The Online Photographer

Unboxing II

By now you remember my little "unboxing" joke when I got the old Mamiya 7II out of the camera closet one dreary day last February. One thing led to another, and I ended up "trading in" the Mamiya for an old medium-format camera much closer to my heart....

...And look what came! All the way from Japan in a mere three days. This camera is world-traveled—it was born in Germany.

A bit closer...

Be still, my beating heart! (By the way, that phrase was first used in William Mountfort's Zelmane, 1705.)

Almost just like the factory packaging! Well, no.

And there it is, in all its dignity and majesty. Not my old boon friend and companion, but its brother. Excuse me as I dab a bit o' moisture from my eye.

...And here's the reason for paying top dollar: the Xenotar MF. There is also a Xenotar E, but it's not remotely the same lens. The Xenotar E is nothing but an adaptation of the old Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar in Exakta 66 rubber-armored livery.

The 1984 Exakta 66—descended from the Praktisix of 1957, the year I was born, through the Pentacon Six—was in part a vanity/nostalgia/hobby project of the German industrialist Heinrich Mandermann, who also owned Rollei, Schneider, and B+W at the time. The Xenotar MF is optically the same as the one that Schneider made for the Rollei 6000 series in the 1980s—and those were better than the Zeiss 80mms that everyone wanted. In Praktisix/Pentacon Six/Exakta 66/Kiev 60 breechlock mount, the lens is genuinely rare. I know that for sure, as I've searched online for them from time to time over the years.

There are some pictures of Heinrich Mandermann with his baby here. He died in 2002.

The Exakta 66 was the cheapest medium-format camera you could buy new when I got mine, and I had to stretch for it on my photo teacher's salary, which started out in 1985 at $17k and change. This bit, along with the webbed strap, was a $90 accessory back when I bought my Model I in the mid-1980s—it didn't come with the camera (what?). So I never owned one—and thus never had a way to attach a strap to the camera. That right there is a bit of drawback in a camera's design. I carried my camera around in my hand.

The little knob that holds the strap bracket on, in the foreground, serves a double purpose—along with the knob-ends of the film spool wells on either side of the camera body (see below), it forms a tripod that lets the camera sit level when you set it down, so it doesn't rest on the nose of the lens.

Who needs Camerasize.com when you've got TOP? The 1984 Exakta 66 medium-format camera with the 1980 Pentax LX, smallest of the 1980s professional 35mm system cameras. The Exakta is only slightly smaller than the much more popular (and, it must be said, better) Pentax 67.

The Exakta 66 was a flop—and probably, given all the problems it is heir to, it deserved to be. It has lots of problems and weaknesses! I could list every last little one. It was unfortunate, but the '80s update failed fix the major problems of the Praktisix and Pentacon Six—the limited viewfinder coverage, the iffy film flatness because of a poorly designed pressure plate, and—most annoying—the poor and trouble-prone film winding mechanism. In 1985 the production target was 2,400 cameras a year, but by 1990 Herr Mandermann admitted that they had only sold more like 600–700 annually. One thing that meant was that eventually, all the cameras were assembled by a single employee! (That redoubtable fellow's name is not known to me. Maybe the position rotated.)

Speaking of rotation, look at all those shutter speeds that will sync with flash! Helpfully heralded in red. All the speeds anyone could ever need, eh?

Despite its updated appearance, there's nothing '80s about the Exakta 66. There's a lot of the 1950s in it, though.

(I keep writing the "66" because an "Exakta" is mainly a 35mm camera made by a different company. Herr Mandermann's first job was at Ihagee Kamerawerk in Dresden, Germany, where Karl Nüchterlein's Exaktas were made. Herr Mandermann, who was a true photography guy and who I'm quite sure would have been right at home reading TOP, also owned the remnants of the Ihagee Works and the rights to the Exakta name.)

Holding the camera again felt like coming home. It felt very natural, and all the controls fell right to hand. I really bonded with mine back in the day, as they say.

After my time with the Exakta, I spent an extended period reviewing medium-format cameras for Camera & Darkroom magazine (the California-based one), but, oddly enough, I never found one I bonded with like I did with the Exakta 66. I did the most work with a Bronica SQ-Ai, which I liked well enough. I also liked the Mamiya 6 but couldn't afford one until much later—after I had decided to embrace the fact that I was really a 35mm guy.

I rummaged around in the barn and found this old print from the 1980s, back when I was convinced I was going to be an art photographer all my life. (You know the auld Robbie Burns quote, "The best-laid schemes o' Mikes and men....") It was taken with my Model I Extaka 66 on Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River. I sat cross-legged for an hour trying to catch planes on their approach to what was then called National Airport in the heart of Washington D.C. Note the de rigeur mid-'80s silver Neilsen frame and acid-free rag mat. And the careful proportions—I was a good craftsman. The picture was shot on Tri-X 400 film, with a K2 filter, developed in D-76, and printed with a Rodenstock Apo-Rodagon 80mm ƒ/4 in a Saunders/LPL 4500II. A lot of work and time went into the production of such prints—for example, I developed two rolls at a time at the kitchen sink, and it took just under two hours from loading the reels to cleanup. That's two hours work for 24 frames just to get to the negatives. It encouraged you to be careful with your shooting.

So those weren't actually the days, but, in spite of that, permit me to say, "those were the days!"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Three More Things About the Spotmatic

Three funky little points about the ultra-retro-hipster icon the Pentax Spotmatic that I failed to mention the other day:

1. Spottie without a spot meter: The name "Spotmatic" derived from the fact that the camera was originally intended to incorporate a spot meter. Late in pre-production the decision was made to abandon the spot metering function, but the name was already in the pipeline and for some reason more difficult to change, so it stuck—even though the reason for it had gone away.
2. The "Takumar" name for the early lenses was adopted in honor of the Japanese-American painter Takuma Kajiwara.
3. Like buttah: The Super-Takumar and its immediate successors has the smoothest, silkiest, most tactile helical focusing action in the history of cameras and lenses—better than any Zeiss lens, better than any Leica lens, better than any Nikon lens, better than any anything—at least in my experience, and I have a fair amount of experience with old lenses. It's the gold standard for manual focusing action, the apogee, the peak, the best of the best. That's not something some people give a fig about, but there it is anyway.

Four versions
There were four versions of the M42 screwmount 50mm ƒ/1.4 for the Spotmatic worth knowing about. The first was the original 8-element Super-Takumar. This had a cemented triplet with all surfaces of all three elements being spherical.

Lore I've heard concerning the Super-Takumars over the years:

• One of them has an element of then-special rare-earth glass that is radioactive. Some say it's the 8-element lens that has it (this is what I always heard, back in the day); some say it's the later 7-element version that does (more common to hear lately).
• Some Super-Takumars take on a yellowish cast over time and the cure is sunlight—leave it out in strong sunlight for a few hours and the yellowish tint will go away.
• Some people attribute the yellowing to the radioactive glass element, but it's more likely the glue between the cemented elements...
• ...which was made from pine sap.
• Set a Super-Takumar with the radioactive element on a piece of Polaroid film for a few days and it will record a faint circle of exposure on the film.
• You shouldn't hold it up to your eye for too long or bad juju will happen to you.

I don't know if any of these are true. Since Asahi quietly changed from the 8-element to the simpler 7-element version on the fly during production, there's no easy way of identifying the 8-element version. Some people think you can do it by weight (8-element version 245 g, 7-element version 230 g); some say the focusing ring on the earlier lens is slightly wider; some say it can be done with serial numbers, which method has the advantage that you can dispute happily about the serial-number ranges till the cows come home; some point out that the convex rear element on the earlier lens protrudes farther; and some say that on all the 8-element lenses, the red infrared focusing index mark is inside the "4"s on the D-o-F scale. All?

This early lens—I'm still talking about the 8-element Super-Takumar—was intended by Pentax to be a better lens than the Zeiss Planar of the day. And it was. Not only that, the Pentax fast 50s were better than Zeiss Planars all the way up to the AF era—sez me, anyway. This—the 8-element Super-Takumar—was most likely the lens that Pentax produced at a loss; it was a loss leader for the sake of company pride...and Japanese national pride.

Here's the rub, though: there's no evidence that the 8-element lens was any better than the 7-element Super-Takumar or the later versions. The contrary, in my opinion. That's if you can detect any difference at all beyond sample variation, which I doubt most people could. Some mavens go to great lengths to hunt down the fabled 8-element Super Tak, but there's no reason to do so IMHO. There's also no reason not to—this all falls under the heading of enthusiast stuff—so suit yourself. As far as health risks are concerned, I doubt the "radioactive" element could hurt you if you swallowed it, but then I don't know, and that's another thing people can argue about.

The second version is the garden variety 7-element Super-Takumar, produced in great quantities as Asahi's "The Pentax" became the best-selling "good" SLR of the 1960s. This reduced the cemented triplet with a doublet at 4/5 (but still with concave and convex surfaces, unlike the flat surfaces in most planar-types). Most Super-Takumars were single-coated but some late ones were probably multi-coated.

The third version has improved coatings. The whole truth about this is difficult to research, and indeed probably lost to history, but what I believe is that Zeiss and Pentax worked cooperatively in the early days of multi-coating came up with their solution jointly. Zeiss called it T* (pronounced "tee-star") and Pentax called it "SMC" (for super multi-coating), but they were more or less the same thing at first. Something that is not well known by photography buffs is that not all lenses are coated on all surfaces—many lensmakers try to cut corners, and coat lens elements only where they think it's needed. So earlier lenses might have a few elements multi-coated, a few elements single-coated, and in some cases even a few elements uncoated. Coatings are highly proprietary, but one of the reasons for that is that many lensmakers didn't want you to know how much they were skimping.

Of course, these days, coating of lenses has progressed greatly and gotten much cheaper, thanks to zooms—which were essentially made possible by advances in coatings. Before multicoating, a zoom with many elements would have been impossible—the aggregated flare from all those air-to-glass interfaces would have overwhelmed the image-forming light. One of the reasons the famous Tessar developed by Paul Rudolph of Zeiss was so sharp is that it had only six air-to-glass surfaces, which minimized flare before lens coatings came along. Now, Olympus can make the whimsical and fantastical 25mm ƒ/1.2 PRO lens with an over-the-top nineteen elements (I love that, I have to say)...and that lens probably has less veiling glare than an uncoated 4-element Tessar-type from the early 1900s! That 25mm PRO is a prime lens that only exists because zooms do. Coatings are much more important to lens design, and lens performance, than most hobbyists realize.

Third version—note that "Super-Multi-Coated" is written out.

Anyway the third version is marked "Super-Multi-Coated Takumar" (with the words written out). It's important to realize that at least up till this point, Asahi was trying its best to put as much value into these fast 50s as it could—the engineering it applied to the products was devoted to making them better rather than to making them cheaper. There's often if not always a war between these two impulses. So the Super-Multi-Coated version of the fast 50 was multicoated on every surface. It might have been early MC, but they weren't cutting corners.

Next we reach the end of our tour with the SMC Takumar, with the initials for "super-multi-coated" on the lens instead of the words written out. This version has a rubberized focusing ring with a checkered pattern rather than the scalloped and grooved metal focusing ring of the earlier versions.

What went with what
The Super-Takumars were the lenses sold with the original SP, including the SP500 and SP1000; the Super-Multi-Coated Takumars (quote-unquote) went with the much better-constructed but similarly-featured Spotmatic II; and the SMC Takumar was the native lens for the Spotmatic F and the Electro-Spotmatic, ES, and ESII, the world's first SLRs with autoexposure.

After that, Pentax changed to the K-mount bayonet mount, after sticking with the M42 screwmount probably a bit too long.

And the verdict...
So which one is the best? The same basic 7-element design followed the Pentax fast 50s all the way through the K-mount era into the autofocus era, with the SMCP-FA lens you can still buy today. That included the SMC Pentax-M and SMC Pentax-A. The SMCP-FA is the last 50mm that Pentax still makes that dates from the film era—and it's a direct descendant of the justly famous 7-element Super-Takumar screwmount lens of the 1960s.

