Need a 35mm or medium format camera, have a few choices in mind, please sound off

[vintagesnaps]

I have that Konica, nice camera. Rangefinders took some getting used to but once I did I love them (and now have more of course...).

Maybe we need a sticky of where to get film developed... it keeps coming up and I'm getting tired of typing this! LOL I live in the midwest and use a local place sometimes, but also send out (particularly odd sized films etc.) to The Darkroom in San Francisco; Dwayne's in Kansas has a good reputation, Blue Moon in Oregon is supposed to be good (and there are others).

You might want to check out Film Photography Project | An Internet Radio Show & On-Line Resource for Film Shooters Worldwide ; they do a podcast, have videos, a Flickr discussion page, etc.

 

[gsgary]

I have that Konica, nice camera. Rangefinders took some getting used to but once I did I love them (and now have more of course...).

Maybe we need a sticky of where to get film developed... it keeps coming up and I'm getting tired of typing this! LOL I live in the midwest and use a local place sometimes, but also send out (particularly odd sized films etc.) to The Darkroom in San Francisco; Dwayne's in Kansas has a good reputation, Blue Moon in Oregon is supposed to be good (and there are others).

You might want to check out Film Photography Project | An Internet Radio Show & On-Line Resource for Film Shooters Worldwide ; they do a podcast, have videos, a Flickr discussion page, etc.

Why not do it yourself

 

[vintagesnaps]

I've done darkroom work and enjoy it, but the one I'd been using at a local university is in a building now under construction. I'll probably at some point get something set up at home, to do B&W anyway, but I don't think I'd necessarily do everything myself (film developing and scanning, printing and matting, fixing and ferrotyping and whatever).

 

[gsgary]

I've done darkroom work and enjoy it, but the one I'd been using at a local university is in a building now under construction. I'll probably at some point get something set up at home, to do B&W anyway, but I don't think I'd necessarily do everything myself (film developing and scanning, printing and matting, fixing and ferrotyping and whatever).

I do all my developing in the kitchen

 

[dsiglin]

Well I've gone and done it. Got my first roll of 35mm developed. Thanks for all the advice on cameras, etc! Since this is just a test roll I dropped it off at Walgreens and had them run it through their Noritsu. The files they give me are just 4.5mb. I'm going to see if I can't find someone there who knows how to scan at a higher resolution. Anyways, here's a few photos off the roll. It kills me I missed the focus on a few of these, especially the guy standing in front of the wooden American flag. He used to hand build props in Hollywood but quit to hand build tables. The guy is an artist in his own right. The sign is for Martha Stewart who was just there checking out his tables, he's working on getting them featured. I post processed these in Lightroom, not entirely happy with the first two but I'll tweak them later.

 

[dsiglin]

 

[dsiglin]

Got the rangefinder in today but alas the self timer was busted. Sad pandas. The seller advertised it as being guaranteed to work so I'm going to send it back. That thing had a case, original box, and original manual all in great condition. Oh well. I did find the size a bit excessive, so I'll probably look for a smaller sized rangefinder. Back to researching them.

 

[limr]

Great job on the first roll! I thought the focus looked fine (at least in that size - maybe it's more noticeable on the bigger size). There's a bit of flare on the 4th picture in the first roll. Do you have a hood yet?

Smaller rangefinders: I've got an Olympus 35RC that is quite compact and has really nice glass. It does have a light meter built in and an option for shutter priority shooting, or you can turn that off and do totally manual. Might be an option if you're looking for something small and portable.

 

[dsiglin]

Thanks, it is just the small size of these Walgreens scans. It makes it hard to spot missed focus. I had to reduce the flare a bit in lightroom but I couldn't get rid of it, I didn't think to take a hood with me and I was shooting almost directly into the sun so go figure.

The Olympus RC sounds like a good option, how does it handle low light shooting since it has a 2.8 lens? I read you can shoot rangefinders handheld at slower than SLR shutter speeds due to no mirror.

 

[limr]

You can definitely shoot a rangefinder handheld at lower shutter speeds than SLRs. No mirror slap to shake the camera. It does pretty well in low light. Here's a shot I took from my first test roll. I can't remember the shutter speed but the aperture was wide open. Probably 1/30. The film was either Kodak Gold or Fuji Superia, but either way it was 400 speed.



(In case the picture doesn't show, I grabbed it from a blog post I wrote about that first test roll after I got the Olympus: Day 81: The Olympus debut. « A Modern Day Dinosaur I'm not at home so don't have access to my photos to just upload it.)

 

[limr]

Here's another shot in very contrast-y light.

 

[dsiglin]

So does the Olympus RC tend to overexpose outdoors all the time? Took a look at your blog and noticed you had mentioned having to meter down some when outdoors. Thanks for sharing the photos. I like low light shooting so no mirrorslap is a plus!

 

[limr]

So does the Olympus RC tend to overexpose outdoors all the time? Took a look at your blog and noticed you had mentioned having to meter down some when outdoors. Thanks for sharing the photos. I like low light shooting so no mirrorslap is a plus!

For the next few rolls, I ignored the meter and used Sunny 16 exposure rules and it was fine, so I knew the meter was off a bit but the camera itself can handle both low light and bright light just fine. It's fairly easy to adjust by taking off the bottom plate. I haven't tested it yet but I think it's going to be much better. It was still a bit off in very low light situations (apparently it was a problem with a lot of built-in meters for that model at that time) but it can easily be overridden. It actually won't let you take a picture if you have it in Auto aperture, but you can just set it back to manual and take the picture if another meter is telling you it's okay or if you're going for a dark overall shot with highlights or something.