October 26, 2018The Kiev 4 is a beautiful, silent and graceful camera. It has a classic rangefinder design which just makes you want to pick it up and start shooting with it. Paired up with the well regarded Jupiter 8M Contax mount lens, it forms a formidable team. Especially with a very accurate focus, achieved through one of the widest available rangefinder…
October 12, 2018Shooting with the Red October theme is one thing, shooting a Soviet Zorki 4 camera with redscale film is a combination that doesn’t get any more red. This ensures that the tool is red (aka Soviet), but also the result (aesthetically). The thought of this came through a suggestion from a friend on the yearly Red October theme that is…
September 21, 2018The Kodak Retina is a camera that holds a certain amount of mystique. It was made by a company that by the 1930s was more focussed on manufacturing film and generally created cameras to support that and the multiple formats they were introducing. Kodak never seemed to aim for or achieve anything above a second tier camera manufacturer, but the…
July 20, 2018Fish and Chips. Kermit and Miss Piggy. Cheese and crackers. All classic combinations. Just like these, photography has its great combinations. A camera with a particular lens, a camera with a specific emulsion, an emulsion with certain development and so on. Welcome to a new series. Rather than a review of photographic equipment or emulsions, this series will concentrate on…
June 29, 2018Sonnar at a budget price. Those are the thoughts when purchasing a Jupiter 8 lens. A lens design which has become quite a “must have” for a photographer, but can be out of reach in many cases. This is where the wonderful Jupiter 8 (ЮПИТЕР-8) comes in, with a very useable L39 Leica Thread Mount or Contax bayonet mount, both…
April 27, 2018Very often it is considered a form of flattery to be copied. It means you have achieved something causing envy amongst others and they would like to also have it, but not necessarily have the means to get it. That is the case with Leica cameras. Whilst not everyone covets them, there is many people that do. This spurred on a…
November 5, 2017Everyone knows that red cars go faster. Ok, they feel faster. Does this translate to cameras? It sort of does with this one, as the Olympus XA3 does meter for faster film than the camera it replaced, the XA2. The argument does break apart though, as they did come in black, blue and white as well as red, but as…
August 22, 2017Scale focus cameras can be fun. There is no precise focusing, you pre-set focus points in advance, allowing a quick “draw” approach, and the viewfinder is very uncluttered. They are also generally cheap, so a very easy way to get into film photography. There is occasion though, where some precise focusing would be helpful, which is where accessories like the…
May 7, 2017The camera made for the young soviet generation, the Lomo Smena 8M, has made its place in history. Smena (CMEHA) is Russian for “Young Generation” which is the market this camera was aimed at. Production over 35 years ensured millions of soviet families recorded their memories with it. It is somewhat of an enigma though, where it is very easy…
March 2, 2017Medium format in a small package, the Fuji GS645S Professional gives that to you in spades. Apart from some of the folding cameras, this is one of the smaller cameras I have come across which shoots 120 roll film. I really enjoy cameras where they have been designed in a thoughtful way to achieve a specific outcome and again this…
October 11, 2016There is a saying that “everything in Texas is bigger”. So, let’s take the svelte Leica M camera, and visualise what it would look like if it came from Texas, but to add a twist, has the build from Japan. We have just described the Fuji GSW690III Professional camera. This is a camera capable of some amazing results, has an…
August 31, 2016Every type of camera has an entry point model. For rangefinders there is a number of them, with one of the most popular being the Yashica Electro 35 range. There has been a number of iterations of this camera, all with very slight differences, with the Electro 35 GL being a bit of a lost model, mainly due to a…