Block diagram of the 7-element Super-Takumar

Block diagram of the SMCP-FA autofocus lens

I've used all of these lenses, each long enough to get a handle on them (but only with B&W film, it should be noted), and to be honest they're all great—"3D," characterful, and possessed of the famous old Planar-type "look." The Super-Multi-Coated Takumar was the best-built, but the later K-mount cameras are more convenient and I prefer the SMC Pentax-M as a user, as it handles the best. The SMC Pentax-A K-mount lens is considered by Pentax fanciers to be the sharpest of them all, probably attributable to coatings. Honestly, though, there's not much to choose.

I've never used any of them on a digital camera.

The Pentax fast 50 is not a Zeiss and it's not German, but in my opinion it's the ultimate expression of the classic Planar lens design—and one of the treasures of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Mike

UPDATE from Ray Ulrich: "Here's more information on Asahi and multicoating. I'd heard this before (OCLI was in my home town—Santa Rosa, California), but this was the only link I could find that mentions their part in it."

UPDATE from Paul Farkas: "If you haven't already heard, in May of this year former President of Pentax Ricoh Imaging USA Ned Bunnell made two posts on his Instagram account outlining the differences between the 8-element and 7-element 50mm ƒ/1.4 Takumar lenses: here is the first, and here is the second. Since then, he's been posting numerous photos of pictures taken with both lenses on a Pentax DSLR. Additionally, he wrote about the 8-element version on the casualphotophile website.

"His recommendation: 'The 8-element is quite rare and going up in value; samples in pristine condition are going for $200–250 and more these days. A similar condition 7-element will fetch just $70–100. So your choice is pretty easy. If you want a beautiful vintage 50mm prime M42 manual lens to use everyday, get the 7-element. Buy the 8-element if you want a part of Japanese lens history which will continue to appreciate in value and give you great satisfaction while you own it.'

"P.S. My favorite Pentax 50mm lens is an SMC Pentax-M ƒ/1.4."

Mike replies: Thanks gents! I had not seen Ned's posts.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Smooth like buttah
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Tom Burke: "I enjoyed reading that, Mike—obviously a subject about which you care.

"A slight aside, but—what happened to Pentax? I recall that in the late '60s, when I first became aware of SLRs (and photography generally) a Pentax SP500 was the goal, at least for an amateur. Nikons were around but were probably viewed as professional cameras only. (This is in the UK, by the way.) The other camera that people bought was the good old Practica, from East Germany, and many people had them—including me—and they used the M42 thread. But everyone agreed that they were nowhere near as good as a Pentax.

"Then I suppose I started hearing about Canon SLRs—especially the FT QL—and then later models such as the A-1, AE1, and AE1-Program. I started seeing Nikkormats around that time also. The Olympus OM-1 appeared in the early '70s, followed by more Canons—T50 and T70 especially—and somewhere in there Pentax just seemed to vanish from consciousness. I know the ME Super was around, but by then Pentax was just one of the pack—at least in the UK the marque had lost the status it had enjoyed in the '60s.

"Do you know how that happened? And was it the same in the US?"

Mike replies: Well, the fortunes of companies ebb and flow. Just off the top of my head, I'd say Pentax was a player up until at least the LX, a wonderful camera with a couple of quirks (don't they all seem to have them?). Mainly that the strap lugs were proprietary and the shutter made a noise like a firecracker exploding. (I mean it was on the loud side.) The LX came along in 1980. There were 1,000 gray titanium bodies issued in 1994 to mark the company's 75th anniversary, with 300 more in black two years later; and finally there was a Japan-only Pentax LX 2000 to celebrate either the new millennium or the long run of the LX itself (accounts vary). It finally left the scene in 2001, after the digital transition had begun.

Pentax was still selling loads of cameras through at least the 1980s as far as I recall. Most, however, were amateur models—the company had gotten a reputation for catering to hobbyists, amateurs, and casual users, and of being for those who could not quite afford a Nikon or a Leica. Sort of the Chevrolet of cameras, if you will. Of course the company made the K1000, which was endlessly popular and well known as the basic camera for students to learn on.

The company was called Asahi Optical starting in 1938. It was dismantled after WWII but allowed to re-form in 1948. It changed its name to Pentax Corporation in 2002, probably because that's how it was mostly known anyway. Then in 2007 Hoya acquired 90% of its stock, mainly for the non-photographic businesses. Hoya then sold the camera bits on to Ricoh in 2011.

People who use Pentaxes are afflicted with a stereotype to this day. Which is, they're like Canadians—all nice, mild, and polite. They tend to be decent people free of disputatiousness and bloodymindedness, who love their parents and children, are modest about their wealth and accomplishments, and are courteous, kind and friendly to others.  :-)

Out and About with a Camera You Like

One more comment before I leave the subject of old film cameras to break for the weekend:

It's been a long while since I've recommended this, but Ivor Matanle's Collecting and Using Classic Cameras is a particularly delightful book. I think any photography enthusiast would enjoy it, even if you're not a film user or a classic camera user or a camera collector of any sort—and even if you have relatively little interest in old cameras.

It's great chiefly because Ivor himself is so present on the pages, and he's such wonderful company. This book was undoubtedly a labor of love, the result of many years of happy activity. It's the story of an enthusiast who likes getting "out and about" to run a few rolls of film through a variety of prized old cameras. In the book he tells you about each camera and shows you the pictures he took with it. Along the way you'll get to know a friend and kindred spirit. Quite incidentally, he imparts a good feel for the joy a lot of us find in doing what we do.

One of my favorite photography books, and I don't have very many books about cameras per se. It can be read straight through. Recommended warmly if it appeals.

Another nice old book not too far off from the first is What the Traveller Saw by the globetrotting travel and adventure writer Eric Newby. In it he gives an account of where he was and what was happening when he took a variety of whimsical and wonderful photographs. He, too, is great company, and his pictures are quite fine even though he's not primarily known as a photographer. And this relates very nicely to the past few days here at TOP, because most of the pictures in the book were taken with an old manual Pentax with a 50mm lens.

The crickets are noisy already
See you back here on Monday, and I hope you have a very pleasant weekend! I just can't believe the dog days are almost upon us—this Summer has sped by at breakneck speed. It will be Fall before I blink three times.

Oh, and a blog note: I'm way behind on the comments again, and there are many great comments on the last three posts still to appear. I need to go ship the Mamiya 7II to Victor H. now, and edit a portrait shoot I did on Wednesday, so please do come back later today or tomorrow to catch up on all the new comments.

Cheers,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

More to come
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Rob L.: "I've just gotta laugh at shipping a Mamiya to a Victor H."

'Mamiya For Sale' Part II (Or, the Perfect Camera)

Here's what I bought with the proceeds from the sale of the Mamiya 7II yesterday—it's on its way from Japan:

Ebay seller's photos

I saw it for sale yesterday priced at $1,649, and I figured yeah, I would trade my Mamiya for that. (The camera shows up relatively often but this lens is genuinely rare.) So that's why I asked $1,649 for the Mamiya—straight trade, from my point of view.

I know it's neither as good a camera as the 7II nor as desirable. This acquisition is purely "the armchair narcissism of nostalgia," to use a memorable phrase whose author is lost to my memory.  The Exakta 66 Mod 2 with the 80mm ƒ/2.8 Schneider-Kreuznach Xenotar MF a.) was the first medium-format camera I ever bought, back when I was a nearly penniless high school photography teacher in the 1980s; b.) had the best lens I ever used, ever, although I'm fairly positive that the one I had was a "sweet spot" sample, at the apex of the sample variation—the lens coming from Japan will most likely not quite measure up; c.) was the camera I used to make the photographs in the only public exhibition I was ever in—a group show of six photographers I curated for the National Park Service in Rock Creek Park (which got reviewed in the Washington Post no less) and, finally, d.) is the camera that, over the years, I have most most regretted selling and most wished I had back.

Now I do. Once it's here and I've run a roll or two through it, maybe I'll write a post on the history of the camera. I actually know quite a lot about it.

Not to splash cold water in the faces of film fans and APUG.org denizens and enthusiasts of old cameras, but I doubt I'll ever use this seriously. However, I'm sure I'll be very happy to have it—and other people won't mind, either. When I wrote the post about the Mamiya 7II, several readers took me to task for hoarding it without using it, thus not allowing it to be used as it was intended to be. So now I've set the Mamiya free, so it can be used to fulfill its manifest destiny of making great photographs!

I doubt very many people will feel the same way about the Exakta. It's really not a camera most people would want to use. It has film-flatness problems and a delicate film-advance mechanism and a wonky viewfinder that is offset from what you'll get on the film. And the mirror is not instant-return—you get blackout after taking a shot until you cock the camera again. The lens mount is breechlock. Did I mention it's meterless? That's why I wrote the article "Train Your Brain...To Guess Exposure" for Ed Buziak's Darkroom User magazine back in the '90s. I actually guessed my exposures when I used the Exakta as my only camera. Never used a light meter.

Oh, and no way to attach a strap, at least not built in. The only thing this one has that is not identical to what I owned is that it has the strap bracket for attaching a camera strap—a $90 accessory back in the '80s, and something I could never afford. (It's that semi-circular bracket affixed using the tripod thread.) So I wandered all over D.C. with that camera simply holding it in my hand—I had no way of attaching a strap.

I'm going to take a WAG—wild-assed guess—and speculate that the cosmetic blemish in the word "Exakta" on the waist-level finder of this camera is the reason it's being de-accessioned from some Japanese camera collector's collection. But I don't mind that. It can stand as the one thing that keeps the camera from being perfect.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Exaktaly!
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Douglas Chadwick: "I am glad you mentioned being reviewed in the Washington Post. It reminds me of my one review there a few years before for a show at Henri's Gallery near Dupont Circle. It certainly seemed like a big deal to me to see a review of my work in that paper. Even though the review basically said it was the best of a bad lot, But a nice mention of one of my photographs. It seemed like the start of something, and it did lead to a show at a museum in West Virginia. But my gallery success was on a downhill trend as it turned out—business got in the way perhaps. But the Post was doing nice reviews of photography shows back then, I suppose they gave that up? It was just, I don't know, an interesting trend at the time? You were there for a while, what is your take on it?"

Mike replies: I was actually asked to write photography show reviews for the Post at one time. But the pay was so miserable I had to turn down the opportunity. The decision was wrenching for me—it would have been a high-profile position with a fair amount of respect and influence, but I had been doing lots of hard work for very little pay at the time and just seriously needed to be putting food on the table. It didn't help that my walk to work every day took me past the Georgetown mansion of the then-owner of the Post.

Andrew Lamb: "What a glorious folly! This is one for the romantics, a triumph of hope over experience. Congrats, Mike. I wish you all the best. We both know you're going to need it. Ex-Exakta owner."

StanB.: "That's some seriously serious nostalgia!!! You traded a precision instrument for an overgrown Holga...then again, some of my favorite photographs have been taken with one!"

Michael Roche: "Mike, I don't know whether I want to laugh or cry. I hope you will have lots of enjoyment from your purchase, but I can't convince myself you made a wise decision. However when it comes to hobbies all decisions are only temporary anyway and only serve to take us on to the next phase. Have fun."

Benjamin Marks: "I totally get the 'nostalgic' repurchase of a camera that is/was emotionally significant. Hobby-objects that fall into that category for me: A Pentax Spotmatic, a Pentax LX, a Crown Graphic, a Nikon FM2, and (off-topic, and recently) a Cannondale 53 cm road bike (what was I thinking?). I have often written that it's 'the painter, not the paintbrush,' but if that were really true, why do we painters get so attached to these specific paintbrushes? Well, my explanation is that sometimes things just 'click.' (and, oh yes, pun intended). When you have that relationship to your tools, you can do your best work. I had a Kiev 88 that, despite its many shortcomings, did pretty well for me. Not going to repurchase that one though. So: Mike—I am raising a glass of iced tea—here's to the paintbrush! I hope you take your best photograph with it. Or second best.  ;-)  That would be pretty great, no?"

