If you want a cheap introduction to rangefinder cameras and can’t afford a Leica then get one of these. The family of Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder cameras are an absolute bargain. From its first incarnation in 1966 to its sad demise in the early 70′s it sported a superb 45mm f1.7 Yashinon (Color) lens, aperture priority, a stepless automatic shutter with speeds from 30 seconds to 1/500s.
They don’t make the original batteries for the Electros anymore but there’s a very good replacement made by the aptly named “Yashica Guy” who makes an adapter which does the job perfectly. You can pick them up directly from his website here http://www.yashica-guy.com/document/battery.html and the website is also a great resource for Electros and other Yashica cameras.

So although the Electro is a little on the large size the quality of its fast f1.7 lens makes it a great addition to any camera collection.

So these can picked up for very little money on a well known auction site and they are and excellent introduction to rangefinders and you can’t help but be impressed with the quality of the images it produces.

Now, when I was a lad September was conkers time, if you waited til October all the good conkers would be gone. I walked through a local park the other day and the ground was strewn with them, what’s up with kids nowadays. I blame the health and safety brigade, ffs get a grip.

The Bronica ETRS is a medium format SLR camera with interchangeable lenses, backs and viewfinders and somehow it manages to disappoint in all it’s guises. Although it’s light and versatile I never really got to like this camera. I bought it on a whim thinking I would make use of it’s portability rather than carrying round a square format TLR like the Mamiya C220 or even  the mighty Mamiya RZ67 which weighs more than an average house-brick but I just never took to it’s plasticky convenience and the 6 x4.5 negative it produces.

Now don’t get me wrong the Bronica has lots of things to recommend it, there are a good range of cheap, quality lenses, it’s light not too big, all sorts of accessories for not much money so what’s not to like?

I ran a roll of  HP5+ through it and quite like the images I got, but the whole thing just leaves me a bit cold, it’s got no soul.

It’s funny how some cameras just feel right and some  don’t, it makes no sense and there’s no logic to it, the ETRS seems to offer so much, but ultimately it’s too big to be really portable  and the negs are too small to be ‘proper’  medium format.

These were shot on Ilford HP5+ and as usual processed in Rodinal (1+25) for  6 minutes at 20 degrees, scanned using a Nikon Coolscan 9000 and tweaked using Lightroom 2.

So although it’s now August in the real world, in my world of 52cameras I lurch into March with two for the price of one. The superfast street machine that is the Ricoh 500 GX and the rather farty sounding moped that is the Konica C35. Both are small semi-automatic  35mm rangefinders.

TBH neither of them are sporty or farty but that’s the problem when you give  your cameras names that sound like motorbikes and mopeds.

The reason that they are being posted together is that I split one film between the two of them, the first 16 shots taken on the Ricoh and the rest of the roll on the Konica. I loaded it up with cheap Lucky 100 b&w film and set off from my flat in West London to go and have a look at David Bailey’s  East End exhibition that was being held at Compressor House, in Docklands, next to Royal Albert DLR.

The exhibition was just a small collection from 50 years’ worth of photographs taken by the East End born photographer.
Many of the photographs on display are large-scale prints and document the changing face of the characters and streets of east London.
David Bailey said: “London’s East End is in my DNA and I’m thrilled to be able to return to my roots in Newham. Now the rest of the world will focus on an area I’ve been looking at all my life.”

So this one roll film documents my journey from the west of London to the east and includes a sneaky view of the exhibition of Bailey’s work who I have to admit was one of the reason’s for getting into photography, I suppose if I’d thought it through I could have done a proper homage to Bailey and used an Olympus Trip, it was this advert that really made him a household name in the UK in the late 70′s/early 80′s. For those of you too young to remember have a look here http://vimeo.com/21434174 and yes that is Phil Daniels pre Quadrophenia as the photographer’s assistant.

Anyway back to the reason for typing all this  blurb. The Ricoh 500 GX first appeared in 1976 and it sits very nicely in the hand, it’s an excellent street camera. It’s small and very discrete. I’ve borrowed most of the technical information for this from the Camerapedia site, quite simply one of the best resources for information on old cameras there is, more info here http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ricoh_500GX

The

Ricoh 500 GX

specifications.

This is a handy rangefinder camera with fixed lens made in Taiwan byRicoh. Its special feature is an easy-to-use multi-exposure facility.

