I'm not really a Ebayer so it was with a little bit of shock I found myself buying on there a few weeks back. What I bought was a camera, a Zeiss Ikon Contessa SLK Spezial to be exact. It is a camera older that I am and by a distance, not as much as I'd like, true, but yet, older. And when new you could buy a good sized family home in Ireland and in the UK for the price.
I didn't say anything before since I was waiting for a B&W 100iso film to be delivered from Amazon that I ordered on the 1st of August. Anyway it arrived today.
In it went, the back closed, wound the film on to load the first before the backplate. Now I won't know for certain until I get the film developed. Something that doesn't seem to be too costly btw.
It is hard to describe the feel. It's heavy in a way that's dense. It's remarkably straight froward while at the same time complex. The rangefinder is a bit hard to read and at the same time a piece of beauty. It's got most of the controls of my new Sony over 5, yes five, control rings on the fixed 50mm lense. And that really is the only difference. The lense is fixed. But that bit of glass is f2:8 Zeiss glass when Zeiss made the best optical glass in the world.
When I was a kid an aunts brother-in-law had a Zeiss camera. I remember looking at it and remarking to my mother that her one looked better. She had one of those cube flash things that rotated the cube when the film was wound on. But she let me know that the camera Liam - I seem to remember- had was better than hers by a country mile. Marvellous what you remember from when you were 10.
I didn't say anything before since I was waiting for a B&W 100iso film to be delivered from Amazon that I ordered on the 1st of August. Anyway it arrived today.
In it went, the back closed, wound the film on to load the first before the backplate. Now I won't know for certain until I get the film developed. Something that doesn't seem to be too costly btw.
It is hard to describe the feel. It's heavy in a way that's dense. It's remarkably straight froward while at the same time complex. The rangefinder is a bit hard to read and at the same time a piece of beauty. It's got most of the controls of my new Sony over 5, yes five, control rings on the fixed 50mm lense. And that really is the only difference. The lense is fixed. But that bit of glass is f2:8 Zeiss glass when Zeiss made the best optical glass in the world.
When I was a kid an aunts brother-in-law had a Zeiss camera. I remember looking at it and remarking to my mother that her one looked better. She had one of those cube flash things that rotated the cube when the film was wound on. But she let me know that the camera Liam - I seem to remember- had was better than hers by a country mile. Marvellous what you remember from when you were 10.
Zeiss made some good lens. While I love the digital age, I do miss film, especially b&w.
ReplyDeleteZeiss made great cameras too. None better. And I too miss qualities of film that I can't get with the digital. But what I never really liked about film was you were never really sure until you saw them if you had the shot. That and the cost. Even then a hit rate of 1:1000 good images meant that image was a darn costly image. And that's really about the hit rate in digital for me too.
DeleteI'm hoping that the thing works and I get OK shots with it. But I'm OK if it doesn't too, for I do think it's the prettiest thing I've held in a long time.
Wow! That's a fun one! I REALLY look forward to seeing what images you take with it and how they turn out. Do you have a place locally that will develop, or do you have to send in somewhere?
ReplyDelete(Chuckle) Not to belittle a global movement, but hashtag me too.
DeleteNo, well that's not quite true. There are Fuji places still about locally and I must ring around to do a price check. But the one I found was up in Limerick, and I can post to them. Where I'm not so certain is that the size is quite small at 8 inches on the long side when you DPI/PPI them out.
I have a small collection of old cameras and movie recorders that I have bought at estate auctions simply because I like the heft and feel of them. They certainly don't make things like that anymore. It's been a couple decades now but I picked up a 100mm format camera and after searching, found some black and white film for that and shot a roll. It was super expensive to develop even back then but those pictures sure were nice.
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried developing any film in ages here in the states but I'm fairly certain that I heard many years back that only one place in Kansas still developed 35mm film. I wonder if that is even the case these days.
Yes, I agree. But even I was a bit surprised at the weight in the thing. And I will try to get a medium format at some point.
DeleteWhile being nostalgic, I think you should develop your own. I remember my older brother tried that for awhile and enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI've really been thinking about getting a darkroom set-up. But I really must assess it first. The actual developing process is a fairly fixed cost but where things can truly go off the charts is with the enlarging. However what can be done now it scanning the negative at as high a resolution as my camera and print off that file. That would mean an amalgam of both which I'm not so sure of.
DeleteThat’s a great looking camera and I hope you’ll share some of the photos with us - guess you’ll have to take digital shots of the printed pictures?
ReplyDeleteTo Ed’s comment, I find it shocking there might be only one place in our country that still develop 35mm film. Surely not!