So You Say You Want a Film Camera?

"Slow photography" is hip, and everybody thinks you need an old Leica or an old Nikon if you want to participate. Not so, I say. If you want a film camera and have never shot with one, the way to go is Pentax.

Old silver Pentaxes are the quintessential 35mm film cameras. Mainstream, but iconic. Well made, but no frills. Stone classic.

There are lots of ways you can go with film. You can shoot color negative film and have it processed for you. You can shoot Ilford XP2 "chromogenic" black-and-white film and have it processed commercially, but then make your own prints with an enlarger. Or you can shoot genuine silver-halide black-and-white film and process it yourself at your kitchen sink—there's slow photography, and then there's slow slow photography.

If you want to go a little more modern, the killer camera would be a beautiful chrome MX. The MX was an MMM (manual, metal, mechanical) camera produced between 1976 and 1985.

But if you really want to go whole-hog into hip retro, no holds barred, no punches pulled, the way to go is to get a Spotmatic.

In either case, here's what you do: instead of spending big money on an old Leica, spend small money on an old Pentax, then spend as much as you can on the best servicing money can buy. Buy the top treatment at any good Pentax camera repair service center such as Abilene Camera Repair in the old Wild West cow-town of Abilene, Texas (401 Neas Road, Abilene, Texas 79601, 325/676-2524, contact@abilenecamera.com or acrkori@gmail.com). I don't have personal experience with Abilene; use whichever shop you want. (Google is your friend.)

I'm just using Abilene as an example so I can talk about prices. Their top-level "restoration" service costs $245 for either an MX or a Spotmatic. Added to the cost of a good camera, the total is still cheaper than many classic Nikons and all but the most beat-up classic Leicas. And you will have a camera that works as it is supposed to—clean, lubricated and smooth, with new seals and all parts inspected. It will run as well as a fine pocket watch. And will continue to work as it's supposed to for years to come.

The fabled "Spottie" was the legendary mainstream screwmount Pentax that spanned a number of models from 1964 to 1976. (The top choices being the original SP, which had two "budget" alternatives, the SP500 and SP1000; the SPII; and the later Spotmatic F.)

One thing to look out for is sellers screaming "MINT!!!" at you like manic candy salesmen—the Spotmatics featured double chrome plating over brass, and the cameras wear like iron. Many of them still look fresh and clean today, even if they've been abused. This excites sellers, who think they have "survivors" even though what they have might actually be pretty typical.

Having been well trained by our consumer culture, we all have a strong tendency to want to optimize. My advice: don't. If you want to go slow and retro, then go slow and retro! Don't try to get the latest or the sharpest or the one with the most features. 

Another buying hint: both these cameras were much more common in chrome finish. The black ones, therefore, are more prized, rare, and valuable. The thing is, with any camera, the more valuable one will be the one in less supply. Don't think a black one is any better just because people are making a fuss over it. The classic look is chrome. Get that.

And you might be tempted to skip the CLA ("clean, lube, adjust"): well, that would be optimizing! (For minimal investment, in this case.) I just told you not to do that.  :-)

The first lens you want for the Pentax MX is called an SMC Pentax-M 50mm ƒ/1.4. The ƒ/1.7 is a fine lens and a little sharper, but the ƒ/1.4 has perfect bokeh and, optically, just looks a little better overall. 

For the Spotmatic, the screwmount lens you want will be called a Super Takumar, Super-Multi-Coated Takumar, or SMC-Takumar. Get the 50mm ƒ/1.4 first.

Although cheap now, they are legendary lenses: Pentax believed at the time they needed to do better than Zeiss if they wanted to overcome the perception that Japanese cameras were shoddily built (as many Japanese products were in the immediate aftermath of WWII). The company put everything they had into building these fast 50s, producing them, at least at first, at a loss. A famous comparison by Burt Keppler of Modern Photography and later of Popular Photography pitted the Pentax Super Takumar against the equivalent Leica lens. The Super-Tak came out on top.

With a 50mm lens, you will miss the pictures that you could have gotten with a wide-angle or a super-telephoto lens, but here's the way to console yourself: the number of possible great pictures you can take with a fifty is "infinity."

Don't fret. Have fun.

The right camera with the right lens: $159 for both,
leaving money left over for a thorough restoration.

True retro would be a restored and revived Pentax Spotmatic SP with a Super-Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4, using a handheld light meter, shooting Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP-5 Plus and developing it yourself, making your own prints on fiber-base paper. My personal choice would be a restored and revived Pentax MX with an SMC Pentax-M 50mm ƒ/1.4, using the camera's meter, shooting Ilford XP2 and getting it developed commercially, possibly making prints yourself on RC paper.

Either one is the perfect retro film-camera experience. You don't even need to bother with spending more money.

Mike
(Thanks to the commenter who mentioned the MX the other day)

UPDATE from Ned Bunnell: "Mike, FYI, the go-to-guy for servicing film Pentax cameras is Eric Hendrickson. He's a former Pentax service manager who moved to Tennessee many years ago. He has all the equipment to work on the early film cameras including the various 6x7 models. He adjusted the 67 I bought from you. His work is superb, and he's honest and very reasonable with his rates. Contact info:

http://pentaxs.com/index.html 

pentaxrepairs@aol.com

Cheers, Ned."

[Ned is the former President of Pentax USA. —Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Double chrome plated
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis (partial comment): "I just took a look at the Spotmatic after reading this—it's a beautiful camera! I noticed that it uses 1.35 volt mercury batteries for the meter and that rang a bell...years ago, when I bought my HiMatic 7sII, I paid for a CLA and to have the meter circuit adjusted to 1.5V batteries. Apparently, that's one of the things that Abilene does as part of their repair service, but just another argument to not skip the CLA step."

Mike replies: Thanks. I should have mentioned that. Yes, the Spotmatic takes long-since-outlawed mercury batteries, so it's necessary to get the circuit converted. Another option is to use the Voigtlaender VC Meter II, which has the added advantage of being transferable to all your other old film-camera bodies. If you get a Spotmatic SP and want to use a VC Meter II, note that you need the clip-on "cold shoe" (the bit above the eyepiece meant to hold the flash), which itself is an add-on with the original Spottie.

Andrew adds: "It is my understanding that Pentax Spotmatics have a bridge circuit in the light meter and can use modern 1.55v silver oxide batteries without re-calibration."

Mike replies: Thanks. I really don't know the ins and outs of the meter circuit. As I implied in the post, I always used a separate meter with my Spotmatic II.

Bill Poole: "Ah, yes. During my brief time working in a retail camera store in the late 1960s, I came to love the Spotmatic, and to recommend it often to customers. (You don't mention to lovely clunk of its shutter—the solid sound of quality.)

"I'm not sure why you didn't mention that commercial development is also available for silver-based black-and-white films. While I continue to develop at home sometimes, I also use Photoworks San Francisco, just down the street, which also has a mail-order service. They charge $8 a roll, cheap enough, and the quality is superb.

"Also, you do not have to print wet to get the unique look of film images. Scanning and printing digitally yields lovely results, while Lightroom and Photoshop provide impressive controls over image contrast, burning, dodging, etc."

Paul B: "My first camera was a Spotmatic II, and saw me through high school and college. Later cameras never pleased me as much as my Pentax, probably not even my Leica M3 (which I love dearly). That Pentax was as rugged as a tank, and took as much abuse as I could dole out. When I was 'done' with it, I gave it to my brother who used it until he went digital in the early '00s. So it served us for almost 40 years with barely a whimper. And the lenses were great. Worked in all kinds of weather, too. I often think that people who want to learn photography ought to start with a Pentax, either a Spotmatic (partly for the screw mount experience), or a K-1000, and use a hand held light meter. But I guess I'm just an old guy now, with old fashioned ideals...."

Richard Alan Fox: "I was a camera repairman at Brooks Camera on Kearny Street in San Francisco during the mid 1970s. Pentax Spotmatics have a spring-loaded lever under the cover used to cock the shutter; a typical problem would be this lever popping and needing to be adjusted (if my memory serves).

"I received this award from my fellow repairmen after a rather unfortunate incident, and now, forty years and a continent away, I would like to share it with the world:

Dennis Mook: "Photographed well over a hundred dead bodies in the '70s and early '80s with a Spotmatic, 50mm ƒ/1.4 Super-Muliti-Coated Takumar, Tri-X, and a huge Honeywell potato-masher flash with a 510-volt battery hanging off my belt. Never let me down, not once. And no, I'm not going to explain anything more...."

[I'll just add that Dennis is not talking about dead camera bodies. —Ed.]

David Raaum: "My first camera was an Argus C-3 while I was in high school. When I got to Vietnam I bought the Spotmatic with the 50mm ƒ/1.8 at the Marine PX for $189.50. I used it through my entire Vietnam tour, even in the dug-in radio relay hole in Khe Sanh, South Vietnam. It worked all through the rest of the '60s, '70s, and the '80s until I switched to Nikon in 1990. I took a lot of great pictures, on Kodachrome slides, with that camera. When I stopped using it the meter had quit working; other than that it was fine. Great memories."

Jeroen: "Another point: I think the MX has a more than decent finder magnification (almost 1x with a 50mm). That makes photographing 'with both eyes open' much easier."

Mike replies: Some of the Olympus OM cameras also have great finder magnification. A luxury that the market never quite understood, unfortunately, but a pleasure to use even today.

Rod S.: "Mike, your post sent a thrill down my spine this morning when I scrolled down to the picture of that handsome Pentax MX in all its delicious chrominess.

"I loved the Pentax MX and used two bodies from 1977 until 1995, when I moved to the medium-format Pentax 6x7. I looked for but never found a better 35mm camera. The MXs accompanied me on many challenging adventures, including trekking expeditions to Everest in 1978 and K2 in 1994, and I was able to publish two magazine articles as a result.

"One special image from 1978, a portrait of two local boys in long-gone traditional dress, under dappled sunlight, will forever be one of my best photographs. The framed 16x20 Cibachrome print is remarkably detailed.

"The MX's controls are simple and intuitive. In particular, the meter display with 1/2 stop LEDs is perfect, easy to read and quite genius in concept, making 1/2 stop underexposure of transparency film—but only in direct sunlight—straightforward for maximising colour saturation. And the placement of the K-mount lens lock makes changing lenses one handed easily done.

"My only regret is that the wonderful design of the MX held me back from changing to medium format by a decade. That eventual change, and the use of a hand held light meter it required, really challenged my understanding and practice of photography.

"My first camera, though, was a new Spotmatic F (F for full aperture metering), a gift from my father in September 1974 for my eighteenth birthday. That camera introduced me to the Pentax tradition of 'elegant simplicity.' By comparison, most other brands of SLRs seemed bloated, heavy or had awkward controls. I am very appreciative of my father's thoughtfulness.

"Still, I came to see that the original Spotmatic has the most elegant line of the pentaprism housing of all, narrow and uncluttered by the hotshoe of subsequent models.  :-)  "

Is Fuji the New Leica? Or More Correctly the Old Leica?

Written by Mike Plews

It certainly looks like Fuji is on the way to become what Leica used to be. From out here in the cheap seats I can see three clear indicators.

For the first, we need to jump into the wayback machine to the days of pre-digital photojournalism. I’m talking local photojournalism here, not at the national level. Back in the day, a well turned out "local cheesehead" had a bag full of Nikons and at least one M-series Leica, usually with a 35mm ƒ/2 attached, for those chores that only a Leica could do.

(By the way, in this case "cheesehead" does not refer to people from Wisconsin. It is a term of endearment reserved for the local press by the nationals when they think we are out of earshot.)

Since digital took over I have never seen a local sporting a digital Leica, but I am now seeing a lot of Fuji gear tucked away in amongst the Canon artillery. The Fujis are now being called upon to do what Leicas once did. No doubt there are people at the national level shooting digital Leicas but not out here in the provinces.

The second indicator is that at least two Fujis look like Leicas, and people love them like Leicas.

