Vintage film cameras

[Kenzie]

Well I go away in just over a week, so no rush! Going to load up the Gevabox and see what 17 year old film is like!

[yokohama]

Don't mention old film. Before I got sucked in here, when I was sorting old cameras, I found a 5 pack of Konica 400 ASA that I bought in Japan in 2005..... and of course I thought it was too old and binned it.

[Kenzie]

Lol. sucked in! Bet you wish you hadn't opened Pandora's Box!

[yokohama]

Yep. It's a dangerous place in here.

[Kenzie]

So, from the original two you wanted to sell, how many do you own now?

Sent from my Xperia T

[yokohama]

Originally Posted by Kenzie

So, from the original two you wanted to sell, how many do you own now?

Sent from my Xperia T

[johnnyrod]

Yowsers

[yokohama]

It's most of them, but not all. I'm trying to sell a few to thin things out a bit.

[Kenzie]

Not my fault you peeked in here!
That's a good collection, rather a lot of slrs. What are you selling?
Not all?? How many missing?

[johnnyrod]

Had a bit of success tonight with my Pentax K2. I've never shot with it, and if I didn't have a shutter speed tester I'd have just tried it out - it's in great condition. When I got it I checked the speeds and the faster ones seemed to be slow and erratic; tonight I've found out it's fine. The shutter tester is a photo transistor, it has a reasonably narrow field of view, but not that narrow. This is fine for leaf shutters, but a curtain shutter is pretty big, so you really need to measure the exposure time at just one point. I was using a lamp as a light source, and tonight used a laser on a small spirit level from Aldi. Seems the phototransistor was seeing light from when the shutter slit was passing it, but also either side of it as it was approaching and receding, so the time it was illuminated seemed (was) much longer than the actual exposure time. Can't get that with a laser. It was a bit of a pig to line up accurately but got there in the end. The K2 is basically accurate, even a touch quick. I checked my MX too, 1/1000 came out 1/1260, 1/250 was 1/270, so underexposing a bit. Tried my Olympus S rangefinder but couldn't get a reading - I think the lens was dispersing too much light - I did the SLRs with the lenses removed, and on the K2 with the mirror locked up (the MX doesn't have that feature). Shame as it would be interesting to see the difference, but a leaf shutter always goes through its full range of movement at any speed so the lamp is probably fine - maybe I should try at small aperture instead of wife open.

Hurrah! Time to give it a try. Or maybe the Contessa first, when it arrives*... am starting to feel a bit guilty about buying my own birthday present.

* if it works from the off of course!