Free Camera

Off I went, shopping, for 2nd hand gear again.

I am a wide-angle guy, at least this is what I love for use in street-photography. Having browsed the local stores for a while, I found a Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 (first generation) for just shy of 200 Euros. Actually, the lens was not listed individually; to be precise, the lens was not listed at all. What was listed was a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3, which the 14mm lens attached.
Interestingly enough, another store had the lens itself listed for 200 Euros, i.e. the same price.

You guessed it, I took the one that came with a free camera attached.

The use of the 14mm lens is rather obvious, it will go into my OM-D outfit; this is what I bought it for.

Now, what can be done with the Lumix GF3? The GF3 is a first generation MFT camera with a 12 Mpix sensor. The camera is trimmed to be as small as possible, minimal controls. It is not meant for the prosumer, that's for sure. At least is shoots in RAW, that's a plus.
At its time, the GF3 was the smallest interchangeable lens camera. That title was taken by Pentax with their Q-system not too long thereafter. However, that might actually set the theme of my use of the GF3.

Some of my favorite street-photos where taken with an Olympus PEN E-PM2 and an Olympus 15mm body cap lens (BLC-15). In comparison to the GF3, the E-PM2 is relatively big. Consequently, it might be actually a good idea to fit a BCL-15 to the GF3. After all, the 15mm BCL would be close to the 14mm lens I closed the deal for.
Of course, the GF3 needs to be set to shoot w/o lens, since the BCL-15 does not have electronics built in. Other settings might need revision as to get the best out of the combo.
First shots promise big time fun using the GF3 with a BCL-15.

4x5 Press Kit

What a nice day! My genuine package arrived today, howling a full 4x5 press camera kit to me, including a case, 10+ film holders, a flash and that came in a fitting case! And yes, this cost me just over US$150.
The images on the bay showed some corrosion... for that price, who cares? Actually, the film holders alone would have been worth the purchase.

To be honest, the camera seems to be missing some bits and bops. Nothing vital however.

At first, the shutter was all frozen up due to corrosion. I took some forceful persuasion to get the T setting to work. I continue on B, with decent force and some patience. Some tries later, I got the shorter time operational, so, from s/400 to s/10 where up fine. So, the 2 higher speed gears are up and running now. Still., the lower speed gear seems to giving me attitude.
Some playing got s/5 going fine.
However, there are still 2 speeds not going smoothly: half second and one second.
Contrary to my earlier Graflex shutter fix, this time it seems that I do not have to disassemble the shutter and re-grease all the gears.

However, with that kit, it is not all smooth sailing. This kit employs a Graphlock back, which depends on springs. Said springs are in this model corroded too, and hence, do not show the prompt springy action you will need for operating the camera smoothly.

Also, there seems to be some fungus on the outer surfaces of the rear lens group. The front group appears to have suffered from a quick clean (hopefully w/o any damage).

Next steps for me:

• clean the lens groups
• clean the ground glass
• replace some lost screw
• make sure the bellow is tight
• make a new hand strap
• remove corrosion from and grease all springs
• fix an electronic flash into the flash unit

All in all, this was another XMAS-Xperience today!

OMG the NX mini

As a street photographer, never in my life, I could imagine that a selfie camera grows to my heart as quickly as easily. And here it is, the Samsung NX mini, the ultimate selfie camera, and I am a fan boy by now!
To be honest, I bought the camera (with the 9-27mm kit lens) when it was at sale, just for the Lightroom 5 licence which came with it. Actually, I was prepare to sell the camera for cheap and keep the LR5 licence. It turned out that I kept the licence and the ultimate selfie camera.

Why am I calling this camera "the ultimate selfie camera"?
Well, there are 2 obvious reasons:

1. it powers up when the display is flipped up to 180 degrees
2. it comes with 2 lenses covering 9mm (equivalent to 24mm on 135 film)

There are more indicators for the camera being the ultimate selfie camera:

• very small form-factor
• various selfie trigger modes using gesture detection
• "stylish" colors
• the 9mm pancake prime lens does not even allow for a lens cap

You that you have seen me writing 9mm twice, you might ask yourself, that the deal with that focal length is. On a 1" sensor, that would be equivalent to a wide angle of 24mm on 135 film, which is a pretty wide angle perspective. When taking selfies that means that with the your arm extended, you still get something of your surroundings in the shot.

It also means that camera shake does not really blur up your shot as much with slower shutter speeds.

Another factor, besides the lenses, would be the color the camera is available in. I choose mine to be brown. Actually, I do not like the color at all... however, the color is dim and makes me look like a hipster type tourist... When I pull up the camera, people just ignore me. What more can you ask for?!