The third indicator is the uptick in Fuji lens voodoo. I am starting to hear Fuji glass being described in highly subjective glowing terms not unlike those formerly reserved for Dagors and Rodenstock enlarging lenses. (I read once that Leica glass exhibited "a sort of roundness" that no other lenses had. I have no idea what "roundness" means in this context. I hope it isn’t spherical aberration.)

Fuji is clearly on its game. The best still PJ I know raves about his Fuji cameras, and it's not about romance, it's about performance.

If I was starting from scratch and had the scratch I suspect a Fuji and few snout-nosed primes would do me just fine.

Mike P.

©2017 by Michael Plews, all rights reserved

Mike Plews is a TV news photographer and a lifelong still photographer who has been taking pictures since 1963. He says he is a "longtime TOP fan." He lives on a farm in the American Midwest.

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Featured Comments from:

Patrick: "You make an excellent point. I've recently finalized my transition from Nikon to Fuji for my documentary wedding work. For a while I shot both side by side while working. I remember one quiet ceremony where I put the Fuji X-T2 on silent electronic shutter, shooting unnoticed. Then I pulled out the Nikon D800E (my long-lens camera at the time) and the sound of the shutter in comparison was so loud that half the guests turned to see what was going on. I quickly switched back to the Fuji for the remainder of the ceremony and made it a point to replace the Nikon as quickly as I could. The DSLR shutter never bothered me in the years I shot weddings up to that point, but suddenly it was embarrassingly noisy when put against the silence of the Fuji."

Stephen Scharf: "Just one more comment regarding Mike P.'s really nice article: here's a nice example demonstrating how Fujis are 'now being called on to do what Leicas once did.'

"One of my photo assignments at the NASCAR SaveMart 350 for Sonoma Raceway last weekend was to cover the NASCAR Euro Whelen Series driver, Alon Day, from Israel. The PR Director for the NASCAR Euro Whelen series wanted coverage of Alon as a guest driver in the 'big USA race.'

"Here's a photo I took of Alon during his press conference with the wonderful little Fuji X100F, which was perfect for this shooting scenario as it just 'gets out tof the way.'

"By the way, this photo was taken the X100F’s little in-camera flash which I find to be very 'intelligent' and provides just the right amount of fill to look natural."

Simon Robinson: "Funny—I've just gone the other way and sold my Fuji X100F and got a Leica. The problem with the Fuji was the out-of-focus areas: sometimes they looked terrible—terrible enough to ruin a photo. Even if Fuji stopped using X-Trans sensors in their ASP-C cameras I wouldn't be tempted to go back, as I'm loving using the Leica and find it the perfect camera for me."

Ken Ford: "I know that I'm impressed enough with the 'training wheels' X-Pro1 / 35mm WR combo I picked up last year that I'm almost certainly going to offload my M-P 240 (and a whole bunch of other stuff) and pick up an X-Pro2 with 23mm ƒ/2 and 50mmƒ/2 as a Leica M replacement."

Jackson Bart: "The Leica M10 is the new Leica."

Paulo Bizarro: "No doubt Fujis look good, they look the part, you can even mount M glass via adapters. But...you can also mount M glass on a Sony A7, and keep the focal length as intended. Just saying...."

Andre Y: "I still stand by my claim that the iPhone is the new old Leica."

Alex: I think of my X-T1 as a Nikon SLR. In use it's basically a FE2. I keep it on aperture priority, shoot manual lenses about half the time, and make frequent use of exposure compensation."

Mike replies: Y'know, this wasn't my post, but I really like your idea. Possibly because I've been hearing people clamor for a digital Nikon FM/FE/FE2/FM2/FM3a since just about the time of the 6-MP Nikon D100 (that was 15 years ago, which is 105 in dog years and about 45 in digital camera years). The X-T1 is much more complicated, of course, but in many other ways, you may just have hit the nail on the head.

I'm Going to Shut Up

The very camera that in 2005 I said
"they" should build. Fuji built it in 2010.

A leitmotif—a.k.a. meme, hackneyed saying, cliché—of the Internet photography forum world is: "If only they would make [blank] I would buy it."

I think I'm going to stop saying that.

We're big on it. The implication is they don't make exactly what I want. If they would only provide me with exactly what I want then they would be blessed with my cash.

The thing is, each time I say that, apparently I don't mean it.

Way back when I decided against the Olympus E-M5, I said I was sticking with the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens forever (which I did not do), and, well, if only they would make a professional-level Micro 4/3 camera I would buy it.

Well, they did, and I am not using it.

While waiting for the E-M1 to come along, I switched to the Sony NEX system. Some time thereafter I found myself holding back from the A6000 update, lamenting that I would buy such a camera if only they would make one with in-body image stabilization (IBIS). This one seemed pretty safe; I figured they'd never do that. Certainly not right after coming out with the A6300 update.

But they did (which still kinda surprises and amazes me, if I'm honest).

But do I own it? I do not.

Granted, I've moved on from Sony and it would cost $$$ to move back.

And then there's this. For quite a while I proclaimed (um, loudly) that if anyone ever made a dedicated black-and-white digital camera, I would be forced to buy it.

Forced. Put ketchup on that word, please—it will make it more palatable as I am, um, forced to eat it.

Because alas, someone did do that, and the rest is history...namely, that I never bought it.

Of course it's from a brand that's irrevocably and irretrievably above my wallet's weight class. Did you notice the price at that link? For a manual-focus camera? I use that as my "out."

But still. While we are here, I should bring it up that a lot of "if only they would make [blank] I would buy it" is just another way of saying "I want [blank] but I can't afford it, so I'm going to make it their fault. The product is flawed. There's something wrong with it. It isn't exactly right or exactly what I want. They have not pleased me. Otherwise I would buy it." Yeah, right—sure you would, you skinny-wallet, no-money-having dog-on-the-Internet.

All right. Guilty.

Icing...er, ketchup...on the cake
The biggest one of all—don't bleat at me, I already feel sheepish—is that in 2005 I essentially spec'd out the mirrorless camera segment in my head, calling for it in an article that got a lot of attention. It took a long time for what I described to arrive on the scene...four years at least. And I did use an early iteration of the idea. But, right this second, a company makes a camera that is almost scarily close to what I originally called for...except it's even better than what I imagined.

Am I satisfied? Evidently not. Never laid out the long green for one of those. (Although I have one in the house, thanks to a friend.)

They—a different "they"—even built a full-frame version! With, to rub salt in the wound, a lens by the lensmaker I've frequently named as my favorite. No, no, I don't use that either.

At least I didn't join the worldwide chorus of people crying out that if only Fuji would make an interchangeable-lens version of the sensational X100, then they would buy that. As we all know, Fuji did exactly that, and they didn't waste any time about it, either. Apparently a lot of people did buy the X-Pro1, too. So maybe other people aren't like me.

Do I need to mention that I once proclaimed that I would never, ever again buy a camera that didn't have IBIS? You know, IBIS, like the trusty Fuji X-T1 sitting on the desk right next to me as I write this does not have.

Anyway, next time I say anything like if only they would make [blank] I would buy it, please call me on it, please.

I should be mindful of the past, and stop saying that.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Ranjit Grover: "Mike, You do not have to feel guilty on that. That is human nature. It only tells us you are human too. The funny part is the camera makers know that and that is their trump card. It is the carrot hanging on a stick in front of the donkey that goes by the name 'the consumer.'"

Dave in NM: "Re 'I'm going to shut up.' Don't worry, Mike. We won't hold our breath.  ;-) "

Christopher May: "You're not alone, Mike. I've been itching to get back into 8x10 but always used the lack of a cheap and lightweight camera as one of the reasons I would pass on it. Lo and behold, 'they' (the fine folks at Intrepid) just ran a Kickstarter for a small and lightweight 8x10. Alas, I was not one of the backers of the project. So I understand how that works."

Ernie Van Veen: "If only they would make something like this for photography:

"I would definitely buy it! (Although the guitar version I use seems to be faulty.)"

Rfeg: "I have a slightly evolved version of your saying: 'if they make that camera they would sell a lot and maybe even I would buy it.' I try to be honest as much as I can. This is the case of Fuji B&W: if they make a X-T20BW, they would gather almost all the dedicated B&W 'low end' (read cheaper) market. It is a niche market but globally should be many cameras and they have everything developed save (part of) the software. (And they'd also push the X-Trans naysayers to Fuji lenses and bodies). Looks like a win-win. And even I might buy it."

Stephen Scharf: "Well, I know you don't put much stock in rumor sites, but FujiRumors, which has had a >95% accuracy this year (as well as last year), has an article today that there will be IBIS in future Fuji X-cams. FujiRumors founder Patrick does say that this is a from a 'trusted source,' so it might be worth putting your plan of skipping upgrades and wait to see what the X-T3 might be.

"Rumors aside, Fuji does a very good track record of listening to customers, and more importantly, acting on them."

John Shriver: "Well, I lived up to my commitment. I said if Pentax made a full-frame DSLR, I'd buy it. When they came out with the K-1, I put my money where my mouth was. I had already bought the appropriate lenses before used prices zoomed. Love the pictures, but boy is it heavy. But I'm not ready to pay the new prices for an Leica digital rangefinder. Waiting for decent used M9 under $2,000."

Andy Kowalczyk: "I think your experience just reflects the underlying reality of two quotes from Steve Jobs: 'You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.' '...it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.'"

A.B. Normal: "For your snoutnosed Fuji lens post, I commented that if only those lenses had IS, I'd buy an X-Pro2. Now I'm hearing about IBIS coming to Fuji...even better! That was fast.

"Now, if only...FF Pentax and Olympus mirrorless, a mid-range headless Mac, an electric VW GTI, a way to lose 25 pounds without quitting red wine, an end to cable monopolies, the arrival of advanced extraterrestrials who decide to put things right on earth...I'll just stop there."

Mike replies: I see what you mean...all preposterous. By the way, extraterrestrials have visited, many times, but Earth is marked down in the interstellar ledgers as a jungle planet populated by giant lizards, since that's what we were for eons upon eons.  Boy, are they ever going to be surprised the next time they come by. The catch is, we won't still be around for that, since they only check up on us every couple of million years, and we are an evolutionary dead end, a brief flash in the pan in terms of geologic time. We'll go by too quickly to be noticed.

The Two Most Beautiful Retro-Styled Cameras

Retro, adj., from Latin, through French: Relating to, reviving, or
honoring the styles and fashions of the past.

Cameras can be beautiful. They've inspired not only endless fascination since very near the beginning, but truly endless iterations. The newest thing spawns the next thing. Just as each newborn babe, as it is said, is nature's attempt to take two imperfect adults and blend the best of them to create a perfect human, so every imperfect existing camera seems to issue a built-in challenge: improve this and it will be perfect. In cameradom, nothing is ever so good that someone doesn't want to improve it almost immediately.

One of the great designs in the ongoing evolution of cameras was German designer Luigi Colani's Canon T90 of 1986, the last top-of-the-line manual-focus-only camera from Canon. But the T90 can be said to have created a monster, too: the Canikon juggernaut and its tagalong wannabees quickly settled on a relentless succession of "black-blob polycarbonate" (BBP) SLRs and DSLRs, a style that has been hugely successful. And is definitely still with us.

The style has mostly been successful collectively, it should be added. It's when it comes down to each ultraconservative, unchanged, derivative BBP model that we run into problems. Consider what DPReview said of the very newest Canon, the 77D:

...This camera is still pretty plasticky. It's still a black hunk of DSLR. It's not going to win any beauty contests or elicit 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from strangers on the street...

That is certainly correct. The 77D is plain to the point of being homely. The DPReview writer, Carey Rose, then adds to "strangers on the street":

...or your friends at the bar with their retro-styled mirrorless cameras.

Aha.

That puts a finger on it. Partly, retro sells because it's pretty; partly, though, it's a reaction to the endless undifferentiated parade of anonymous, anodyne, ugly-duckling BBP DSLRs. Because too much same-old gets old in its own way.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about retro. Is it...necessary? No—even its fans know it's a tiny bit frivolous. Is it even historically accurate? Not really. Is it authentic? Ah, get outta here, who cares!

