Vintage film cameras

[Kenzie]

Oh well. I guess a Contax is the only thing that would tickle your fancy at the moment then?

[johnnyrod]

God knows! In reality I have everything I need. Except... I don't shoot a lot of rollfilm but I still don't have a folder with combined RF and VF. I know it's picky but I tend to shoot stuff that moves, so the time to set scale focus etc. is too slow. I'd hoped the Mamiya Six would be the one but for the knackered glass. I'm thinking about trying to polish the lenses, not to remove the etching per se but to remove the roughness to take away flare. I don't want to make the good parts of the lens any worse though. Anyhoo it's 6x6 and I've always had a job composing that way, so a 645 jobby would be good - Konica Pearl perhaps, but again they're not cheap. First world problems!

[Kenzie]

Could you not get an optician to polish it? My first world problem is what cameras to take to Brugges on Friday. Perkeo is a must but not sure what 35mm. Must be pocketable so Trip 35, mju ii, Pen ee 2, XA 2 or 3?
There isn't any 120 folders with combined rf view is there?

[johnnyrod]

Doubt an optician could do anything, they buy lenses in 65mm or 70mm diameter and cut them down to the size of the frame opening. Not many folders fit the bill, Mamiya Six, Super Fujica, Konica Pearl, maybe Super Baldax? something like that. Super Ikonta III and IV. All expensive kit. An Ensign or two, they are rare and expensive.
For Bruges I'd say something quick to use, as the Perkeo won't be so quick, then you have it all covered. XA2 perhaps, your settings are limited but good lens, don't know much about the mju really.

[Kenzie]

Fully auto point and shoot with an apparently sharp lens. Only gripe is flash has to be turned off each time its opened as its automatic otherwise. XA3 is film tested though, the 2 isn't.

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[Kenzie]

I think I will take xa2 with black and white and the xa3 with colour.

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[yokohama]

XA2 sounds like a good shout. Weekend in Bruges sounds good.
I'm struggling with exposure at the moment. High altitude, bright sunshine, narrow streets... Too much contrast and it's really hard to get balance and light and shade right. Taken masses of pics on the digital and finished a roll of film on the Minolta, mostly underexposing by half a stop or more. Lijiang is great. Completely different part of China.
It's 6am and I've a bus in 90 minutes....off for a 2 day hike to a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge; there should be a few good photo opportunities there.
Oh, I was in a bar yesterday. Not only did the owner have a small retro Suzuki scrambled type bike, he also had an old camera display with Russian rangefinders and a few old Zeiss cameras.

[Kenzie]

Did you manage to grab a few then? Sure you can tuck the bike in your luggage. Sounds like a good trip so far but a bit of an early start for me though. How about shooting black and white? Might make the scene look better?

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[johnnyrod]

Sounds great! Yes B&W would tolerate more overexposure than colour. I'd say use some flash but for scenes it's too far. All you can do really is either bracket the exposures or meter for the lowlights, trust (or tolerate) the film for the highlights, and maybe sort it out in PP. I have a set of three pic somewhere that I shot straight into the sun, metered for various parts of the scene, and they pretty well all came out, on Poundland film. A combination of film latitude and the auto-corrections when it was processed. I don't have them scanned just now but they look very similar - disappointingly so as they span 4 stops!

[yokohama]

I'm absolutely wrecked. I only walked about 12km but mostly uphill- seriously uphill, and up to 2,600 metres above sea level. Lungs were burning.
I'll have to see how the pics come out. I could use hdr or bracketing on the digital but I wouldn't learn anything about exposure so I prefer to experiment with metering lows and hihs and seeing what comes out. Didn't bring any B&W with me...just a fujicolor for the greens.