• Type: rangefinder camera with electronic aperture control for shutter priority operation option
• Films: 35mm with speeds of 25 – 800 ASA
• Lens: Rikenon 1:2.8/40mm
• Shutter: Speeds 1/8 – 1/500 sec.
• Aperture: 1/2.8 – 1:16
• Exposure: manual shutter speed selection, aperture controlled by CdS-meter or manually
• Viewfinder: optical finder, superimposed rangefinder, parallax correction marks, “M” for manual operation visible, and the exposure meter’s needle shows f-stop value or works as battery control
• Focusing: manual focusing with help of coupled rangefinder
• Battery: 1,35 volt mercury battery PX675
• Dimensions: 111×71×56 mm
• Weight: 420 g

It’s not the most sophisticated of cameras but it has the best name by far, imagine being summoned to a meeting at the  Agfa creative round table in Munchen in 1954 and asking the question “so, was wir gehend, unser spätestes Angebot zu nennen sind” or ”so what are we going to call our latest offering”  (I have no idea whether these translations make any sense at all but I have utmost faith in Babel Fish) and some bright spark says “lassen Sie uns es nennen das Geklapper” or “let’s call it the Clack!” Of course the Americans didn’t get it and insisted they call it the Click, ffs click, what’s that got to do with photography?

Like so many of my cameras I bought this on an ebay whim, the product of that dangerous combination of alcohol, a late night and a little spare cash in my Paypal account.

Basically it’s a pressed metal box with a fake snake skin cover. The height of technical sophistication it has 1 shutter speed, approximately 1/30th of a second and a B setting, 2 apertures which are something like f11 & f12.5 and according to Camerapedia http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Agfa_Clack it’s supposed to have a yellow filter but I’m buggered if I can see it.

Also according to camerapedia site The best feature is the curved film plane. There’s no pressure plate in the back of the camera; the film isn’t supposed to be flattened. The camera body is oval shaped when viewed from above, and the film is led around the curved back of the camera to create maximum sharpness: an intelligent solution to create a low-cost camera of decent quality. 

It has the quaintly named zone focusing system with two steps. 1-3m (3-10 feet) with a built-in close-up lens and 3m (10 feet)-infinity, which pretty much equates to mountains and everything else.

The Clack is still a very useable camera, it uses the readily available 120 film, and it shoots very nice big 6×9 negatives which will give you 8 shots on a roll. I usually try and use something like a 50asa film in it but you can stretch that a little. So if you want to try a 1950′s box camera make some room in your life for a Clack, what’s not to like?

Here’s a couple, the boat and the Red Lion in Ealing were both shot on Ilford PanF+, processed by me in Rodinal (1+25) for 6 minutes at 20 ° and scanned using a Nikon Coolscan 9000, with minor tweaks in Lightroom V2.

There’s also lots more info on the Clack and lots of other cameras here on Alfred Klomp’s web pages. http://cameras.alfredklomp.com/clack/

This is quite possibly my favourite camera in the collection, it’s an Ebner, made of Bakelite in Stuttgart, Germany between 1934-35. It’s a quirky folding camera that takes 6×4.5 on 120 roll film. It’s a model  304, I know this because  http://www.ukcamera.com/classic_cameras/ebner1.html tells me that with a Meyer Trioplan 4,5/75 lens and a Pronto S shutter it can’t be any other model.

It is without doubt the most appealing of cameras, it’s all chrome and Bakelite with interesting knobs, levers and a fold-away viewfinder. There are two red windows on the rear of the camera and as I’m not that clued up on old cameras I just assumed that this gave me the option of different film, but no it’s because the Ebner produces 6×4.5 negatives so you line up the number on the back of the film with the first window take your shot then wind on until you can see the same number in the second window,  all genius and wonderful German efficiency.

I was given this Ebner camera last year by my friend Alice, it belonged to her late uncle and had been stored in her parents loft for a good few years. There was a roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan in the camera when she gave it to me which I nearly exposed  when I opened the back but I noticed fairly quickly and managed to save it. As I wasn’t sure on processing film that was likely to be at least 40 years old I sent it to The Darkroom in Cheltenham to be processed and these are the results. Neither Alice or her parents have any idea who these boys were but her uncle was a scout leader for many years so it’s very likely that this was one of the camping trips. What I do know is that  it dates  sometime after 1968, as that’s the year of the Ford Escort in the background.

The return of the self portrait.

Of all my old cameras I’ve used this one the most, it’s a folder which helps, it’s quirky and it produces very nice results. The Meyer Trioplan 4,5/75 lens is still pretty good considering it’s nearly 80 years old and the Pronto S shutter seems reasonably accurate even on the often suspect slower speeds. I’ve tried it with various b&w films including Ilford Delta and Fuji Acros and they all perform very well.

