The Film Retriever

I didn't really need a Minolta XD-7 but I did want one. Having heard and read so many good things about it, i thought i should go through that auction site and see what is available. Ten minutes later and £28 less, there i had it, an immaculate XD-7 with a new leatherette that no one wanted to buy !!! The XD-7 is a fantastic camera that does not hide its professional aspirations. Althought not meant to compete in the professional grade arena (Minolta had the XM for that role) you could see this camera as the professional sibling of the X-700 - a camera which i really love - or see the X-700 as a scale down version of the XD-7 (if that help better). So what is different? First of all the shutter. In the XD-7 we find a Seiko MFC shutter instead of the more simple (but equally reliable?) cloth shutter of the X-700. The mirror box is also different, shock and noise absorbers are employed that makes the XD-7 more quiet than the X-700 (the difference is not huge bu...

Back in my teen years, I didn't know much about Chinon. The only model I knew was the CP-9AF and my limited knowledge on it was that it was a cheap alternative AF camera to the more prestigious Nikon/Canon/Minolta's. I never really bothered learning about Chinons, what was the point anyway - Nikon and Canons were producing much better cameras, right? Wrong. What i found out after joining photography forums is that almost all Chinons are fantastic cameras, much better than your average SLR's, with certain models competing directly with offers from the big fives (Nikon/Canon/Minolta/Olympus/ Pentax) but never really achieved any sort of collectible status. One of these cameras is the Chinon CG-5. This camera was produced in 1983 and it was set to compete with cameras such as the Minolta X-700, the Canon AE-1 Programme, Pentax ME-Super and P30 and maybe (or maybe not) the Nikons (FE/FE2). In the heart of the CG-5 we find the Seiko MFC shutter which is found ...

Those who read regularly my blog, will probably have figure out by now that i am not a point & shoot fanatic. I have sold all of my compact cameras to further invest in SLR cameras. So when i came across this little camera, i knew that it was a buy-to-sell buy to finance my next SLR adventure. The seller told me that it works fine, the price was right, so camera and money swapped hands quickly. The T-Zoom ( or T4 Zoom in America), is Kyocera's fifth incarnation of the T-series cameras, all well known to the photographic world for the beautiful Carl Zeiss lenses that they carry. With this model, Yashica pushed the concept one step further, offering a zoom range between 28mm to 70mm. The lens bears Zeiss's famous T* coating which means that we should expect high quality results from this little beauty. Comparing it with Yashica's T4 lens, the lens on the T-Zoom is a full stop slower at 28mm reaching a gloomy f/8 at 70mm. Although this might sound pretty...

This camera came to me as a short term loan from a friend. I didn't have the chance to exhaustively test it, so the following review is based on a three day stay with me and a film i shot with it.  The 7000i is a significant camera in the Dynax line. It is the first camera that the AF was really, really working effectively with all the teething problems of the previous module becoming history. In order to do that, Minolta introduced so many revolutionary ideas with this model that it is fair enough to say that at that point, Minolta was a class leader in the field of AF-SLR's. And just to name a few of those innovations, the 7000i was the first camera that used three AF sensors in 90 degrees angle that solved the problem with the horizontal lines that posed so many difficulties to the early AF systems. The AF was more sensitive and the 7000i was the first SLR to implement an auxiliary AF aid that would allow it to focus even in pitch dark. The combinatio...

Those of you who are regular visitors to my blog, would probably know by now that i am not a big fun of Prakticas. My first camera was a Practika, the BMS Electronic, which lasted for only five years of relatively good treatment before its shutter became erratic. This erratic shutter is my common experience with all Practika B-series that i've tried (BMS, BX-20, BC1, BCA) and a few MTL's that I've come across in car boot sales and charity shops. Those who have already read my post on the BX-20 (if you can call it "a post") might think that i am determined never-ever to buy a Praktica again. But i suppose i'll always have a soft spot in my heart for those cameras. Which was exactly what made me buy this LTL-3 when i saw it. The price was £2 , it seemed to be working fine and i got for free the Jena Tessar 50 f/2.8 which has sticky aperture blades ...so... what the heck... why not? From a couple of resources on the Internet, it seems that th...

If there is an award for the most underrated camera, the Minolta X-700 is definitely within the top three. I am not joking, in a forum, people were asked to name the camera they think it is the most underrated and i suggested the Fujicas but one constant contestant was the Minolta x-700. Eventually a participant in that conversation offered his old X-700 to anyone who wanted it and this is how this camera landed on my hands (Thanks Richard). There are plenty of reviews on the Internet about the X-700 therefore I will not go into the historical bit of the story, just check out MIR's fantastic page for more information. I will just focus on how this camera feels after I've shot a couple of films with it. When i picked up the camera, the first overall impressions were..errr.. OK-ish.... Extensive use of plastic (remember, we are in the 80's), both top and bottom are plastic and the camera feels light without feeling cheap thought. A typical problem with th...

Another car boot sale find, just confirms my impression that there are plenty of great cameras out there that can be had for peanuts. This camera, together with the Sigma 28 f/2.8 and the winder-G cost me only £10. It was a buy-to-sell buy, i thought i would keep the lens and the winder for the Minolta X-700 that has recently landed on my hands and sell the XG-2... But i am not so sure if that's what is gonna happen. We are back in the distant 1977, the year I was born actually, and Minolta shakes the world once again with the new Minolta XD-11. The camera became an instant hit with professionals but with the production of the XE-series been seized the gap between the SRT-series and the new XD-series meant that there was potential for Minolta to capture the very lucrative part of the market, the casual shooter who would like a camera newer than the SRT but who couldn't afford the XD. The response to that was the XG-series. See this camera as XD's little ...

Fujica is probably the camera make you’ve heard good things about but you never bothered looking on that auction site for one. Fujicas were quite popular at their time, they were offering a good mixture of quality and low price backed up by a beautiful line of Fujinon lenses. Fujica was the camera-making section of Fuji industries, starting the manufacturing of cameras in 1948 with the Six I BS – a 6X6 folder and continued to the very popular for the 50’s-60’s rangefinder sector before introducing the Fujica ST 701 in the early seventies. The ST X01/X05 series became popular as they were carrying the famous M42 mount, giving the photographer a vast range of lens choices, from the world famous Takumars to the FSU lenses. By the late 70’s, things had moved on, the offerings from Nikon/Canon/Minolta/Olympus/ Pentax meant that the M42 mount was outdated so Fujica presented its own mount, the X-Fujinon mount which they sadly discontinued 5 years later when they pulled the SLR ...

I think that I've reached a point that I'm done with Prakticas. This is the fourth one that develops an erratic shutter AFTER I've put a film in and honestly I cannot afford spending money on cameras that die a film later. Unfortunately I cannot recommend you buying one, I think the much cheaper Zenits are better build or you can pay a bit more and get a nice Fujica or Chinon.

Some say that cameras are nothing but a light-tight box; it is the lens that counts. I disagree with that, cameras are very sophisticated devices that operate with accuracy and can expand to suit our needs. The pinhole cameras teach us that a lens is not necessary to take a picture but on the other hand, the lenses made today produce pictures that astound us with their clarity and level of detail they record. New, CAD aided programs offer new designs and “better” – if we can say - lenses. Or not? I think it is only fair to make a post about the lenses I’ve used so far and compare them with each other to give a sense of scale. I am basing my scoring on usability, personal preference and most important performance for the price.  I will limit this post only to the prime lenses I use; maybe at some point I will start adding the plasticy zoom lenses.. we’ll see.   Prakticar 50 f/1.8 I start with this lens because it is historically the first prime I ever use...