiss Ikon 6x6 folder. It comes with a little hot shoe viewfinder/meter thing that I can't figure out how to use.
If anyone knows anything further about this camera then please share! It has a date of 1954 written on the inside of the leather case. Initially I thought it might just be a piece to pop on a shelf or put somewhere on my desk as a cool looking retro camera, but I thought I'd best put a roll through it to see if it still operated properly. I purchased a roll of portra 400 knowing that it is quite forgiving if my exposures were off or the shutter speeds were off and the wife and I went out for a walk after work.
It all seemed very odd to do everything on the end of the lens, shutter speed, aperture and focussing. As I had no way of focussing properly I had to just guess distances and f-stops by using the feet/m markers on the front, which proved harder than you'd think. Shutter speeds of 25, 50, 100 and 200 also felt oddly limiting, but understandable from a camera of this age. How we are spoilt today.
I sat on the roll for a few months having forgotten about it with all the craziness going on. But I spotted it in my drawer one evening and packaged it up to send off to the lab. The images are not perfect, and a few of them were because I missed focus, but I must say I am incredibly impressed that it seems to function perfectly well and produces lovely images.
This is also the first time I've shot medium format before. The level of detail in the negative is amazing, though not immediately obvious on here. It almost persuaded me to jump at an RB67 setup from eBay the evening that I had the negs back, but I resisted!
A couple of the better shots are below, one shot of a scene in a location I have photographed quite a few times overlooking a lake in the distance on a warm autumn evening, and the wild ponies charging past was quite special, I quickly set it to 200th SS and guessed the rest to try and capture the moment, it came out okay.
Short story: I inherited my wife's grandfathers camera. Un-used in 40+ years, it works a treat.
Longer version: My wife never met her grandfather, he passed away just over 40 years ago. Whenever we have visited her grandmother and the bi-annual dusting off of the old vegetable box containing the family photos happens, there is a lot of reminiscing that happens about him, and I always notice that he took some lovely photos. He clearly enjoyed it and took care over composition and framing, much better than the usual disposable holiday snaps that you see in these family boxes.
About this time last year, my wife's mother was having a sort out and came across his old camera that she kept when he passed. Knowing that I use film cameras she offered to post it to me which I took her up on. I don't know much at all about older cameras. I know it's a Zeiss Ikon 6x6 folder. It comes with a little hot shoe viewfinder/meter thing that I can't figure out how to use.
If anyone knows anything further about this camera then please share! It has a date of 1954 written on the inside of the leather case. Initially I thought it might just be a piece to pop on a shelf or put somewhere on my desk as a cool looking retro camera, but I thought I'd best put a roll through it to see if it still operated properly. I purchased a roll of portra 400 knowing that it is quite forgiving if my exposures were off or the shutter speeds were off and the wife and I went out for a walk after work.
It all seemed very odd to do everything on the end of the lens, shutter speed, aperture and focussing. As I had no way of focussing properly I had to just guess distances and f-stops by using the feet/m markers on the front, which proved harder than you'd think. Shutter speeds of 25, 50, 100 and 200 also felt oddly limiting, but understandable from a camera of this age. How we are spoilt today.
I sat on the roll for a few months having forgotten about it with all the craziness going on. But I spotted it in my drawer one evening and packaged it up to send off to the lab. The images are not perfect, and a few of them were because I missed focus, but I must say I am incredibly impressed that it seems to function perfectly well and produces lovely images.
This is also the first time I've shot medium format before. The level of detail in the negative is amazing, though not immediately obvious on here. It almost persuaded me to jump at an RB67 setup from eBay the evening that I had the negs back, but I resisted!
A couple of the better shots are below, one shot of a scene in a location I have photographed quite a few times overlooking a lake in the distance on a warm autumn evening, and the wild ponies charging past was quite special, I quickly set it to 200th SS and guessed the rest to try and capture the moment, it came out okay.
