The Film Retriever

A charity shop find that i came across about a month ago. As you probably know, i am not a point and shoot camera fan so it was a buy-to-sell buy in order to further fund my passion for cameras.   This camera comes from the early '90s, and it was targeted at the same lucrative sector of the higher-end point and shoot compact cameras. The big mini resulted in good sales and there are a number of different versions depending on whether they have data-back or not and different aesthetics. All of them share the same very nice lens, a 35 f/3.5 consisting of four elements in four groups. There is also an upper Big-Mini F with a 35 f/2.8 lens but it is not that common and it usually fetches a lot more. The camera is a bit on the bigger side and the noise that it makes while switching on and taking the picture is probably the biggest disadvantage. Both my EOS 5 and Dynax 9xi are far more quiet than this little monster. Another thing that left me wond...

I didn't really want this camera. The reason i bought it was the lens - a brand new and clean Tokina 28 f/2.8 that shows no signs of having ever been used. I thought i can mount this lens on my MX and get rid of the Makinon 28 f/2.8 which never really impressed me. Five pounds seemed like a real bargain price so this is how this camera ended up in my hands. The P30T is the third and final incarnation of the first P30 introduced back in the 1985. The P30 evolved to the P30N and eventually in 1990 Pentax gave some facial lifting to the P30N and added a diagonal split screen and a plastic back, moved the production to China and baptised the P30N into a P30T. While this camera was very well received in the mid-80's, ten years later, it seemed so outdated and lacking important features that other entry level cameras from Nikon/Canon/Minolta were offering for standard that eventually persuaded Pentax to pull the plug somewhere in the late90's (1997 if i recal...

The story of how I got this camera started a couple of years ago and it is quite funny. In a car-boot sale, I came across two books, a 1828 edition of the second volume of " Don Juan " and a 1906 edition of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's " Uncle Bernac ". Having thought that I stroke gold, I bought them for the grand total of £5 both. Unfortunately, they didn't worth much in the second hand book market and I ended up keeping them since they looked nice on my bookshelf. A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues at work told me that she is collecting old books and I told her that she could have a couple of old books that I have at home. She wanted to pay for them but I told her that I am quite happy to swap them with any old film cameras she might have. She said that she has an old camera from the 80's that she bought in order to take pictures of her honey-moon and that she doesn't need it any more.... So this is how this camera ended up i...

Another charity shop find that cost me as little as £5, proves the point that if I am such a lucky guy when it comes to how to spend my lunch money! By the late 50's, the rangefinder design was delivering the goods to all major camera manufacturers. It was easy and simple to implement, the know-how was around for almost 20 years now and people seemed to love the combination of relatively small size and decent optics. This demand in camera manufacturing gave the all-green for almost all camera manufacturers to produce the upper class, high quality rangefinders with fast, fixed lenses. In April 1959, Nikon released the legendary F which challenged the rangefinder design but it wasn't until the mid-sixtes that the professional photographers were persuaded about the virtues of the SLR design. That fast changing environment gave birth to a series of innovations in camera design and Konishiroku Konica did not sit on their hands. With the Auto-S, Konika produced th...

With cameras of the classic status like the Pentax K-1000, it is always difficult to write a review. There are loads and loads of websites that host reviews of this excellent machine as there are also thousands of K-1000 users that have done their first steps in photography with theses cameras. The psychological factor of having used these cameras for years and years makes every review of them seem fragmented, inaccurate or sometimes unfair. With the introduction of the iconic Olympus OM-1 back in the early 70's, Pentax seemed to be caught up in a dilemma. Apparently the M42 mount was starting to become outdated so there was a genuine need for an introduction of a new mount but what Pentax was trying to figure out was whether they should continue the production based on the long tried and tested spotmatic design (i.e. well build, decent sized cameras) or go down the OM-1 route of small durable cameras for the professionals. Their gut reaction was wi...