My biggest worry is that by using it so much I could damage it, Bakelite is not the strongest material known to man and I suspect 80 year old Bakelite is even more prone to cracking then when it was new. Until that fateful day comes I’ll continue to use and enjoy it.

I’ve given up with the ‘week‘ prefix, I have now decided  to use the ‘camera‘ prefix, at least then I don’t feel like I’m quite so far behind.

So Camera 7 is the Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera. These are the specifications for this multi-format camera, cunningly lifted from the Zero Image website:-
The emphasis with this pinhole camera is versatility. It is a 4-in-one camera, and the film format can be set to 6×4.5, 6×6, 6×7 or 6×9. Simply select your preference before the film is loaded.
Specifications
• Material: Teak Wood
• Weight: 328 gm
• Pinhole Size: 0.18mm Zone Plate (Optional): 40mm with 11 zones

Mine is the Deluxe version so it comes with a spirit level and cable release adapter, these aren’t essential but they do make the camera easier to use.  I love this camera, it’s made from teak and brass, is very tactile and just an absolute joy to use as long as you can count in ‘elephants’. Although this can shoot in a variety of formats from 6×4.5 to 6×9 I tend to stick with the 6×6 format, there’s something about that square shape that really works for and I think suits the pinhole camera. Although it’s a simple concept I think it takes a while to get the best out of the pinhole and I’m really only just starting to get the hang of it.

This is the shot I took for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, all photo’s had to be taken on the last Sunday of April, so I loaded the Zero Image up with outdated Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 and  took a drive down to West Wittering on the south coast of England, typically the weather wasn’t perfect but least there was some sunshine trying its best to burn through the cloud and the rain held off for long enough to grab a few shots before it all turned into a normal English spring day.

It’s always a challenge to use the pinhole, experience should tell you what the shots should look like but I still just guess and hope for the best. I know roughly what the framing should be and I use a lightmeter and the exposure calculator to give me a shutter speed but then it’s me with the cable release and counting elephants, (for those of you that saw the 1981  film Gregory’s Girl you’ll know what I’m on about). So it’s all a bit hit and miss and that’s what makes using a pinhole so much fun.

I’ve had my Zero Image 2000 pinhole camera for a couple of years now, I bought it from the lovely people at Silverprint in London. Some say they are a little pricey but they are nicely made, very easy to use and look beautiful, besides it was my birthday and deserved a treat!

Like most of the colour film I’ve shot so far this was processed by The Darkroom in Cheltenham, scanned by me on a Nikon Coolscan 900 and tweaked in Lightroom 2.

As I suspected I am now way behind in the quest to use one camera every week for a year but hey, I was never going to stick to it so who cares?

Anyway, this week’s offering is the Canon Canonet S,  it’s a great rangefinder camera and I bought this one from a fellow member of the Talk Photography forum and although it did work after a fashion the slower shutter speeds were a bit hit and miss so I sent it off to Miles Whitehead  for a thorough CLA. It came back very much improved with everything snappy and responsive as it should be. Canon only made these for a very short time in 1964 it was then quickly superseded by the Canonet QL.

Here’s some basic technical details, unashamedly borrowed from the Canon Camera Museum website. It has a very useable Canon SE 45mm f/1.7 lens, a Copal SV; B, 1 to 1/500 sec. Built-in self-timer. Flash sync enabled with M-X switchable German socket.

 Coincidence rangefinder integrated with reversed Galilean viewfinder (I have no idea what this means). Automatic parallax correction with projected frames and marked finder. 0.7x magnification. Viewfinder bottom features aperture scale (f/1.7 – f/16) and match needle correct exposure window/exposure warning indicator.

Needless to say the Canonet S is a bit better than the Canonet and, according to Canon, not quite as good as the Canonet QL that follwed it, although the QL stands for ‘quick loading’ I couldn’t see what made it any quicker to load than the S.

Anyway, I think that’s enough of the technical info, It’s boring me and I’m typing it.

So, I loaded it up with a roll of Ilford XP2, I’m not normally a fan of these C41 process b&w films, I always thought they lacked depth, sublety and contrast but to be fair I think the last time I used some was some XP1 in 1990 so I can only assume they have tweaked the emulsion some time over the last 22 years.

I feel a little guilty as I didn’t go too far from home to test this rangefinder, a series of shots nearly all within a mile of my house.

