Anyone know of a guide to taking lenses apart?

there are tons of guides on Youtube – there is a guy who is very good lookup mikeno62

Got an Olympus mju2, Canon EOS30 and a Toyo 5×4 which I only ever used a couple of times. I also have 2 or 3 films and a dozen or so medium format slides which still need developing, and some 15 year old prepaid Fuji envelopes 😀

I started using my second roll of film at the weekend and got through about 6 shots of my family when I realised I hadnt changed the ASA setting from 400 to the 200 that it should have been for Kodak gold.

Anyone know if that sort of film can tolerate that amount of what I’m guessing is underexposure?

Ref 400/200 asa Kodak Gold depending on the subject it will make a varying difference , whilst print film generally has a wide margin – especially designed for point and shoot , if you have subjects with a light or sky background it will make them a bit dark, unless you applied the needed compensation , or the camera did it for you with some wizzy metering, then they should be OK, its a 1 stop difference , the printers may auto adjust too. Tolerance depends on subject and the post exposure techniques needed to get an acceptable result , thats where all the highlight/shadow detail stuff comes in and and .. you missed the shot, the expensive way is to bracket of course, can also get some nice effects with under/over if the printer does not correct.

Yep, got a nice little collection of stuff I’ve picked up from Charity shops, use a lot of vintage lenses on my Fuji XH-1 & X-Pro 1. Got this lot on display at home to annoy the wife…I’ve used them all at least once after repairing them. There is a nice little photoshop in Penzance that develop and scan the photos onto my penstick for about a fiver for standard colour (B&W is about 8 quid)

Pentax MX
Yashica MAT LM (medium format)
Yashica Electro 35 GT
Kiev 4A
Zeiss folding camera
Konica Pop
Agfa Optima Sensor
Rollei 35T
Olympus XA
Pentax Auto 110 SLR
Minolta 110 Zoom SLR
Zenit EM

Whilst we have a stack of film cameras to use as as per prev posts , at the end of last year I picked up a couple of Fuji X100`s for peanuts because they had the common fault of stuck aperture blades, so you only get to shoot at F2 , despite this “restriction” a combination of large sensor and excellent jpeg engine/film simulation and overall handing (almost silent operation) they have been a real treat, having a film Leica the Fuji X100* absolutely give you the nearest to film experience in my view.

@finishthat – Dammit, you aren’t doing anything to discourage my ebay hunting, they all seem to sell for a really decent price (I presume because they are worth it)! A lot of the time the T models go for close enough to a reasonable F.

Yeah the X100 series do fetch a fair price , remember the ones I got were both faulty, so around £100 ,
for me thats fine as they work, just with the aperture stuck at F2, I thought I could fix them myself but it turns out the fix may be a bit harder than I thought so for the moment I am happy to use them as is, outdoors there is never camera shake due to high shutter speed , and there is a built in ND filter that can be assigned an Fn button if it gets too bright. Also and I am a bit of a stickler for this – because they did not cost much they are not “precious” so I can take them anywhere without stress, its the same as the expensive watch thing if you wont take it with you why have it?

Whilst we have a stack of film cameras to use as as per prev posts , at the end of last year I picked up a couple of Fuji X100`s for peanuts because they had the common fault of stuck aperture blades, so you only get to shoot at F2 , despite this “restriction” a combination of large sensor and excellent jpeg engine/film simulation and overall handing (almost silent operation) they have been a real treat, having a film Leica the Fuji X100* absolutely give you the nearest to film experience in my view.

+1 on Fuji’s – the X100 is ace. I lucked out and found a ‘beater’ X-Pro2 (missing its card door), well-used, battered but functionally perfect. Stuck it in a case, cheap fast prime lens on the front, and it goes everywhere with me. Keep an eye out on LCE website and the various other usual 2nd hand camera kit online stores. Often they seem to have PX bargains that cosmetically aren’t great and hence sell at a price whereby you don’t need to be precious about it.

Does anyone digitise their film negatives? Is there a way to retain the ‘film look’ with scanners?

I may get an epson V600 in the future.

Does anyone digitise their film negatives? Is there a way to retain the ‘film look’ with scanners?

It will always look like film IME. The dynamic range of the scanner should be higher than the film, and 6400dpi is ~58 mega pixles on 35mm film. SO what you get on the screen isn’t much different to what you’d get on an enlarger. Light passes through the negative and ends up on a photosensitive receiver whether it’s paper or electrical.

Although different people mean different (and often conflicting) things when they say “film look”. Anything from wide angle, shallow d.o.f, grainy (at >400iso), detailed (at iso 50), higher color dynamic range / more vivid, lower color dynamic range / less saturated, etc.

interesting programme on the radio today about the dying days of the darkroom and chemical photography. Slightly strange listening to photography on the radio but quite an interesting bit of radio non the less.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000d70k

“Garry, I’ve just been offered 11 litres of CibaChrome, you want it?”

We join him as he uses up the very last of the chemistry which enable him to use the techniques he has spent a lifetime perfecting, before his dark room is closed forever. Reflecting a change out of his studio and in the world – in 2007 there were 204 professional dark rooms in London, by 2010 there were 8.

I listened to that maccruiskeen it was good, strange to think there is someone out there who is the the very last person to be doing something.