The small form factor speaks for itself, I figure.

The immediate purchase to fit the kit to my needs was the 9mm pancake prime! And this lens did not disappoint! The NX mini with the 9mm prime installed is thin enough to fit into my Jeans' pockets effortlessly. Not having to care about a lens cap, or extending the lens (like one needs to do with the 9-27mm zoom) the camera is ready for shooting in a few seconds. And again, with such a device, no matter how close you are, nobody takes you seriously as a photographer (unless you act strangely, of course), still the image quality of the 1" sensor is good enough to publish... in particular since the camera is able to write RAW-files.

The image stabilized zoom I have not used much... here and there... it is small enough to fit in any pocket, so I had it with me a lot. Again, it did not see a lot of action.

The latest purchase, I could not resist, was the 17mm image stabilized f/1.8 "normal lens" (about 50mm in 135 terms). A hard purchase it was, I can tell! First I ordered it locally, after a month, the seller reimbursed my money. I tried Samsung locally... item unavailable... I tried Samsung globally... no luck. Finally, I found a seller in the UK who had a single specimen... which I bought.

BTW, the process of locating this particular lens took about 4 months. The costs for the lens were about the cost for the camera w/ the kit zoom lens.

Yesterday, the precious 17mm f/1.8 arrived.

First tests showed that the lens was not only worth the wait but also the money! When shot wide open, the bokeh is adorable! Image stabilization does a great job shooting handheld with the shutter open for 1 second (technique: exhale first, press shutter, inhale when the shutter is closed).

Some features I do not like about the NX mini:

• no battery charger provided
• charges via USB only
• microUSB
• expensive lenses having plastic bayonets
• no PC-sync or hot shoe connectors
• no remote shutter release
• WiFi controls limited

Some stuff I really like:

• touch shutter release
• full manual mode
• manual focus difficult to change (*)
• flip-up screen from 0 to 180 degrees
• leaf shutters in lenses
• auto ISO in manual mode

Why is any of this relevant?

1. When you waiting for a shot in front a of setup, the lens way open, you want to take the shot with just pointing the finger on the point of focus.
2. You might want to be in total control of your depth of field and the motion blur.
3. Once focused, you want to be able to rely of the hyper-focal distance set.
4. Looking down rather than towards your subject might conceal your intentions.
5. Leaf shutters a fast, don't create much shake or noise.
6. When DoF and motions blur dictate the shot, amplification (ISO) should take care of the correct exposure.

Up to now, the Samsung NX mini was the camera I expected the least from... however, the camera delivered beyond my wildest expectations, in particular with the 17mm lens.

OMG, why is the NX mini 17mm soooo hard to get?!

Samsung, what is going on? Could be best product of the year.... but only if costumers can buy the product w/o tremendous efforts.

Vintage Lens - Rapid Aplanat f/8-f/64

The vintage 13x18 (cm) camera, I recently bought of ebay seemed to have suffered from moisture a lot.
While the camera is still ok, the plate holder is really warped.
The lens (Rapid Aplanat) was also suffering from the moisture too, having developed severe fungus. Have a look:

front view

rear view

The lens can be taken apart, in the same way as many other larger format lenses: the front and rear groups can be screwed of the lens barrel.

the lens taken apart

one of the groups

The barrel still retains the iris. In my case, the iris was really stiff. Cleansing with several passes of lighter fluid, followed by some petroleum jelly and more lighter fluid, seen to have loosen up the iris sufficiently.

the diaphragm at f/64

Pictures of clean lenses are boring, hence, I decided to not show any.
I wiped down the front and rear surfaces of the front and rear groups with alcohol using fresh a q-tip for each of the surfaces. Said wiping down is to be performed in a meandering fashion, starting from the middle of the lens.

My Rapid Aplanat is now as clean as clean can be. There are no visible traces of the fungus left.

Next step: make a plate (film/paper) holder.

eBay Bug Bit Again

Yep, I have been staying away from eBay for some time. However, the temptation to check it our was too great, so, I gave it another look.

Since a long time, I have been into alternative methods of photography. It might not be that obvious from this blog, other than me writing about paper negatives.

Today, in eBay, I took yet another step towards old skool picture taking. I won an auction on an old wooden LF camera with a lens, a film holder and a few copying frames. I spent about €220 including shipment... Can't wait to hold the camera in my hands.
I am sure that I will have to do some work on the stuff, the bellows looked pretty dirty (mold?). I figure the wood to get some TLC too. I hope the lens is clear, although, I am prepared to take it apart and refurbish it myself.