One of the things I like about rangefinders and this one partiularly is they are really quiet to use, no great ‘slap’ of a mirror like an SLR, just a gentle click makes it so unobtrusive, they make a great ‘street’ camera although to be fair it’s not the sort of thing I shoot.

And finally, the return of the obligatory self-portrait, I have shamefully missed this out of the last couple of cameras and I’m glad to have reinstated it for the Canonet S.

A truly complicated camera. Bought relatively cheaply from ebay. The good price was probably because the owner wanted it to be collected from a disreputable part of South London. As it turned out he was a very respectable fellow, very educated and keen to educate me on the finer points of this beautiful camera, for which I was grateful. The 985 Multiformat’s virtue is versatility. It can be used as a rangefinder / press camera with a rollfilm back, or you can fit a ground glass screen for composing, to be replaced with either a sheet film holder or roll film back. The rangefinder is a separate viewfinder next to the main one. It has a large set of camera movements too – you can adjust the back as well as the lens which can be moved in various axes: pan, tilt, sideways and up, as well as being able to drop the bed for wide-angle use. This example came with a non-standard Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S 5.6 100mm lens. The non-standard aspect is important, because the rangefinder is controlled by an interchangeable cam that corresponds to the focal length of the lens in use. In this case there were cams for 105mm, 150mm and 65mm, so the 105mm was used but I think that purists might wince at this.

I had the Graflex 120 6×9 roll film back and ground glass screen. The back was easy-ish to load but you have to pay attention to the position of the exposure counter as if it starts in the wrong position it will not allow you to wind on. Focussing using the rangefinder was not confidence inspiring. It would not register infinity or indeed any distance correctly, though tweaking some of the adjuster cams seemed to help. So focussing was mostly done with the glass screen. This involved removing the back. clamping on the screen, opening the lens up and then throwing a blanket over my head and camera while pressing a magnifier loupe to the screen to focus the very dim and very upside down image. Then replacing the screen with the roll film back and remembering to close the lens before removing the dark slide, setting the aperture and taking the shot. I found this whole rigmarole a pain in the arse. I can’t compose upside down, let alone with a virtually invisible image while sweating under a flipping blanket.

The idea of the movements was my main draw to the camera, but I am not sure what I aimed to gain from them. If the use of the camera had been anything other than painfully ungainly and slow, I might have had more chance to experiment but as it was, the idea of using the bloody thing just put me off. I took several shots with immoderate amounts of movements but I am not sure that they benefited from them.

It was soon apparent that this was not the camera for me. Especially as I take most of my photos at night. I only tried this once but should point out that my digital kit consists of a camera, bag, lenses and tripod that I can use pretty much in the dark just by touch. In fact, the dark, rain,snow, gale force winds. Chilly but no huge problem. Not so the Horseman. Too many little knobs, too hard to load the film, too dark through the awful screen.

So I have sold the Horseman, with precious few images to show for it, though a tidy profit. These cameras need an owner with patience and planning, a vision of the finished image and all that sort of stuff. Someone cleverer that me. It did take some very sharp 6×9 shots, but so did my Mamiya Universal, without the aggro.

I have had a soft spot for Detrolas since the day many, many years ago that my Dad emerged from our loft with a Detrola G in his hand and gave it to me. I was about 14. The thing had belonged to my Uncle Harry, who had brought it back from the USA some time before. Along with the camera there was a Focal Guide to Photography, that taught me all I needed to know about stuffing 127 film into it and guessing exposures. Luckily there was also a Box Brownie and a Bencini Comet to keep my siblings happy. Though in proper big brotherly fashion I seem to have those now, as well.

Apparently Detrola were principally a radio and record-player manufacturer based in Detroit, and only diversified into cameras during 1939-1940. This came as a bit of a shock to me as I have always seen them for sale, even over here in blighty. They must have gone hell-for-leather during those 2 years.

So I bought the HW as my G had lost it’s viewfinder, a very common problem as they weren’t stuck on too well, though annoyingly the HW also had a dodgy viewfinder – only one of the two lenses were in place and the extinction meter (whatever that is) was absent. Bum. I gave it a go, anyway – I wanted to see if the Wollensak lens was any better than the Detrola Anastigmat that the G has. There is a model H that has the Detrola lens, so I assume that the W in HW means Wollensak lens. The only significant differences between the G and the H is the addition of the extinction meter next to the viewfinder. Or not in this case.