I think I like it; it certainly exerts a kind of guilty-pleasure pull. I do feel that. Yet sentient intelligent people have learned to be just a little on the alert against the crude suck of guilty pleasures.

But let's be honest: when retro works, it works.

Two nutshell summaries of TOP's nominations for the Two Most Beautiful Retro-Styled IL* Cameras:

Celebrating Japan: The Fuji X-T20. Some art school graduate or graduates had a very satisfying time at their virtual drawing boards with this one. Like a Miata channels the classic British two-seater sports car, the X-T20  channels many of the "manual, mechanical, metal" SLRs of Japan's 1960s and 1970s,  the exciting days when the Pacific island nation was overtaking Germany as the world's leading cameramaking country. In one perfectly-proportioned device, it embodies the spirit of bygone things like old Mirandas, Topcons, and, yes, Fujicas. The X-T20 says those were great days.

Celebrating Germany: It's hard to say whether the Olympus Pen-F (currently on sale for $200 off) evokes the spirit of the historical half-frame Maitani-designed Pens with a dash of early Leicas thrown in, or whether it tilts the other way and evokes the screwmount Leicas with a dose of the old Pens thrown in for the sake of plausible deniability. I lean toward the latter theory. Either way, Olympus, always a creative company, went all-in to craft a beautiful little jewel. It succeeded. The Pen-F is a beautiful object in a way that a BBP camera can never be. And pleasing in the way that only beauty can be pleasing.

It's possible someone out there might not agree with these choices. It's more possible that someone out there might have a different take on the whole "retro" thing as a culture-wide phenomenon. But I think it's a good impulse; in our throwaway society, it's good to let styles evolve, through refinement, and not chuck the successes of the past out the window just for the sake of relentless knee-jerk neomania. Style is fun too.

And neither of these cameras is just a pretty face, either. Both are highly specified, highly capable picture-takers.

But being pretty doesn't hurt.

Mike

*I have to specify that I mean "IL"—interchangeable-lens—cameras, or else Fuji X100F owners and aspirants will form a mob and pursue me with pitchforks and torches. Or perhaps tasers and LED flashlights.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Steve Biro: "What can I say? I own both the X-T20 and the Pen F. Does that make me shallow?"

Mike replies: No, it makes you discerning. Knowing the first name of more than one member of the Kardashian family makes you shallow.

Stephen Scharf: "While I like Oly's effort with the Pen F, and the X-T20 is a great camera, I personally don't find it particularly attractive.

"Neither compares to the camera that started it all, the 'king of retro,' the Fuji X100-series. When this camera was first announced at the end of 2010, it caused the heartbeat of many, many a photographer to quicken.

"The original retro camera and still the best, IMHO. What started as a cool but definitely quirky camera has, after four revisions, become a fantastic camera. Photo by yours truly."

Mike replies: Put that taser down and step back slowly Stephen....

lyle allan: "Pretty, Yes! I had a chance to play with both at an Expo this weekend in Jersey. They are well balanced (with lots of different lenses) and easy to use. Either would be a joy to work with.

"I went to the expo to look at the new OM-D E-M1 Mark II. But for a $1K less, if one can give up all the 'steroid options' of the OM-D, the Pen might be the way to go...then again, the X-T20 priced in the middle, new sensor technology...decisions...."

Barry Reid: "It's a funny thing, but I love the retro stylings of Pen F but loathe the retro stylings of the X-T10/20. Which just goes to show how Marmite the whole retro thing can be. Thankfully I can't afford to consider either at the moment anyway.

"(After typing that I suddenly realised the readership of TOP is not solely British. Marmite is a yeast extract based spread which has a successful branding campaign based on the idea that you love it or loathe it. 'Marmite' has therefore become a term for anything people have strongly divided opinions on.)"

Paulo Bizarro: "But... if we were in 1986 (when the T90 was introduced), we would probably look back and say that cameras had been boring looking for decades: Leica-like, or SLR-like (say Nikon FM or Pentax). I like retro too, but to this day, nothing fits my hand better than the BBP that comes in the shape of the EOS 1V or its siblings."

JohnMFlores: "The aesthete in me wants to like retro. The futurist in me wants to let go of the past and chase the future. The photographer in me just wants a good hammer. More often than not, the photographer wins."

Here's Mine

Well that was fun! Thanks to everyone who uploaded a picture of their favorite camera yesterday. Sorry again it isn't easier to do; sharing pictures is fun, though—enough fun that it's worth doing once in a while despite the technical awkwardness with the blogging service I use.

So here's just one more, and from the uploads in the last post it seems like a lot of you are going to get this. My all-time fave:

It was an Exakta 66 Mod. II with an 80mm Schneider Xenotar MF lens, a medium-format, 6x6-cm square SLR film camera. This picture isn't of mine, although pictures of the one I owned were published in Darkroom Photography magazine in my review of it.

An odd choice? Very!

I bought it new in the 1980s after reviewing several much more expensive medium-format cameras for magazines—cameras I couldn't afford. After I reviewed the Exakta 66 I bought the review sample. It was quite cheap for a new medium-format camera at the time but on a teacher's salary it was still very expensive to me, and it took me a long time to save up for it. I had only the one lens and never bought the metering prism; I had only the unmetered flip-up waist-level finder like the one in this picture. I never bought the camera strap, even. It was a dedicated strap with a special attachment designed just for this camera (you can see it in this picture, a semicircular bracket under the camera that cradled it and attached via the tripod screw), and it was too expensive for me at the time—around $90 or $100 if memory serves. My budget for food was $60 a week then. So I used the camera without a meter and carried it around in my hand. I never shot anything in it but 120 Tri-X 400 with a K2 yellow filter.

It turned out to be my OC/OL/OF/NLM/OY camera...one camera, one lens, one film, no light meter, one year. Except it was more like 18 months.

Long history
The Exakta 66 was essentially a "vanity project" of the German/Israeli industrialist Heinrich Manderman, who bought the lensmaker Schneider-Kreuznach after the last of the Schneider family owners went bankrupt in 1982. Herr Manderman, who was born in 1923 and died in 2002, at one time also owned Rollei, B+W filters, Exakta, Miranda, ORWO, and Pentacon, among other companies. I believe his family still owns, or perhaps has an interest in, Schneider, but I don't know.

I was never able to speak to him directly, but the story I heard was that either Pentacon or Exakta was the factory where he got his first job, and the Pentacon Six was his favorite camera in his youth (which is right on theme). So he ordered the old Exakta works in Nuremberg to build a modern, updated variant of the Pentacon Six, and he had Schneider design new breechlock lenses for it. The result was the Exakta 66.

By name, the Exakta 66 was supposed to be a descendant of the Exacta 6x6 made by Ihagee in Dresden before WWII, but it was really a descendant of the Pentacon Six introduced in 1956.

The Pentacon Six had a long history as well, including some USSR knock-offs. This, for instance, is a Kiev-60, sometimes called a "Kneb" on forums because of the Cyrillic characters for "Kiev." A copy of the old Pentacon Six, it's a distant cousin of the Exakta 66. While not as nicely constructed, the Russians fixed the film advance, so the Kievs actually had fewer headaches with frame spacing than the German cameras.

Great camera? Not really
Although the Exakta 66 went through two refreshes, three models altogether (called "Mod. II" and "Mod. III," leading the first version to retroactively be called "Mod. I"), it never sold well. The reason is that it just wasn't a very good camera, unfortunately. Although "modernized," it showed its ancient roots in its flaws, which weren't subtle. The viewfinder showed considerably less than the negative would record, and it wasn't centered, either—the bottom of the picture in the viewfinder lined up with what you'd get on the negative but there would be considerably more "air" at the top of the image than you'd see in the finder, and half that much on either side. And the film advance mechanism was a weak point—frame spacing was often irregular, and sometimes failed resulting in overlapping frames. Film was not held flat very well in the gate, either—I occasionally lost a shot due to poor film flatness. In fact, I probably lost more shots with that camera than with any other camera before or since, including one great shot ruined by poor film flatness that still galls me even after all the intervening years.

The Schneider Xenotar MF 80mm ƒ/2.8 I had was the single best lens I ever used. It wasn't that the lens was so great, though, it was that I happened to get a good one, one that must have been at the very top of the sample variation. I tried several other copies of the same lens over the years and none were quite as good. My experience of medium-format lenses over the years, and enlarging lenses too, was that there was considerable sample variation. This was confirmed in a number of cases. You couldn't buy those things by the label; you had to buy by the specific individual sample. That was even true for Zeiss Hasselblad lenses until fairly late in the game.

The young have hopes
So why was this camera my favorite, then, if it had all those flaws? Well, I guess it has to do with memories of youth. For some reason, I took to the Exakta 66 like the proverbial duck to water. I knew just what to do with it immediately, almost subconsciously. As I say I only ever used that one film, and from the first I took to cropping every picture to a vertical rectangle. Why? I guess because it was hard to guess what would be on the negatives on the sides of the image. Because it didn't have a light meter, I decided to train myself to guess my exposures, and although this was a struggle at first, I worked hard at it, and found to my surprise that I got very good at it. In some cases my brain even metered better than a light meter would have, because I understood the scene better, whereas the meter would be assuming the scene was middle gray and would need to be compensated for. And I really liked the pictures I made with that camera. I curated a group show for the U.S. Park Service in which I included my own work, and it turned out to be the last time my work was ever exhibited. All my pictures in that show were taken with the Exakta 66. The show as a whole got good reviews, and while not every reviewer singled out my work, those who did said nice things.

The Exacta 66 was the camera that I owned as I transitioned from being a photographer to teaching and writing about it. So it was the last camera I used while I still assumed I was going to spend my life as a working art photographer. I'm better at the career I ended up with than I would have been at that career I left behind, I think, but, still and all, I have a certain amount of sentimentality for who I was then, and for the plans, ambitions, and hopes I had. As many of us do, for our youthful dreams.

So that's why it was my favorite.

I roamed on foot all over Washington D.C. with that camera, and did many portraits with it. I think having to carry it in my hand and working so hard with it played a part in my affection for the old beastie, too. What can I say? We bonded.

The usual fate
In those days I had very little money, and when I wanted or needed a new camera I had to sell the old one. I joined a photo studio in which all the other photographers shot Nikon and Hasselblad, and I couldn't use off brands or I wouldn't be contributing to the equipment pool. So my Contax and my Exakta 66 had to go the way of all cameras.

I've always regretted letting that one go, however, and to this day I wish I hadn't.

Mike

P.S. As for my favorite camera now, it's the one I'm jonesing to buy next...same as Peter Vagt's favorite. But it's going to be awhile before I can both a) afford it and b) justify it, and both a) and b) are going to have to pertain before I can get my hot little hands on one. But don't cry for me!  :-)

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Andrew Lamb: "I had the Exakta 66, with an 80mm Schneider, when I was young and foolish. If I'm being honest, I think it appealed to my contrary nature. As I've mentioned before, I experienced focusing problems with it until I figured out that the focus screen had been installed the wrong way around. I can't remember how long I persevered with it for. Nowhere as near as long as you. It was a nice camera to use hand-held on location but the 1/30th sec. sync made it poor as a studio camera. As for the lens, I got great results with it in B&W (T-Max 400) but I was disappointed with it when using colour slide.

"All-time favourite camera? Another 6x6, the Super-Ikonta. Current modern favourite: the Sigma SD Quattro."

Mike replies: The slow sync was the proximate rationale for selling my first one--it was useless in the studio. I bought a 150mm telephoto for the Hasselblads, contributed in lieu of a few months of studio rent—never owned a Hassie body, but I could borrow those, and nobody else in the studio owned a 150mm. I tried to buy a second Exacta 66 sometime in the '90s, trying to recapture the magic of my period with the first one, and it, like yours, had the focusing screen installed upside-down. Took me a long time to figure that out, too—you don't expect a new German camera straight out of the box to have a problem like that!