It brought back memories for me of making cibachrome prints some 25 years ago. I recalled the total  and absolute darkness you had to work in and it was a lot trickier to colour balance I found that printing from negatives. The prints were also very easy to damage while processing but once dry it was easier to tear a telephone directory in half that a gash print! They certainly had a unique look with the incredibly glossy finish, I’ve probably got some prints still in a box somewhere, I’ll have to go on a hunt for them.
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I saw an interesting video about the last roll of Kodacrome on Youtube recently

Another interesting one from yesterday

I recalled the total  and absolute darkness you had to work in

I did at first think it was an odd choice of subject matter for radio but I guess it would have made for weird TV too 🙂

having exclusively shot 10×8, 5×4, 6×6 transparency for about 15 years i couldn’t wait to see the back of it!

all the linhof/hassleblad gear is sold off. i just don’t get the ‘romance’ and hipster interest. don’t get me wrong it sometimes has a certain quality and i was heavily into cold cathode enlargers, high acutance developers (rodinal, HC-110) and had stacks of silver heavy papers like oriental seagull and Agfa brovira but if you are producing work for clients then digital all the way. time is money, and digital produces better results.

i’m sure those hipsters would think differently if they had to use it every day to pay the mortgage and keep clients happy. so much time wasted waiting for film to come back from the lab and not being able to strike a set and move onto the next shot.
having to batch test film and add 5-red or green to keep it neutral and then the lab would change something and the tones would shift.

I’d agree for pro use it’s much easier quicker and more reliable on digital. My skills were no longer needed once digital got into the world of proper high speed filming. I was thinking last night that I took photos on all formats and filmed with 16mm, processed B&W C41 and E6, printed from all of them, processed 400 feet rolls of 16mm VPN and telecined them and mixed up all the chemistry to do it. I enjoyed the variety though. I guess I was lucky in that due to what we did it all had to be done in house so we didn’t outsource anything. All that has gone, huge amounts of kit just went into skips.

A similar thing has happened in the av industry I’m now in with presentations. Today we’ll typically run with a main and back up laptop which will play and show everything going to screen. I used to be back set on some shows with a data projector and slide projector and on the desk VHS, U-Matic, Betacam and DVD players all of which needed cueing up and playing in. It is so much easier now with a fraction of the kit

Only last week I threw out a full screen blending and matrix kit that had cost around £20,000 10 years ago, all analogue though so useless now. Same thing happened to a broadcast quality standards converter that had cost a similar amount.

I don’t get that people still want to use film, I also get the feeling that they do it to be “different” rather than having any real merit in using film.
Digital cameras have done to film what MP3s have done to LPs.
The only positives I can see from using a film camera is it forces you to consider your image a little more, because your film is limited and you can’t see the end result until its been developed. If you’ve screwed it up, that moment is gone. Also film cameras generally have less automatic exposure choices, so they help you learn and understand exposure better.
I still miss using my Pentax Super A…. but my Pentax KP is so much better to use.

I don’t get that

Yes you do, you explain it 3 sentences later. What you mean is, “This doesn’t appeal to me”.

In a world where you can buy a tap that saves you having to boil a kettle of water to make instant coffee. Sometimes it’s nice to have a task/hobby to focus on, rather than just it’s results. Damn hipsters using their kettles to boil water slowly.

If you’ve screwed it up, that moment is gone. Also film cameras generally have less automatic exposure choices, so they help you learn and understand exposure better.
I still miss using my Pentax Super A…. but my Pentax KP is so much better to use.

But then if you judge a camera by the percentage of good images it produces the film one probably wins.

You can extend the argument further and a cameraphone comes out better than the KP, because the lack of DoF and massive levels of sensitivity, shake reduction, and noise reduction that’s possible means every images comes out Ok, all you have to do is point it at something worthwhile.

Took my k5 for a walk at the weekend with an old f3.5 35-105 manual lens, my OH got better pics of the dog with her phone.

It’s a fun, tactile experience with the film camera and yes it is different, it’s nice to be different sometimes.

it forces you to consider your image a little more

heaven forbid!

Not so sure film is more expensive. This notion may relate to our ancestors in the 1960’s….

Just bought an old Canon EOS50E for £20, which included a new battery – they are £10 themselves. The camera is unused. Expired film, £4 for 24 or 36. Developing is £8. I may take 3 or 4 images a week on film. If I don’t like the Canon, I’ll sell it for £35 as “film tested.”

Digital. I fancy a Fuji XT-1. Used, £260. Needs a lens, oh. Call that £200. I’m now in for probably £550 when you add in a new battery and memory card. No film developing, but I’ll need a new laptop…… Plus now instead of taking a £20 camera out on my bike, I’ll have near £600 worth of kit. Ain’t gonna happen. I have a Nikon D80 with lenses, unused now.

With digital I’ll take 40 or 50 images on a ride. Point, click, point, click. They will all be rubbish. But it will take me an hour on the laptop (which always feels like working from home) to find out.

I don’t use film to be different or to hark back to the old days. I use film because fundamentally taking photos is boring. I just want to take a few images that actually reflect what I did. Could take my phone out and use that, but then I’m back being connected to the world.

Film is dead cheap, the photos are usually fine (my £10 Canon would have been an impressive piece of kit back in the day) and I really can’t be bothered being a photographer. I like cameras and photos, but I don’t like photography.

Plus there is a shop in town that develops film. I take my film in, and have a chat – with a real person.

I understand digital, have owned digital cameras since they came out, have bloomin photoshop qualifications. Just can’t be bothered with the faffage of digital all the time.

I watched a nice documentary last night on Netflix about Elsa Dorfman, a portrait photographer who uses a 20×24 polaroid for her photos. Quite interesting and the camera results are amazing quality.

Well worth a watch

On the back of this thread I decided to cash in on an Olympus Trip that has been lying in the cupboard unused for 5+ years. I bought it at that time for about £20. Anyway, i chucked it on eBay with a small selection of unused film with a buy it now of £50 and it was sold within 5 minutes. I wish I’d stuck it on a bit higher now.