Yes. You get the scans right away and the negs come home in negative sleeves a week later.
I just went to the lab. They haven’t scanned the B&W yet. Good thing I needed to make the 50-mile round-trip to town anyway.
Even when I shot with pro cameras in 135 and 120/220 roll film, I never had just one brand of cameras in my array. Some brands and some individual cameras were just better at what I wanted to do for that job or that photo idea or that trip. You can see why I was always trading and reselling and buying used models.
And yet, one of my faves was my Minox 35GL. Since it was the size of a pack of cigs, I had it on me almost constantly from the day I bought it.
I have about a dozen and a half 35mm cameras, comprising four brands. I sold my first camera and my second camera, and have replaced them.
I always wanted a Minox subminiature camera. My mom had a Minolta 16 in the early-to-mid-'70s. Wouldn’t mind having that, but it’s long gone.
As for sub-mini, the results always disappointed me when I borrowed a Minox from the store. Smaller negs than a 110. I owned a Minolta 16 that I had to re-spool my own film, since the supply had dried up by the time I had one. Still have it sitting in a display.
The Minox 35GL used 35mm and I usually had it loaded with Fujichrome 100. Guess focus on a very well marked lens, and the exposure settings were often close to perfect.
Another great very small camera I still have (tho it doesn;t work anymore) is the Olympus XA. Has a real rangefinder (superimposed orange-ish focus area), but I found it was hard to focus due to the short rangefinder base.
After i recover from my shoulder surgery, I’m digging out my Agfa 120 folder and shooting some B&W.
Thanks for starting and continuing this thread!
I was just thinking about ratios today. When I did the post-high-school-traipsing-around-Europe thing, I think I shot about 150 photos on reversal (slide) film (on a Canon AE-1 Program with a 50mm lens, if you must know). Of those, there were only four that I felt were worthy of printing (11"x17", I think). Nowadays, with digital photography, people shoot hundreds of images and they can post all of them on Facebook at no cost. With film, you have to be economical. I’ve been shooting 35mm negative film, and have yet to receive any results. I wonder how many of those I will feel like sharing?
I have one (Minox-B), with the flash accessory. The absolute coolest thing about that camera is the snake chain. It has beads on it at different measurements, so that the camera can be used to copy documents.
I’ve heard a statement to the effect that with a digital camera you take 1000 shots to get five good images, on 35 mm you shoot 24 frames to get five good images, and in large format you shoot five sheets to get five good images.
That’s a winner!
I normally don’t click on ads, but this caught my eye. (All of the crap from the question mark onward removed from URL.)
I bought an AE-1 T-shirt.
Just now, or previously?
Just now.
Let me know how it looks. I could go for the Olympus OM-1 (1973). (And the Pentax K1000, and the Pentax Spotmatic, and the Canon AE-1 Program… I’ve had my eye on a Nikon F3. Too bad they don’t have a black FM2 shirt.)
The Yashica Mat-124G arrived from Japan today, much more quickly than I expected. It’s too dim in the house to play with it. I put a battery in it, and the needle does move. Again, I’ll need to look at it in daylight. I looked at the manual I’d downloaded to ensure that the meter turns off when the viewfinder is closed. I moved the empty reel from the feed side to the take-up side. I played with the ASA setting, the shutter speed, and the aperture. I cocked it and clicked it a few times, and it’s much quieter than my 35mm SLRs. I thought I’d put a vintage-looking ‘rope’ strap on it, but the camera requires a buckle-type strap. The rope strap fits over swivels that are on 35mm SLRs. I did order a Yashica case from KEH Camera, and it has a strap.
I think I’m taking Friday off. That might be a good day to try developing the roll of B&W I shot with the OM-2n a couple of weeks ago.
ETA: I’m currently watching a video about the Yashica Mat-124G, and the guy is using the same rope-style strap I have on my Pentax SV. He just put the ‘key rings’ through the lugs. So I can do that if I want to.
