The Film Retriever

Cute... This was an impulsive buy - found it for £5 and thought i could have it. It came with 2 CR-2 batteries and initial testing at the shop showed that it worked well. Anyway, the batteries alone cost more than £5. I am not sure how did Pentax experienced the 1990's. Pentax was big in the swinging and dancing 60's with the Spotmatic, did very well in the 70s with the MX and it was the LX that dominated Pentax's pro-line in the 80s. But in the 90s Pentax did not come up with any pro camera and did not introduce any exotic lenses either. The different iterations of the Z-1 were good cameras but in the same league such as the Nikon F90 or Canon EOS5. If you scroll down my blog you will find a review of the Z1 - a very good camera which I sold due to the complicated user interface.  I have to say that the photographic press was pleasantly surprised by the Z-20. I don't see a lot of them coming up online and some of the reviews I read describe it as functiona...

The Classic Minolta SR-T101  And as it is usually the case, another Minolta - an SR-T101- landed on my lap, wearing a pristine Rokkor MC-II 58 f/1.4. Part of an online bundle deal containing different (not photographic related) stuff, I made an offer for £45 and was accepted. This post makes very little sense on its own, it is more like a long winded postscript to my previous post about the SR-T303 to which I constantly compare the  SR-T 101 against. Have a read of my SR-T 303 review first ( found here ). My SR-T101 belongs to the second version of SR-T101 (sn# 1.964.xxx) and judging by the "1B" code stumped inside, it was made in February 1971. It came with a matching period Rokkor MC-II (sn# 5.731.xxx), very likely to have been matched from the beginning of their lives. The camera had slightly sticky slow speeds below 1/8 but with a bit of exercise speeds appear to be very close to the shutter speeds of the Canon EOS 10D. Also, one if the strap lugs was loose so...

The largly unknown Vivitar 35ES  A few months ago I came across this little camera during one of my visits to the local charity shop. It looked in poor condition and I wasn't quite convinced that it worked well but for the grand total of £25, I decided to take the plunge. This is a Vivitar 35ES from 1978, it was sold under other brand names such as Revue 400ES and there is a Prinz version out there (in chrome!) - these cameras were churned out by the Cosina factory and there are minor differences between them all. Minolta must have bought the same chassis/rangefinder/meter assembly from them as the Minolta 7Sii looks very similar and displays the same issues as the Vivitar/Revue siblings (read on). Not sure if Minolta used the same lens or they put their own - would they call Rokkor a lens they didn't make? (remember the Celtic lens line for Minoltas? They were not made by Minolta, that's why they are 'Celtic' and not 'Rokkor'). Minolta dropped ...

The Spotmatic F  It's been some time since I made a review post about the Spotmatic line of cameras. If you haven't read it, have a look first on my old post about them ( link here ). This is more like a long winded lasting impressions post. I sold the first spotmatic soon after I made the original post in 2015. I didn't think it was for me, at that point I was after a good AF SLR camera that would get the job done with minimum fuss. A couple of years later, another Spotmatic came my way, this time together with two Takumar lenses (28f/3.5 and 55f/1.8). Over a period of few months (and without putting any particular effort) I gathered a few more M42 lenses. So overall I ended up with: * The Takumars: both very good lenses. Performed like modern lenses, I couldn't fault them. * The Helios 58f/2: A good lens to own and shoot but recently I feel that they receive an internet hype that do not necessary deserve. * A Pentacon 50f/1.8: not bad - not great, these len...

The Beautiful Minolta SR-1  I am going through my familiar cycle of gathering Minoltas again - it has happened twice before and twice I sold off everything to buy Nikon and Olympus. But Minoltas are so good and cheap that they always creep back in again - started with a 7xi, then it was a 700si and then two SR-T (303 and 100). I felt pretty covered by these until a nice, rare, black SR-1 showed up. In a pretty sad state but cheap - and I got it. The public liked the SR-1 in the early 60s and Minolta kept upgrading it throughout its production - depending on which resource you read, there are six to eight different versions (I too believe there are 8 versions rather than 6 but the differences in some models are very small to be considered a different model). Stephen at Cameraquest has a nice summary there and so does "The Rokkor Files". Following the description on the rokkor files mine is "Model-B" from 1960. It is worth noting that my camera has the de...

How do they compare to each other? Over the last couple of months, my zuiko family has grown. Got a cheap 28f2.8 for Christmas and within a few weeks I found a "Made in Japan" 50f/1.8 for £1.99 and a MC 50f/1.4 for £49.99 in different charity shops. The MIJ 50f/1.8 was sold as spares as it was full of fungus - to my surprise when I took it apart the fungus was limited on the outer part of the inner side of the group (the side facing the aperture blades) and cleaned very nicely using white vinegar and then a bit of window cleaner.  There is a tiny spot that is inside the cemented group - I assume it is fungus, but it is very small and faint, limited at the edge of the cemented group - too small to have an impact. The lens spent a couple of days under the UV lamp to kill any remaining fungus spores. The Multicoated 50f/1.4 was another repair story. No trace of fungus when I got it, everything looked clean and bright, but when I shone some light I noticed this foggin...