I broke out a film camera this weekend

In reply to David S. Wallens :

One is a Japanese Leica copy, a Leotax F. I had bought it from Japan on eBay last summer and used it for a few rolls, but it was about 6 months into it and the shutter ribbon snapped so I was out of luck getting a return on it. I had a feeling the shutter curtains was replaced before I got it and thought the ribbons were overtensioned based on how loud the shutter was, and they snapped as result. The repair to fix it was a new ribbon and it is significantly quieter than when I first got it. 

The other is a Leica IIIC. I bought the body off marketplace, the seller had five from her father's collection, read ad and saw the seller would ship it. It was priced well enough to justify buying it and taking a chance and paying to get it serviced. The slow speeds and the fastest speeds would hang, but now its good. Waited about a year to get them back. Knowing what I know now, I probably would have sent them to Slovakia to have them serviced. Priced about the same, but with a quicker turn around time. Lots of demand to have Leicas serviced in the US, and a few repair people so they are swamped with work. 

There was a website I was using that claimed to search marketplace globally, but all it did was point me to the Seattle area, and that was how I found that Leica iii lot. I swear one of these days I am going to accidently buy a car over on the PacNW that I otherwise can't find in Florida. 

I will say the Japanese copies are built well and feel every bit as refined as the real thing. I have a roll of Kentmere 400 on Leotax and am pushing it 3 stops. Internet lore and the local lab have mentioned people have gotten good results out of pushed 2-3 stops so we'll see. 

In reply to aw614 :

I haven't heard of Leotax, but a quick search of prices has me interested.

I know what rabbit hole I'm going down tonight.

Colin Wood said:

In reply to aw614 :

I haven't heard of Leotax, but a quick search of prices has me interested.

I know what rabbit hole I'm going down tonight.

There is also Nicca too, also reasonable in prices

http://leica-copies-japan.com/index.html

Colin Wood said:

In reply to aw614 :

I haven't heard of Leotax, but a quick search of prices has me interested.

I know what rabbit hole I'm going down tonight.

I have a feeling I’ll see you there, Colin. 

And sorta related. A friend just shared some slides taken with “granny’s Argus C3.”

So I grabbed my Argus C4 off the shelf. 

I believe I ran a roll of film through this a million years ago. 

Was all excited to drop off Dad's camera at my new favorite shop.

Nikon F; metal body, no light meter, bought it new in 1970 in Okinawa.  The shutter drags, stays open for seconds.  (That could be due to it getting hit by salt water in heavy seas when I was on the flying bridge of LST 1183 in a storm in the south China Sea.) 

Shutter doesn't always drag, or it didn't. I remember Dad carrying the camera around when I was a kid.

Lead tech told me that it might not be salvageable. :-/

Entropy sucks.

Can't remember what decade I last bought film, but here we are. Think I'm going to explore the Air Force Museum in Dayton over the holidays with the F3HP.

In reply to Jerry :

Cool and eager to hear how you like the Cinestill. I haven’t shot any yet. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Same. I think I've been shooting a lot of color film lately, maybe it's time to take a B&W break.

(Added bonus: It can be cheaper to buy + develop)

Yeah, also been looking closer at my b/w options. A little expensive to buy but a little more to get processed. 

I have some Tri-X sitting here on my desk plus a few other rolls of black and white on the way.

Check out Ilford XP2, too: b/w film but C41 devlopping. I shot a roll and really like the look. I have another roll sitting here, too.

I used to love XP2 because it was so convenient to get processed at any lab.  I remember depending on the setup, the prints would sometimes come out with a bit of color tint like purple or sepia.

I have an expired three-pack of the Kodak equivalent. It’s sitting in my box of film. 

Not sure if I shared this before, but I find this page helpful/inspiring: Lomography has a huge photo gallery that can be sorted by film type (as well as camera, location, subject, etc.)

Ready for the holidays! (And took advantage of Black Friday since I know I’ll eventually use it all.)

I can stop whenever I want. 

I developed a roll of film a couple of days ago for the first time in months and nearly all shots are back focused.  Pretty sure my Pentax MX needs someone more talented than I am to fix this and I'd like a new focusing screen installed anyway since the current one is cracked.  Not very excited about this.... I don't really love this camera but I like having a fully mechanical camera in the mix. 

Have a shop in Topeka to call about it, hopefully he is still working on cameras and wants to deal with this kind of thing.

Here's one of the few shots I like from the roll in question.  It's Ilford HP5+ that I push developed in Legacy Pro L110 (a developer I am pretty new to and enjoying the use of).

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Still looks pretty cool. Kind of like a happy accident. 

In reply to Colin Wood :

Yes, there's a second one from that same evening that is similar.  But going through frame after frame of back focused shots that are worse is really frustrating.  I do seem to naturally back focus when manually focusing a camera, which is annoying, but this is something else.

This Friday in St. Augustine:

Details here.

The film finally showed up, sat in FL for 3 days then IN for a few days before Dayton OH...  I'm looking forward to trying them out.  I'm hoping I can push the Cinestill to 400 or so, maybe even 800, have to double check.  And I've always been curious about IR film so that should be different.

I put 8 AA batteries in the MD4 motor drive on the F3HP and everything seems to function.  It's been 20+ years so I wasn't sure, hopefully the body is still light-tight.  I got out the other cameras (besides stepmom's gifts) including the digitals and have 8 Nikons now.  I now have an F, F2 and F3, plus my old FG and I'm pretty sure the EM was actually hers.

While I was checking out the F3HP, I got the old Tamrac double bag out of the closet and went through some pockets.  A notebook going back to the late 80s, some Tiffen filters, manuals for a couple cameras and accessories (need to put batteries in the old Speedlight and see if it works).  I forgot I had this thing, anyone remember the Sima soft focus lens?  You change aperature rings to get different levels of soft focus. 

I plan to attempt everything in-camera, no Photoshop or editing later.  I'm really geeking out to try this again after so long.  The MD4 on Continuous is a classic sound.