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OP
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The Zone System. One of these days I need to study that.
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The Zone System. One of these days I need to study that.
martx-5
Yoda
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I used it sometimes when I was shooting 4x5 B&W negatives years ago. I have several books on it, including Ansel Adams "The Negative". It's a photographic technique for determining optimal film exposure and development. I had some successes. It did help to expand or contract the gray scale as needed. I don't know how well it would translate to digital. I still have my Pentax spotmeter and was considering selling it, as they still command a decent price. Maybe it is something I should re-visit before I put it up on flea-bay. Up 'til now, I've just been using an incident light meter if the situation requires it, and adjusting the exposure accordingly.
I'm a crappy photographer and resigned to it. Got some fairly expensive equipment and still take snapshots. My daughter gets better birding results with a point & shoot Canon. I miss the bird most of the time or get a great shot of tree branches with a fuzzy bird inside. By the time I shoot manual, the little bugger has flown the coop.
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It doesn't really. The closest thing in digital would be HDR.
I did a series of tests to find the dynamic range of a particular film. What a pain in the butt. It only worked for a combo of film and paper. Change either and you had to do the tests all over. I liked shooting different films, Techpan, IR, Tmax, so there was too much testing to get the system to work for me.
Gliderman8
Great Pumpkin
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I still have my Contax 139 and shot hundreds of rolls with it. I really miss setting f-stops and playing with the depth of field. I wish someone made a digital back for my Contax... that would be cool.
OP
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I still have the first "real" camera I ever owned (at least first SLR), which is a Canon T-70. I bought this camera over in Greece in 84 when I was on a remote assigment. I got into photography as a great way to pass the time. It was a manual focus camera that had a neat little circular split-focus prism thingy in the center of the view finder that made getting tack-sharp focus very quick and easy. The T-70 was the second generation of Canon's T series cameras. The T-50 was the first, but it was pretty much a point and shoot SLR that only had auto modes. The T-70 had all the auto modes of the T50 but also had Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority as well as full manual modes.
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First "real" SLR's for me were Miranda G bodies. Most of the versatility of Nikons of the day (1966-68) and not as costly. Soligor made their glass and it was just fine for news photography. Nikon F's came later, have my first of each, still. I stayed with prime focal length lenses well into the late '70's, got a 70~200 Vivitar in '77 along with a Soligor 35~70. Those were on a pair of Nikon F-2's. Rugged, dependable bodies. Later an F-3 HP and a couple FE & FM bodies as secondaries. Really liked the FM's; "manual". A 24mm Nikkor on one, a 109mm on the other. Could wade into a situation and get some good "money shots" with those. A Pittsburgh nurse's strike comes to mind.
The good old days. Haven't carried a camera bag to-hand in over twenty years. A fixed lens zoom on a point-and-shoot Fuji digital suffices for now. I suspect all the optics I've amassed have grown fungus on the coatings. :shrug:
The good old days. Haven't carried a camera bag to-hand in over twenty years. A fixed lens zoom on a point-and-shoot Fuji digital suffices for now. I suspect all the optics I've amassed have grown fungus on the coatings. :shrug:
I still have my Canon FT QL and a Ricoh film camera. I actually put new batteries in them and may shoot some film if I can get it developed. The Canon is semi-automatic with a match needle exposure. I also have the complete Time-Life books of photography. I'll send them free to anyone who wants the set - just pay the postage. Everything you ever wanted to know about photography is in there.
Gliderman8
Great Pumpkin
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Almost forgot... I also have a Rolie 35 (silver). It was by far my favorite camera. Small, lightweight, lots of shutter speeds, built-in meter, and Carl Zeiss lens.
Edit: This camera did have one flaw.... In order to access the battery you had to remove the back; no problem unless the battery died with film in the camera. I got quite good at going into my darkroom and changing the battery with no lights.
Edit: This camera did have one flaw.... In order to access the battery you had to remove the back; no problem unless the battery died with film in the camera. I got quite good at going into my darkroom and changing the battery with no lights.
YakkoWarner
Jedi Warrior
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Depending on what kind of lenses, you may be able to get an inexpensive adapter to use the old manual lenses on an EOS digital body, usually not too expensive to pick one up second hand (I often see 10 megapixel Canon XTI bodies on Craigslist for under $100, I upgraded to a 15 megapixel 2Ti body for $180). If you have an EOS film body, the lenses in most cases are compatible (the lenses from my EOS film body work perfectly fine on the EOS digital body, but certain lenses for the digital won't fit back to the film body). I bought a $20 adaptor ring to mount some older manual lenses - I wanted to use my 600mm and I found a gorgeous 133mm Russian prime from the 1950's or 1960's that I wanted to use. If your older lenses are purely manual with screw-in threads you can probably adapt them, harder to do with some of the automatic lenses.
OP
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I still have several FD-mount lenses for my Canon T-70 SLR and have thought about picking up an FD to EF adaptor just for fun to see what kind of results I get. You can get adaptors to adapt old FD Canon lenses to EF, and even to Sony and Nikon mounts. Of course all my FD lenses are manual focus.
OP
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Speaking of older cameras, Here's what we used back in the late 50s & 60s when in Cuba for a couple years. Zeiss Icon, took great pictures, loved that camera! German technology at it's best. Are they still in business? PJ
View attachment 55988
View attachment 55988
OP
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Yes, Zeiss is still inbusiness and still makes cameras. They are most famous for their lenses (which are VERY expensive compared to most competitors).
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