This could be my first serious step into the direction of wet plate and tin types.

Going Old Skool, kinda

It has been a while since I posted last on this blog. Having been busy giving classes and clinics, which do in fact take some time to prepare, I was running short on time.

In the course of this blog, you have seen me liking Fuji cameras, e.g. the X100S, but also slowly getting the hang of mirror-less systems. A few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and bought a Fuji X-Pro1 'special edition' kit with 2 lenses and a camera case. I figure, the 'special' offer just intends to sell the stock off, so that the X-Pro2, which is announced for fall 2015, wont have a competitor.
Personally, I hesitated, the EVF of the X-Pro1 is considered being not really good, however, the hybrid-viewfinder, which I love so much on the X100S, is brilliant!
One thing speaks for the X-Pro1: the possibility to adapt lenses of various kinds to the camera. This fact finally bought me into the system.

Adapters
Before even thinking of adapting lenses, one need to obtain adapters... In my case, those where 2 different ones:

1. M42 - FX
2. EF - FX

The first option is somewhat obvious. You may know that I own a decent amount of good M42 glass, e.g.:

• 55mm f/1.4 Cosinon
• 85mm f/2 Jupiter-9
• 135mm f/2.8 Pentacon

With the 1.5 crop factor the the APS-C sensor, the Jupiter-9 and the Cosinon make brilliant portrait lenses.

Now you may ask, why EOS EF lenses? Most of the EF lenses are 'by wire', hence, a cheap passive adapter would not be any good. And, I cannot agree more with your doubts. However, I actually own some more wacky lenses for the Canon system, i.e.:

• LensBabies' system
• Samyang 24mm T-S lens

all of which are entirely manually controlled lenses.
So, while the M42 adapter takes care of all my prime lenses, the EF adapter enables me to use my creative lenses on the Fuji camera system.

Adjusting the Focus on a MIR-38B 65mm

Lately, I got myself into the KIEV 88 medium format system.
Don't ask me why....
OK, you asked, this is why: 6x6 is a square format, simplifying my photography, I thought I should give square format a chance, removing one more parameter, allowing to focus more on composition.

Right, so, that's what happened: I got this very nice kit with a KIEV 88 and 3 lenses (80mm, 65mm and 45mm).
2 of the lenses were just right. Meaning that one was not OK...
Guess what, that lens that was not OK was the one I planned to use the most... the 65mm wide-angle.

The MIR-38B 65mm did not focus infinity! Actually, it only focused up to 8m. As a secondary problem, the "DoF-preview"-lever was kinda dragging.
When purchasing the kit, I was not informed about this, however, I did not expect to receive a perfect kit either, seen the many reports about the poor quality control done on equipment of such kind.

At closer inspection, it was clear that some previous owner discovered the problem that this lens has (had). Traces of (unprofessional) attempts to open the lens are obvious.

The following image is not mine... I got it from the following link:
http://digichar.com/imgs/a/e/d/e/i/ussr_soviet_lens_mir_38_b_3___565mm_medium_format_kiev_60__6c__88cm_pentacon_six_3_lgw.jpg

On this photo, you do see some screws on the back of the lens, but if your lens is just out of focus range... don't touch any of those!

If the focus range is the problem of your lens, just (carefully) remove the rubber-sleeve from the focus ring... get it out of the way!
You will now find 3 tiny screws on the focus ring. Gently loose those, you don't want to unscrew those. Just loosen those a little.
Now, you want to mount the lens onto your camera.
Slight pumping back and forth action with the focus ring doing a left-right motion, while looking through the view finder, will get you some idea how to further proceed.
Once you figured out what I am talking about, you want to use the split-image indicator to focus a very distant object.
You done that, lock those screws again.

Now you want to unlock the screws of the DoF and focus indicator ring ans adjust the red dot to whatever position your infinity focus is.
Lock down everything.

If the focus position was you only problem (which is very likely), you're done!

With my lens, more things were wrong. The DoF-preview stuck.
Actually, I had to remove the 3 screws you see on the back of the lens. This removes a plastic shield.
Further, 3 long (!) screws of the back of the barrel will need to go out. This will remove the aperture selector mechanism, including a tiny steel ball, which you have to watch out for!
When removing the barrel, you will hear a click, which is the aperture tension mechanism.
In my lens, the preview lever was badly bent (and partly sheared off) on the inside. With a pair of pliers, I carefully bent the lever to a functional position.

I managed to get my MIR-38B 65mm lens into fully functionally shape. I hope that my little howto helps you to deal with your very own MIR lens.