Thomas Rink: "This brings back some less-than-pleasant memories from my youth. In 1985, the camera shop in the next town had a nice, pre-owned Pentacon Six TL with 50mm, 80mm, and 180mm Zeiss Jena lenses on offer. The entire kit was only 800 Deutsche Mark, which was within my financial reach (with a bit of stretching). But on the day I finally decided to go for it, I rear-ended a driving-school car; to add to the embarrassment, the car was from the driving school from which I got my license just a year earlier (which required, due to my ineptitude, an above-average number of driving lessons, of course). Gone were my savings, so no medium format for poor Thomas."

Mike replies: That is a sad story. So close, yet....

Forge Ahead!

I was kind of taken aback by how many people urged me to sell the old Mamiya 7II instead of doing some shooting with it, "so someone can get some use out of it."

Hmm. Not a vote of confidence!  ;-)  Am I not "someone"? The post was kind of about getting some use out of it, rather than not getting any use out of it. If you know what I mean.

Whatevah. Here's why I'm going to forge ahead anyway: because for days I've been seeing potential pictures for it. I've already planned the first shot. The other two I saw were light-specific, and probably wouldn't be there if I tried to go back. But the point is that just the idea of using it is making me see fresh things. I'm "seeing with the camera" in my head. I like it when that happens.

I'll probably get the XP2 developed and proofs made at Duggal in NYC, unless anyone has a better suggestion.

Plan for that
Personally I think it's sensible to keep a few cameras around if you know you're going to get a recurring urge to use them. It saves you from another bout of planning/researching/buying. If you know you're periodically going to start jonesing to do something or other that doesn't actually make any sense for you, keep a camera that fits that urge in the closet so you can scratch the itch without spending any extra money. So if you know you periodically get the urge to shoot film again, keep a film camera around. It's actually sensible, rather than a waste.

Everyone gets a wild hair every now and then. If it's one you can foresee, then go ahead and plan for it, I'd say.

Either way, cheers!

Mike

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Seeing fresh
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Dave Jenkins: "Re 'So if you know you periodically get the urge to shoot film again, keep a film camera around': Good thinking. I keep a Minolta Autocord TLR and an Olympus OM-2n around for that very reason. I dearly wish I hadn't sold my Pentax 6x7, which I think gave me the highest percentage of keepers of any camera I've ever owned."

Bob Rosinsky: "Years ago, I remember you built a darkroom in your basement. Xander and Lulu were rooming with you back then. Although time marches on, and your back is to the Midwest now, I think your analog latency is begging for development. Keep the Mamiya."

Tom Hassler: "Go for it, Mike! Your post has me thinking about a nice little Voigtlander Bessa that I've kept mainly for sentimental reasons. It hasn't seen a roll of film in at least a decade but working with it as a machine is very rewarding. (To be current I should probably say 'device' but that overused term just seems to digital.) I look forward to hearing about your exploits, and seeing the pictures. I worked in NYC for several years in the '80s and Duggal was our go-to lab. They always did a great job. Nice to hear that they are still around!"

Eric Brody: "My Mamiya 7II is sadly gone. I planned to keep using it in a hybrid workflow, 'forever,' or until they stopped making film. Another one of those resolutions that one hopes will never be re-quoted by someone. Happily they still seem to be making film. Realistically I so enjoy using my Fuji X-T2 and seeing its files that I am done with film...really. The Mamiya lenses, especially the 80mm and 50mm, were among the sharpest optics I have ever used. I made every mistake possible with that camera, from shooting with the lens cap on to thinking that since everything looked sharp in the viewfinder that I needn't change the focus (bias from using ground glass focusing for so long). It was the perfect film travel camera. I miss it."

SF Murph: "XP2? I'm curious as to why. (I like that film quite a bit.)"

Mike replies: Here you go.

Geoffrey Heard: "Gawd, some TOPpers said sell it? Keep it Mike, run the occasional film through it, but for goodness sake, stop publishing pictures of it. That's camera porn and it is doing mental damage to me. Oh, wait, with the Mamiya as the subject, it can't be porn, it must be art! LOL. Cheers."

Unboxing

Okay, it's not a new camera. But you know, getting an old toy out of the closet is almost like getting a new one. Hence the little unboxing joke.

In keeping with the "revenge" of analog (the book arrived, too—old-fashioned paper) and my thoughts in passing about film yesterday, I got this out of the storage room and also ordered new batteries and a few rolls of medium-format XP2. I'm a digital photographer but I'm not doctrinaire about it. Not averse to shooting a bit of film now and then.

The Mamiya 7II is a medium-format 6x7-centimeter interchangeable-lens rangefinder camera that takes 120 and 220 rollfilm. Its antecedent was the Mamiya 6 of 1989, which I believe was the first camera I ever reviewed professionally on manufacturer loan. The rumor at the time was that it was the pet project of a Japanese Mamiya executive who was a Leica fanatic, although I don't know chapter and verse on that. The Mamiya 6 was a 6x6 cm square format camera with a collapsible lensmount. The collapsible mount was later deemed overly complicated for its admittedly minor gains in compactness (although it was quite cool). The collapsible section of the 6 was rigid on the 7 (that squarish bulge behind the lens flange in the last picture). The Mamiya 7 only offered framelines for three of its six lenses (the other three needed hot-shoe-mounted optical VFs), but all the lenses got very high marks for their performance.

The Mamiya 7 followed the 6 six years later in 1995, based on persistent calls for a non-square variant. The Mamiya 7 was so popular that it was followed up by a revised version in 1999, ten years after the original Mamiya 6 and four years after the first 7, in what we would now call a "Mark II" variant. The Mamiya 7II had more "rubber armoring" as it was called, an improved viewfinder, and it offered a multi-exposure control. (If you learned on digital and don't know quite what that is, it simply allowed you to expose the same piece of film with two or more separate exposures. Here's an example shot with a Mamiya 7 on Kodak Tri-X.)

Although the Mamiya 6, 7, and 7II used leaf-shutter lenses—which were also very quiet—the cameras had an ingenious built-in fabric darkslide that protected the film while you changed lenses mid-roll. A system of interlocks prevented you from trying to take a picture with the darkslide closed, and from removing a lens with the darkslide open. The interlocks also prevent you from firing the camera with no film in it (if you want to dry-fire the camera, you can do it by cracking the back open a bit first).

The camera has auto-exposure and an AEL mode as well as full manual, and a very nice, easy-to-use exposure compensation dial. 

Despite this richness of features it's a very easy camera to use once you familiarize yourself with the limited number of controls, and master the darkslide and the interlock system, which isn't difficult. One tip: the metering window is on the front of the camera and can be thrown off if it's struck by sunlight. To solve this problem, I simply shot with the Mamiya 6 while wearing a billed cap! The brim of the hat shaded the metering window in most situations. At any rate, it was simply something to be aware of.

The lens has an equivalent angle of view of 40mm, a manual aperture ring, focuses manually by helical, uses a reversed, vented lens hood, and has a maximum aperture of ƒ/4 (although for those who believe in the false idea of "equivalent aperture," it's really an ƒ/2!).

...Except it's not ƒ/2, it's ƒ/4. Despite being a rangefinder camera, the slow speed of the lens, the large size of the camera, and the relative preciousness of the 10 exposures per roll of 120 film make it a camera that rewards slow, thoughtful, deliberate work.

All in all, a fun camera to use...especially now that almost everyone would be using one for personal work and enjoyment.

I'm not aware of when the 7II went out of production, but it's no longer available new. They have held their value remarkably well, and appear to still be in demand.

Speaking of unboxing, though, I well remember when that Mamiya 6 arrived via UPS for me to test for Darkroom Photography magazine. I was a churchmouse-poor former art student at the time, living in a tiny walk-up studio apartment in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and I had only written a few magazine articles. I could almost have lived for a year on what all that stuff cost at the time. Opening the big shipping box that contained the camera and all the lenses and accessories for it was truly exciting—I opened it at night, and couldn't wait for dawn to come. I got to use it for a month. The first picture in this post was taken with it. (I do have a few more nice ones, but not digitized.) Picture Fuji sending a new GFX and all the associated lenses and goodies right now for you to use for a whole month, and you'll get the picture. Fun stuff from back in the day.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Out of the box
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Ernest Zarate: "I remember your review of the Mamiya 6 in DP. Fun to read the backstory on your life at that time. That review had a huge impact on my photography. After reading your review, I took myself down to the local camera store (now long gone) and held the 6 with the gorgeous 50mm ƒ/4 lens. What a thrill! I'd never held a camera before or since that fit my hands so perfectly. (I had a job a few years earlier where I used a Hassy on assignment—great camera, but no fun to use or hold.) I bought the camera and lens.

"For a few months, I had both the Leica M6 and the Mamiya 6. I sold the Leica as I just wasn't using it and could not rationalize having two expensive cameras (but I tried really hard!). I fell in love with the square MF format, the collapsible lens mount, and the camera and 50mm. And I shot Ilford XP1 (then, XP2) in that camera as well. Sadly I ended up selling the Mamiya 6 and lens when I got my first DSLR (Canon 10D).

"I had a lot of great photo outings with that lovely 6. And still enjoy looking at the work I did with it. Thank you for the fun walk down memory lane!"

Mani (partial comment): "The Mamiya 6 is by far my favorite camera. I sold my digital Leica M, and a new-in-box Mamiya with all three lenses cost me about the same, but was a massive step-up in quality and sheer joy of use. The lenses are super-humanly sharp, and the viewfinder is a Brobdingnagian version of the Leica finder. I truly love it—a day walking with this camera is a zen-like immersion in photography, totally removed from how I use digital cameras."

...And the Other Kind of RF

I've been beavering away revising my book The Empirical Photographer to eventually send as a thank-you gift to my Patreon supporters, and I've gotten a little carried away with adding new articles and revising and re-editing old ones. (I keep trying to stop—"just one more and that's it!"—but it's hard.) One of the bits that has required the most work collating and re-writing has been the various posts about "The Leica Year."

And I have to say it makes me a little bit nostalgic. I miss being able to recommend a year with a film Leica to ambitious young photographers. I believe that even if you didn't "take" to it, using one for a while was an excellent learning experience. It forces—or encourages—you to learn how to do a number of things you might not otherwise learn so easily. It's fun and interesting, but also good for you.

There are other RFs, of course—this time I mean rangefinders, not retractable fastbacks—but why wouldn't you use the iconic example? If you want to try a roadster and you're only going to own one, it should be a Miata. And if you want to try a rangefinder and you're only going to own one, it should be a Leica.

The best ones to buy were always the M4 and the M6, although there were others that would serve nearly as well. In the Comments yesterday, Gabe said the gestalt of the first Miata (MX-5 if you insist, but they're Miatas) was "a light ragtop with minimum frills," and a Leica, despite its later enthusiastic adoption by the fru-fru carriage-trade status-symbol crowd, was originally similar: a rugged, minimalist camera with no frills that you had to learn how to handle yourself.

A worn but not worn out M4 currently for sale for $717 on eBay.
Photo courtesy Roberts Camera.

I was surprised to find that M4's and M6's* on eBay are holding their value pretty well. Many recent auctions are for unusual or collector pieces, in keeping with the new order. Most M4's were chrome, meaning the black ones are more sought after, and collectors seeking shelf-queens want "mint" examples. (I hate the word "mint" almost as much as I hate the word "imagery.") Why would a photographer want a mint M4? It would just mean you'd either have to not use it or else feel guilty about using it. Buy a proper used one with some wear on it, so you can sling it over your shoulder and carry it around! Anyway, plain-jane chrome M4's with a decent amount of age-appropriate wear seem to be going in the $7–800 range, which is impressive enough; but similarly utilitarian M6's (plain-jane M6's are black chrome) are still averaging well above a grand. Not bad for cameras that use hopelessly outdated and inconvenient sensor technology!

I suppose my affection for these cameras is one of many things that are generational. The generation you look up to most tend to be either the group that were teenagers when you were a kid, up to people midway, or a little more, toward your parents' age. Those were the photographers I grew up looking up to, and many of them used Leicas at least part of the time. So I wanted to, too. Just as with my Miata, I owned and used an M6 for three years (I had another year borrowing a friend's M4—thanks again, Nick—which parallels, I suppose, the young married woman I worked with who used to loan me her MGB all the time). Present company excepted, I suppose you'd look high and low and long and hard for modern digital photographers who saw any value in experiencing a film Leica.