So what’s the best camera (system)? I think by now, everybody knows I’m a big fan of Olympus. But… The Nikon FM3a can function at all speeds without a battery. It doesn’t have the advanced metering of the Olympus OM-4, but I like the hybrid-mechanical shutter. I prefer the match needle of the Olympus OM-1/OM-1n to the 3 LED readout of the Nikon FM2n, but the Nikon is the logical companion to the FM3a.
I don’t want to come off as a Nikon fan boy, but I have to be honest. As much as I like the OM-1 and OM-1n and the OM-4, I may have to give the nod to Nikon for my favourite cameras.
Once I use up the film in the Canon AE-1 Program and A-1, I’ll break out the Nikons.
Additional: The Olympus OM-1n that romansperaon gave me has a microscreen focusing screen. Today I received a split-prism screen.
Not that I’ve owned one (I’ve been tempted and awfully close a few times), but I’d vote for the Hasselblad 500 series, prob specifically the 500c/m.
The quality of the lenses, the wide variety of interchangeable components, the precision yet robust construction, the historical significance all factor in for me. Plus medium format is my jam. Price is the down side.
A couple of updates.
I’m still waiting for the B&W I took in for processing… What? Six weeks ago? The negatives have been developed, but they haven’t been scanned yet. I’m definitely using an online developer in the future. I’ll probably send the B&W from our vacation out instead of developing it myself.
I thought I had last Friday off, and I was going to try to develop it; but I didn’t have Friday off. I still need to find the time to watch @minor7flat5 's tutorial and learn how to use the Massive Dev Chart app.
I shot a 36-exposure roll of Fuji 200 on our vacation, and started a second roll. I went out at lunchtime today and exposed some more of it. Still more to go. I have not finished shooting the B&W from our vacation yet.
I noticed that the aperture on the Zenit lens on my Pentax SV wasn’t closing. I don’t know if that’s a peculiarity of Russian lenses, or if it’s just broken. (I took it off of a POS Krasnogorsk camera.) I ordered a 55mm f/1.8 Takumar with an M42 screw mount from an eBay seller in Japan. It arrived today. The aperture works.
Five rolls of Kodak Tri-X 400 film, and five rolls of Kodak Portra 400 film for the Yashica Mat-124G arrived today.
And my own updates…
I only got one good roll out of my perfect Rollei 35 before it developed some kind of sticky shutter issue and the blades randomly don’t close completely. This gave me a blank roll of film a few weeks ago.
So, in preparation for the deep surgery to get the shutter blades out, I decided to buy a “AS IS / FOR PARTS” Rollei 35T that I found. Guy wanted $150 for the not-so-thrashed looking parts camera, so I offered $135 and in three days it was here.
Now for the plot twist: I decided to test it to see if it was in any kind of usable condition, and I found that aside from slow lower-half shutter speeds and some small dents, it works perfectly. I did my naphtha cleanup of the shutter escapement and got it performing decently.
The upshot of this is, I have shot more photos with the “parts only” Rollei 35 T than I did with the perfect estate find Rollei 35.
Here’s 4 shots from yesterday. The two color shots were the Rollei 35 T on Kodak Gold 200. The two B&W shots were on my trusty Pentax 17 half-frame on HP5 Plus.
Even if they might be stylistically bland, they are interesting to look at to see the quality of that tiny collapsible Rollei 40mm lens and to see that the Pentax half-frames on grainy B&W film don’t look like they came straight out of Minecraft.
Hoop (Rollei 35T)
Green and Yellow (Rollei 35T)
Goal! (Pentax 17)
Low Headroom (Pentax 17)
@Johnny_L.A , you have a Rollei 35, don’t you? How do you like shooting it?
Nice pictures.
I have an Olympus 35 RC. I took it with us to meet some friends a while back, and it was fun. I did have to set the ISO to 200 for the 400 film though, because I was using a 1.5v battery instead of a 1.3v. I also bought a Canonet GIII QL17 a while back, but I haven’t gotten around to shooting anything with it yet.