I loaded up with some £7.00 a roll EFKE 127 film and went for a walk along the river Lea. Framing was total guess work and totally awful, it turned out. I was going to use the trusty Focal Guide guesstimate for exposure, chickened out and used the Gossen, which in fact vindicated my guess. Tho I would say that, wouldn’t I?

The shutter was very positive and showed no sign of sticking at slow speeds, and the lens is very clean. Lovely. To use it you pop out the lens by turning the focus lever to the point at which it can noisily spring out. To collapse it again you have to align the lugs with the notches, push in and then move the focus lever. You get 2 portrait, half-frame shots per frame, so 16 shots on the roll.

I wasn’t too impressed by the Efke – despite being well within date it was very curly, perhaps due to the tiny spindle, and it turned my dev pink, which scared me. Actually I think it is the 127 format that I don’t like. Despite being ubiquitous for while, the skinny reel is probably the cause of the curl, you only get a couple of shots cos it is only a couple of feet of film, and the spacing is rubbish because of the crappy 2-window affair on the back of the camera that I was rushing too much. And it is 7 quid.

My results were somewhat blurry. I am going to have to try harder. The framing was terrible, but what did I expect. I guess I was more considered and earnest in me youth, as I am sure my success rate was much higher then. Perhaps. I don’t know, I think I expected these to be fabulous – the camera being utterly familiar and yet not so. Looks nice tho..

OK, so this is me doing 2 reviews on the trot of Ricoh cameras. This is not because I am a Ricoh fan – I have a deep dislike of most of their recent digital offerings, but I have been surprised by the quality of their older kit. The Auto Half is brilliant fun and made me prick up my ears to old school Ricoh.  Hence the purchase of this: the Singlex TLS. This is a lot of 35mm camera for your (not much) money: a rather stylish brick of M42, nod to Pentax, angular, muscular coolness. My example is very clean, positive and belies it’s age. Unless you check the foam. I was going to replace it, but didn’t ‘cos I am lazy. Here are a bunch of specs courtesy of Camerapedia:

Ricoh Singlex TLS Major Specifications:

• Film Format and Frame Size: 35mm film, 24x36mm.
• Lens Mount: M42 screw-mount
• Exposure meter: CdS with match needle, stop-down metering, on-off switch
• ASA settings 25-1600
• Shutter: Copal Square metal blade shutter. 1sec – 1/1000sec +B.
• PC X and M Sync terminals, optional accessory shoe
• Battery: Originaly 625 1.35v mercury
• Dimensions: 147 x 95 x 50mm
• Weight: 720gr body only

The shutter speed dial is rather unconventionally placed on the front and needs you to take your eye from the camera to change it. The viewfinder has a centre-needle meter affair that seemed to almost work – but very slowly, activated via a switch similar to a Spotmatic. Actually, the self-timer looked Spotmatic-y and the removable hotshoe too. I wasn’t convinced by the slo-mo reaction of the meter, so I used a handheld meter for these shots.

This M42 lump was partly an excuse to use another recent purchase – the awesome Auto Yashinon Zoom 75-230mm f4.5. Auto/manual version, two-touch, clean as a whistle, tasty. The trouble with big fat zooms is that you need a big fat space to use them. My back garden simply wasn’t doing it as the minimum focus distance is 2.5 meters. So I loaded up with HP5 and set off to Hollow Ponds again, armed with a monopod just to make me extra-conspicuous. I was a tad self-conscious wielding the monster and there was a certain amount of staring and indeed, hiding from some of the good people of Leytonstone. Except for a bunch of Poles, who happily stood in front of me and laughed to each other while pointing at the Singlex, possibly in admiration but probably not. Paranoid? Yup.

The pics that I ended up with were reassuringly sharp, and the Singlex appeared to be exposing correctly. I had been a bit concerned as the viewfinder was slightly dim at the top of the frame. I have seen this sort of thing before on a Yashica that had lost the mirror stop bumper, so the mirror was sitting too low in the mirror box leading to a dark top of the frame. And mis-focussing as the mirror-screen distance was wrong. But that wasn’t happening here, sigh of relief.

Compared to say, a modern Nikon tele-zoom, the Yashinon was very unsophisticated. And big. Not amazingly sharp, but very usable. If you have muscles and a monopod.

The Singlex itself is rather endearing and I prefer it to my Spotmatic, probably because it is in very good condition. Reassuringly crisp and positive, aside from the meter. So what happened to Ricoh? They were clearly on the ball at some point. Answers on a postcard to…