Despite which, it might still amplify nicely the joy of being a photographer. The Leica is a still a good teacher; it just has fewer students now is all.

Mike

*TOP site style calls for an apostrophe when pluralizing alphanumerical equipment model names, to avoid such awkwardness as the 1Ds being pluralized as "1Dss." "1Ds's" is strictly incorrect but reads better.

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Finding the range since 2005
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Trevor Johnson (partial comment): "Shirley, my wife, says that I love my Leicas and funnily enough, Terry O'Neill, in a Guardian interview last Saturday, said his old Leica was his most treasured possession."

Dave Karp: "I have never owned a Leica, but my Dad showed me how to use a camera with his Nikon S rangefinder. My first camera was a Konica Auto S2 rangefinder. It had a fixed 45mm lens. That was my camera/lens combination for years. It never really dawned on me until today that I had the one camera/one lens experience in spades, using a rangefinder, albeit one that had a meter built in! I don't know if it made me a better photographer, but it made me a photographer."

Chuck Albertson: "You don't have to look too far. The other day, some 20-something barista at Starbucks spotted the MP hanging of my shoulder and asked about it; he said he was saving up for a film M. I left a generous tip."

Peter Wright: "Well I suppose I'm still a Leica student! One of the things I learned is that you get over the 'But it's a LEICA!!' Feeling quite fast, and then the camera is absolutely uninteresting in use—no seductive bokeh effect looking through the viewfinder, no complex AF system to master, etc. It's almost boring, although that's not the right word. Then if you keep on using the camera past that point (the point I suspect that many DSLR owners start planning their next purchase), it goes completely out of mind, leaving the user with nothing to think about other than the photography. That's the only reason I can think of to explain why I get a disproportionate number of my best pictures from using one."

 

Fujifilm Film Fuji

So what if you don't need no steenkeeng medium-format digital Fuji? According to FujiRumors, B&H Photo has found a few brand-new Fuji GF670's in its warehouse, and will be shipping them on the 25th.

The GF670 was a new, modernized version of a classic medium-format folder. Unlike most classics, it is dual-format—you can set it to shoot square or 6x7. The lens is a very fine 80mm ƒ/3.5. The camera was jointly developed by Fujifilm and Cosina, was built by Cosina, and was also sold as a Voigtländer. Introduced in 2008, it ended its run a couple of years ago.

And if you'd like an authentic, historical folder, check out Jurgen at Certo6. He restores older folders to working condition. The "Rolls-Royce" late models are the Zeiss Zuper Ikontas and the superb Agfa Super Isolette, but an earlier one might be more fiddly and more fun, and a better conversation piece.

Looks like your very last chance to buy an '08 GF670 new. And if you get one, please also order some of this and maybe even some of this!

Mike
(Thanks to James Boykin)

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TOP: a modern replica of the aging original.
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Peter Wright: "Interesting post! The only medium format cameras I own are a GF670 bought from B&H, and an Agfa Super Isolette bought from Jurgen at Certo6! (The Agfa came with the original leather case.) I've had both for several years now and can't imagine parting with either. These are genuine coupled ranger-finder cameras producing great negs or slides and really satisfying to use. (I tried out Hasselblad, which is better built, but never hit the sweet spot for me.) I really think an extended period with one of these cameras will teach you lots about photography—something along the lines of the 'Leica for a year' approach."

Andrew Lamb: "My favourite camera is a 70-year-old Super Ikonta. Wonderful bit of engineering. Have owned it for 25 years and would never part with it. On a point of order, Jurgen also sings the praises of the Bessa II but I don't think they're a patch on the Super Ikonta or Super Isolette. Amongst other gripes, the 6x9 neg never seems to be held very flat thus making the camera incapable of showing off the lens to its best."

Stephen Gilbert: "How to tell you're a gear head: you have no desire to shoot film, but still covet the Fuji folder."

Mike replies: Amen, bro.

25 Years of Digital

In May of 1991, Eastman Kodak, the inventor of and early leader in digital imaging technology, introduced the first commercial DCS—Digital Camera System—at a press conference in New York City. Utilizing a Nikon F3 carcass (Kodak and Nikon made a virtue of this by claiming it would make the transition to digital easier for photojournalists already used to that camera), six models were offered for sale at prices between $20,000 and $25,000. It was the culmination of years of prototypes and proofs-of-concept.

On Saturday at noon, in Rochester, our friend Todd Gustavson (author of the excellent Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital and several other books of camera history and lore), will be giving a talk at the George Eastman Museum called "The Kodak DCS: 25 Years of Digital Photography" in the Curtis Theater. It's free to Museum members and included with Museum admission.

There's an 80% chance I'll be there (I've been sick this week, hence 17% of the uncertainty—the other 3% would be the possibility of bad weather!). If any friends o' TOP make it to the talk, perhaps we can gather for lunch afterwards at the Museum Café.

There's also a selection of DCS cameras on view in the History of Photography Gallery. And we can go stand under George's elephant (I'll tell the story if you haven't heard it).

Mike

P.S. Note that contrary to received opinion, neither Nikon nor Canon had anything to do with the development of the early digital cameras that used their bodies. In fact, some of the bodies used for Kodak's early "newsroom" digital cameras were bought off camera store shelves. Todd will no doubt cover this in his talk.

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11.3 years in digital and counting
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Ratty Old Nikon

All you guys who say you like to buy used cameras missed a good one the other day—

The third Nikon, a Nikon I from 1948 engraved "Made in Occupied Japan" in English, sold for $406,000 at Westlicht the other day. Doubtless some hardworking wage-earner needed a user...and probably likes the camera's unusual 3:4 ratio (these were 24x32mm if memory serves. Buyer shoots Micro 4/3 in digital, no doubt).

Seriously...a lot of money for an historical artifact. Roughly half a lifetime's earnings at the present minimum wage in my state. The remarkable price is probably just more evidence of "too much capital sloshing around the world," in Niall Ferguson's memorable phrase. Heck, for that kind of dosh, you could almost afford a bargain used Porsche. (I assumed at first that the article at the link was tongue-in-cheek, but no.)

It's the earliest Nikon known to exist. I'd like to look at it in a museum. Maybe the buyer will leave it to the George Eastman in his will.

Another reason to hang on to your old cameras! Although, come to think, I have an old Nikon I'd let go for slightly less, and no takers. You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp)

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Eamon Hickey: "Photo dawg brain teaser: Although that may be the oldest Nikon known to exist, it is not the oldest existing camera made by the company called Nikon. Say what? Well, 'Nikon' was, in those days, simply a brand name created by the company Nippon Kogaku. And Nippon Kogaku made a variety of aerial reconnaissance cameras for the Imperial Japanese Navy going back to the 1930s. The U.S. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum happens to have one of the relatively few that survived the Second World War."

Interesting Old Camera

An Arca-Swiss 4x5 owned and used by Ansel Adams for four years in the 1960s and then given as a gift to his young Belgian friend Liliane de Cock is being auctioned off by Heritage Auctions. Starting bid is $35,000 and it's expected to sell for between $70k and $100k. Nice museum piece! I'm always happy to see old equipment preserved for posterity.

The whole story is at the link.

Mike
(I forget who tipped me to this but thanks!)

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Michael Perini: "Like everything Arca Swiss Makes, they were really wonderful cameras. I still have one of Liliane de Cock's books which I purchased new a long time ago . She did beautiful work."

Seeing With a 'New' Camera and Lens

To "test" the idea in the previous post, as well as the idea that pictures in my newfound home are "farther away," as I talked about previously here—I improvised the closest I could come to a "big" camera and a long lens: my Sony A900 and its 85mm ƒ/2.8 lens, which is what most of the recent pictures you've seen here were shot with (the church steeple, for example). I'm just experimenting...trying to see if a bigger sensor actually means anything to me, and if I really am seeing the landscape around here at a narrower angle. Here's a sample:

Keuka Lake and the Bluff, from the hills

I dunno, but to me this looks like the work of a guy who hasn't quite got the hang of using a short tele for landscapes yet.  :-)  Give me time.

The Bluff, by the way, is the steep ridge that forms the infill of Keuka's famous "Y" shape. Here's a topographical map of Keuka from 1903, on which you can see Bluff Point marked:

The land around here is quite dramatically corrugated, and although nothing's terribly high—there are no real mountains—the hills and ridges can be steep.

Like a lot of my "color" pictures, it's possible that this one is really a black-and-white picture at heart. I still see B&W.

Or...
I don't know if this happens to you, but I shoot a lot of "almost but not quite" shots. They're 90% of the way to being pictures but they don't quite make it. This one's probably a good example. I often find that I still kind of like them at first, even to the point that I'll spend time futzing with them in Photoshop for a while. (The chief pleasure I get is in converting things to B&W.)

Usually, what shows them up as also-rans is the passage of a few weeks' time. By that time I wonder what I saw in it. Or, if a few months passes, I'll simply forget about it. With me, it's "staying power" that ultimately makes it clear which pictures are hits and which are ABNQs. Somehow it always becomes painfully obvious in time.

I'll probably have to shoot with the FF and 85mm a few more times before I start seeing with it. It always takes a while to start "seeing" with a new camera or lens. You have to be patient with yourself, and keep using it.

I've been at it a few weeks now, and it's been an interesting experiment. I suppose a 24-MP FF sensor with 2008 limitations is not really a fair substitute for one of today's big cameras, and certainly not for one of today's big medium-format cameras. But it's the nearest I can come using what's in the camera closet.

Here's one I shot just this very night. I might like this one better, but as I say, only time will tell. (This works well in color too.)

Mike
(I guess you can tell I didn't work on my book today.)

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Frankencamera!

Guest post by JG

The primary reason why I was slow to embrace digital photography is because for roughly 15 years prior to purchasing my first serious digital camera in 2005, I was almost exclusively a view camera user.

A lot of the photography I do is architectural in nature (although it's not, strictly speaking, architectural photography) and using camera and lens movements to correct perspective distortions and control depth of field is common practice among architectural photographers. Thus it will come as no surprise that for as long as I have been using digital cameras, I have wanted one that has view camera movements available.

While a variety of commercial options have existed over the years and in fact, several very nice ones exist today, none of them have been or are particularly well suited to my personal needs—nor can my photography budget stretch to accommodate their purchase.

Many DIY versions have also been made, although most use medium- and large-format lenses because their larger image circles allow for a greater range of movement, and a majority of them are intended to be used in a studio and/or for macro photography, not in the field.

Because I am inveterate tinkerer with all things electrical and mechanical, I have tried several times over the years to cobble together workable alternatives using various digital camera bodies and view cameras, starting with a 4/3-format Panasonic DMC-L1 in 2006. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, every one of my previous attempts has missed the mark one way or another and ultimately ended up on the figurative scrap heap.

Until this past weekend, that is, when I attached a Sony A7R body to the rear standard of a Toyo 45G view camera and a Contax N lens mount to the front standard, and by mixing and matching and slightly modifying bits and pieces from several Toyo cameras, I was able to move them together closely enough along the rail that I could focus the lens at infinity...success was finally mine!

Here's a quick photo of the front side:

And here's a photo of the rear side:

And here is the very first photo I took with it (standing just outside my front door, because it was literally 109 degrees in the shade this past Sunday afternoon) using my much-appreciated Contax N 17–35mm ƒ/2.8 zoom (set at 17mm and ƒ/8, with approx. 4mm of front rise, which is pretty much the maximum possible at this focal length, increasing to ~5–7mm at 21mm and ~8–10mm between 24mm and 35mm):

Using this lens at its widest focal length was the toughest test I could think of to throw at this camera and it succeeded admirably. (No, the image quality is not perfect—there is some smearing visible in the corners at 17–19mm, among other things—but it appears to be entirely adequate for my needs and in the original files there is, of course, that wonderful Zeiss "pop" that I enjoy. And yes, my particular A7R is damaged somehow—hence the magenta highlights and noisy shadows—so I'm actively looking for another one as I write this.) As a bonus, by swapping the lens board with another one I fabricated, and repositioning the standards an additional 16 mm apart, my "Frankencamera" also works with Contax 645 lenses, too!

