Vintage film cameras

[yokohama]

I blame it all on the Spotmatic not having a film tab holder on the back. With films in several different cameras at once, it's hard to tell what's loaded.
I don't have any Takumars Johnny, so I tried out a couple of Helios, a Pentacon 30mm and a Tessar. It's maybe not the stop down metering itself that irks me but the camera itself. Fujica ST705 has a similar system but I could live with that. The viewfinder is better and, big deal for me, it's got split screen focus. My eyes struggle to focus with the plain, ground glass screens these days. I love the diopters on the 60 year old Feds and Zorkis, OM4 has one too which is a bonus.

[Kenzie]

I think I might take the SP1000 with the Flek out next, whenever that might be! I grabbed another Kodak 35 from ebay and managed to win an untested OM4, fingers crossed this one works!

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[yokohama]

Hope the OM4 works. If it doesn't, I think it's one which might be worth paying (within reason) to get fixed, and keeping.

[Kenzie]

There is a guy on Facebook that runs a company repairing them. I have another OM4 but it doesn't work, I could always send them both in to make one good one. I took the OMD to the museum too, low light performance was good and having the grip fitted made a lot of difference to the handling.

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[johnnyrod]

Know what you mean about the plain ground glass, although i do find with a split circle I end up obsessing over perfect focus and wasting too much time on it, when I might be shooting at f8 anyway

[Kenzie]

Hey Yoko, I made a bodge fix on the XE-1 you sent me. Its been sat with the prism out since I got a quote but its kind usable as is. As you know the bottom of the viewfinder was gone due to foam, but I cut a small piece of mirror and slipped it between the prism and the body where the foam would be. Its not perfect but makes it look brighter.

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[yokohama]

Creative thinking there. That will improve the view. Did you ever try it out?

[Kenzie]

I shot it with half a view and it was a pain. But looking a lot better now, just a thin black line across the middle and a slight offset of the image (think of a misaligned rangefinder image) but better than it was.

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[yokohama]

That's good. A bit of a tank but it's a camera I liked and the one I have gave me perfect exposures.

[Kenzie]

Good for self defence if needed!