Ahh.. what a beautifully made all manual SLR from Yashica. Everything made out of metal and glass, the Yashica FX-2 feels like a robust piece of machine. Heavy and - I dare to say - elegant, this is a quality offer from the early-mid seventies, a camera that was (IMO) just as good as its bigger sister's siblings (Contax) in the advanced consumer market of that time. Yashica sold a bucketful of these and the FX series continued with the FX-3, FX-3 super, FX-7, FX-8, FX-103 and FX-D. The FX line was the lower grade cameras while the FR was more aimed towards the enthusiastic amateurs. If you wanted more than that, then you had to consider the Contax line of cameras. But as i said, despite being a lower grade camera, this is a fantastic offer. Fit and finish is of high standards and the viewfinder is in par with other cameras of that era. It carries the Y/C lens mount which means that every Carl Zeiss lens from Contax could mount and work perfectly well with this cam...

 Another camera that can be found littering car boot sales and charity shops, the EOS 500 was one of those cameras that I never thought i would end up buying mostly due to their prices going around £15-£20 which I wasn't sure I wanted to pay. I had already the EOS 300V which is a newer camera and it didn't seem to me that the EOS 500 could satisfy any user's need. Got this one for £2.50 and it is in great condition though... what the hell, i usually spend this amount of money for a sandwich and coke.   The EOS 500 was the very successful successor of the already very successful EOS 1000FN, a consumer grade camera that placed Canon on the top of the sales in the very lucrative category of consumers AF SLRs. The EOS 1000FN was almost revolutionary back at its time if you consider its small dimensions (which are not very small if you see it today) and it sold like hot cross buns on Great Friday before it was replaced by the EOS 500 that i am ...

As I've said to a previous post, I always had the impression that the Nikon L35AF was performing just as well as the Yashica T4/T5 and was costing only 1/10 of it's price. I never had though both cameras at the same time to put them to a test. That was until a month ago when I came across a Yashica T5. I thought I could try to compare the two cameras and see if my gut feeling is right. The test Now, let's think of the limitations of a comparison test like this. My idea was to load the Yashica T5 with a Kodak Tri-X, shoot three pictures, remove it put it on the Nikon, take exactly the same 3 pics and then remove it and put it on my Zenit 12XP and shoot the same three pics with the Takumar 35 f/2. No proper resolution test would be ever complete without the mandatory newspapers-hanging-on-walls test. Picture of the setting.  The cameras where mounted on tripod for this shots and hand held for the shots of the neighbour's roof. Shoo...

Those who have read already my review on the Yashica T4, then this review has nothing more to add. The Yashica T5 is pretty much a T4 with some aesthetic changes and the addition of a waist level viewfinder. Other than that, everything else remains the same. More importantly, the lens remains the same Carl Zeiss Tessar T* 35mm f/3.5. Now, having had 8 cameras of Yashica's T-series ( two T3's, three T4's, one T5 and two T-Zoom's) I can write my overall impression of using these cameras. For me, the T3 cameras where not up there with the rest of the series. Picture quality-wise the T3's were in the same league with the T-zoom (high praise for the T-zoom really). The ones to go for are the T4/T5 ones.They feel like a real improvement over the T3. T-Zoom is a nice compact but you need to have fast films and sunshine to appreciate the lens' performance. With two of my T4 samples i had problems around inconsistent focusing which completely annihi...

Now... what is wrong with the picture on the left? You guessed it right. Newer SMC Takumars SHOULD NOT be mounted on Zenits. Why? The extra pin that controls the Auto/Manual switch gets stuck on the screw holes on the mount. If you did this mistake -like i did - then you have two options. a) You force the  lens to unscrew bending the pin and damaging the lens or b) unscrew the whole thing and reach the pin from the inside. In my case, the lens is a Super Takumar 35mm f/2. Other lenses will of course be different to dismantle. Now.... ************************* Please read ******************** Since in this bad world, there are people who try to make a living out of suing others, please read this carefully. I am not a technician and neither do I claim to be one. If you decide to follow the guide below, you do it at your own risk and I will assume no responsibility if you damage your lens. You are a big boy/girl to decide for your self. If you think you cannot do it, then don't...