Of course, this project still has a way to go until it's finally and fully finished. Because the Toyo 45G is a film-era camera, it was designed during a time when the term "precision" meant something very different than it does during the digital era, so I will be going through the camera and tweaking things to optimize its tolerances and performance. I also intend to make sure it's as square and/or parallel as I can make it and then lock everything down tightly, because I don't anticipate using swing or tilt movements very often. I also have in mind a few additional modifications that should further improve the camera's stability/rigidity and, I am hopeful, further improve its performance as well.

Once all of that has been done, my last step will be to incorporate the guts of either the Kipon or Fringer smart adapters into the lens and camera body mounts such that I can control the electronic apertures of the Contax lenses from the A7R body instead of having to work with them in preset mode, which is the case right now. If I use the Fringer adapter, I may even be able to get the autofocus working, too! Wouldn't it be a hoot to have an autofocusing view camera?

To be sure, this isn't the most practical camera ever made, because it's fairly bulky and heavy (and requires a fairly bulky and heavy tripod, too). And because both tilt-shift lenses and Photoshop exist, many people will think what I've done here is silly and pointless, and to some extent, they have a valid point. But it was inexpensive to build (excluding the basic Toyo 45G camera and various accessories, which I already had, I've spent less than $125 on this project so far, most of which was for the pair of lens adapters from which I salvaged the lens and camera body mounts), it does exactly what I need (want) it to do with my favorite lenses, and in my opinion it will be a lot of fun to use for the type of photography I prefer to do. (YMMV, of course!)

Perhaps most important of all, though, is that I was finally able to scratch an itch that had bugged me for more than a decade. If nothing else, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had from that alone!

JG

JG has been photographing a variety of subjects, using a variety of cameras, for more than 40 years. For the past seven years, though, he's been infatuated with B&W nighttime photography and during the wee hours, he explores the Phoenix, AZ metropolitan area with his camera. He posts many of the resulting photos at his photo-blog.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Graham Byrnes: "Making things that work is always cool, in my opinion, whether they are needed or not."

Richard: "Your 'Falling Frond' photo is one of the most perfect pictures I've ever seen. Breathtaking. And what a cool project."

Gato: "Looks nice. I have often thought of doing something similar, though I doubt I'll ever carry through with it. Though for many years I made my living with 35mm, most of my personal film photography was done with 4x5 view cameras. What I miss, I think, is the ritual aspect and the enforced pacing. The view cameras, especially my wooden Deardorff, brought a sort of gravity to a portrait sitting and engaged the sitter in a way I have never quite been able to achieve with smaller cameras. I miss it, but don't think I'll ever go back."

Start-Up Speed and an Enduring Tic

Guest post by Christopher J. May

Start-up speed with early digitals caused me to develop a nervous tic that still exists today. My first digital camera was a Canon D60. One of the subjects that I was shooting pretty heavily at the time was high school basketball. While that was not a sports camera by any stretch of the imagination, most of its failings could be worked around. Oddly enough, poor autofocus and high ISO performance were not my biggest gripes with the camera. It was the slow start up and "wake up from sleep" times.

When the action was at the opposite end of the court, I'd watch what was happening but wouldn't shoot because I didn't have glass long enough for that. If the action stayed at the far end for any amount of time (free throw situations, etc.), the camera would go into sleep mode. If a fast break would come back to my side of the court, I'd bring the camera up to eye level only to find that it was busy waking up and I would miss the action.

I tried adjusting the sleep settings during games but only found that turning sleep mode off would solve the problem. Invariably, I'd forget to change the sleep setting back and would kill my batteries in no time flat. Eventually, I decided to just give a half press on the shutter while the action was at the far end of the court in an effort to keep the camera awake during the game. This worked except for the fact that to this day, I find myself randomly half pressing shutter buttons (even on my F4S film camera!) to keep cameras "awake."

As an aside, the D60 still causes me to smile when I read about today's lower end cameras being incapable of sports shooting. Those who think a rebel or a D3300 are poor sports cameras should pick up an old D60 and try that for a game. Their entry level cameras will seem like a D5/1DX Mk II after that!

Chris

Chris is a hobbyist photographer based in Pueblo, Colorado. He enjoys photographing the diverse and dramatic landscapes, railroads and grain elevators of his home state.

©2016 by Christopher J. May, all rights reserved

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Steve Jacob: "Ah yes, the stay-awake precautionary tick...I use to get around this by deliberately switching the camera off. Knowing I had around 3–4 sec. to wait, I would switch it on in anticipation. This usually meant I was ready just as everything happened...or it didn't happen and I could switch it off.

"Upside is that I used to get excellent battery life. Downside was it didn't work well in every situation. However, it worked well enough for motorsport. However I did get very attuned to the sounds of an event. Even now, certain sounds instinctively make me switch my camera on just in case. Of course, now it takes about half a second and it's ready."

Stephen Scharf: "Canon at that time was quite good at differentiating its product lines. While one could make do with D60 for sports, Canon's intention was, if you wanted to shoot sports, you needed to transition to the Canon 1D. I made such a transition from a D60 to a (used) 1D in 2003 for shooting pro motorsports, and one of the key performance differences was that the 1D would wake up virtually instantly. 'Responsiveness' has been a key differentiator between pro Canon and consumer or 'prosumer' bodies ever since. I shot briefly with a friend's 5D MkIII, and while it is an excellent general purpose body, I would much rather shoot motorsports with a 1D MKIV (or even my warhorse 1D MkIIN) any day of the week because of the higher level of responsiveness."

Lynn: "I, too, learned to half-press the shutter button to wake up the camera. My first digital camera was the excellent (for its time) Nikon Coolpix E4500. Start-up was best measured in geological time. With a young family I soon discovered the need to plan ahead. The best strategy seemed to be to turn the camera on and then make lunch. We don't have many family pictures taken before noon. In the same calendar year. I still have that camera. For macro work it's hard to beat. Its slide copy adapter is very handy too."

Gordon Lewis: "The phenomenon you describe is not unique to the Canon EOS D60. I own a Nikon V1 that does the same thing. My intention when I bought it was to use it for street and travel photography. The V1's tendency to go brain-dead without warning renders its utility for spontaneous shots subpar at best. Fortunately I stopped using it well before I developed the costly tic of hurling it against the nearest wall."

The Prettiest Image Files

My old K-M 7D. The 28–75mm K-M lens was made in
Tamron's factory in China.

D. Hufford wrote on the "Oops" post that he really liked the files from the original 2011 pre-X-Trans X100. I've heard that said before by others.

Paul De Zan chimed in to say "I feel the same way about the now-antediluvian, 6-MP, CCD-sensor Nikon D40, which to my eye makes the best outdoor, natural light color of any digital camera I've ever used." Ken Rockwell was a big D40 fan too. Harvey Bernstein added, "since some are talking about the ineffable characteristics of certain cameras, I claim the ancient Nikon D2Hs as one of that group. The files are small [4.1 MP] and the sensor is challenged by scenes that have wide dynamic range, but within its limitations, they can be lovely." 

Can you think of any now-outdated camera you had that gave you files you still remember as being better than average?

For me it was the 6-MP Konica-Minolta 7D, introduced in early 2004 and effectively orphaned when Konica-Minolta exited the camera business in 2006. It had very accurate color, lovely low contrast, and yielded files that I thought were just lovely. The lens was a zoom without much in the way of pedigree, but it was a honey on a crop-sensor camera.

I might actually still be using mine today, except it broke. I tried to get Sony to fix it but their policy at the time was to replace it with a then-current Sony camera, and I didn't qualify for that.

A few samples:

I loved that camera. In fact it kind of spoiled me for later cameras, a bit. I had no problem printing the 7D's files, even way past my then-standard size of 10.5 inches wide. Some people claimed an allergy to "uprezzed" files when printed, but I liked them. In fact I've sometimes wondered, in the back of my mind, whether 6 MP might not be the ideal size for APS-C pictures. It's one of those things we can never know, because of course it would be marketing suicide for a sensor maker to make a state-of-the-current-art 6-MP APS-C sensor now.

Typepad's Comments sections are not set up to accept images, but you can add simple HMTL in comment text blocks, and here's how to put an image in the comments. Use this code:

...Where "http:///image.jpg" is an sRGB image on the Web (not on your computer, mind you, the Web) that is no more than 470 pixels wide.

...Samples not required, of course.

Any digital cameras from the past you fondly remember?

Mike

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Christopher C Fuller: "Loved the JPEGs from the Fuji X100, but at some point I remembered how much I enjoy the colors from Nikon cameras I had used in the past: especially the D70 and D2H. So I purchased a used D700. Match that with Nikon's great (and mostly inexpensive) manual and auto focus prime lenses and the files, both JPEG and raw, are glorious. There's little more that I need now than my D700 and the 35mm ƒ/2 AF-D. The X100 helped learn to love the 35mm field of view and the rendition of the 35mm ƒ/2 AF-D is wonderful."

Ken N: "Olympus E-1. I still use it the most of any digital camera. Best colors and skin tones."

Kevin: "Funny, I was just perusing my photo library the other day when I noticed a short period of photos that just had a wonderful, simplistic 'feel' to them. I was surprised when the EXIF revealed that they were all taken with the Nikon D40 and 18–135mm lens. I eventually gave that setup to my father. I may have to trade him my D500 to get it back.  :-)  "

Rodger Kingston: "Dear Mike, I like several of your recent posts, which I would generally group together as 'Cameras that best suit my needs.' I decided about five years ago that the Fuji X10 and X20, with their little fingernail-sized sensors, suited me just fine. A joy to use, they feel a lot like an old screw-mount Leica in hand, and produce files that allow me to make prints as large as my printer will allow (17x22"), which look great on walls—even gallery and museum walls. I'm going to France in September for a documentary film on WWI that my wife is involved with, and because I don't want to lug a big Nikon kit, I bought a new Fuji X30, and will bring the X20 as a back-up. Some laugh at me for using such 'toy' cameras, but they laughed at Henri Cartier-Bresson for using a toy as well."

Jean: "The 2003 Olympus Camedia 5060 Wide Zoom has already been mentioned. Lovely camera! It was a high-end compact camera with a magnesium body, a fully articulated screen, a big battery and with an adapter, you could get 19mm-e wide-angle. The ISO topped out at 400, and it...was useless. If ISO 80 was selected however, the pictures had a lovely color, just like many Olympus cameras. Olympus made a small nice leather holster that could hold an extra battery. TIFF and raw was built in, but was excruciatingly slow. The lens was ƒ/2.8–4.8, and 27–110mm-e. ISO 200 max, ƒ/4.8 and 110mm-e, was a challenge. You had to pre-focus, or the shutter lag was long.... It had a hot shoe and Olympus had a nice speedlight that worked well. Startup time was 'Extremely fast, 3 sec.' According to Olympus.

"I loved this camera, and took it everywhere. And it really sets today's complaining about how bad the newest gear is into perspective. I paid US$1500 for the camera, and about $600 for a gigantic solid state 1 GB Compact Flash card. (No Micro drive, thank you). The adapter, bag and second battery was another $500.  :-D  The Fujifilm X100T or X-Pro2 is my go everywhere cam today. OMG what a rocket! Still, the old faithful gave excellent pictures!"

Gary: "It's great that so many are happy with older digital files, but I think exactly the opposite! I switched from film to digital when Nikon brought out a digital SLR. I forget the model; it was about 6 MP. At the time I bought into the idea that 6 MP was more than enough to warrant abandoning 35mm film. But looking back I now believe that I made the move to digital way too soon, and should have stuck with film for several more years. I look at my early digital files and think, I'm fairly happy with that shot, but I'd be even happier if it had been on film."