The Film Retriever

Santa Clauss brought me a Leica? Wow, thanx Santa. When the box arrived i just couldn't hide my excitement. I was pacing up and down, trying to find on the internet how to load correctly a roll of film and start shooting. My IIc was produced in the distant 1950. It comes equipped with the Elmar 50 f/3.5 made in 1952. It is in near mint condition, the shutter is accurate and all the controls are smooth. The only problem was a bit of fungus on shutter curtain which required some surgical spirit to clean it. I really like the IIc, it is small, extremely well made and the shutter has the best sound i've ever heard. Of course there are some shortfalls. First of all, separate viewfinder and rangefinder. Takes time to get used to it (especially if you are spoiled by using a later rangefinder from the '60s (errr... Ricoh ) ) but the truth is that it doesn't bother me as i use fast films and i zone focus. Another thing is that you have to select the shutt...

Drop dead gorgeous Have I ever mentioned about the legendary third issue of the 1989 Φωτογράφος (Photographer) magazine ? It was a camera-porn galore, forty cameras within four pages, it was the issue that inspired all this love for cameras. It included cameras such as Contax RTS and 164, Canon F1, EOS 1, EOS 650, Minolta 9000 and 7000i, Nikon F801, Nikon F4, Leica R6 etc.. etc... The Yashica 200-AF was the cheapest AF-SLR in that issue and although way out of my budget, I thought that if i ever buy an AF camera, it would probably be this one. Yashica was a wealthy company back in the mid-60's. It became popular with camera lines such as the Lynx's or the Electros. Yashica was probably the camera your father or grandfather had when they were young. In the early 70's, Yashica began collaborating with Contax, with yashica focusing on the production of the affordable line of cameras and Contax producing the Hi-end and more expensive ones. Things were going OK ...