First film camera in nearly 20 years

ozanan

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Dan
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I´ve been contemplating getting a film camera for a little while, to force me to slow down and concentrate on what I´m doing, something I struggle to do with digital. I´ve spent a bit of time looking at the Canon T90 and a couple of other cameras from the 80´s, however on a spur of the moment trip to a car boot sale on Sunday I found and bought (without really looking at it or knowing anything about it other than ¨It´s a 35mm SLR camera¨) a Minolta SRT-101 and some accessories for £40 - all wrapped up in a medium sized foam lined aluminium edged case. The folks I bought it from said it used to be their fathers camera, that he bought it new and used it frequently, but looked after it.

Upon getting it home I had a proper look at what I bought. The camera looks to be in superb condition, the meter seems to work fine - dials, timer, release all feel and sound clean and solid, no dents, dings, scrapes or scratches. Included in the case was a Minolta black leather case, a 55mm f1.7 Rokkor lens, a Rollei E27c flash with charger, 12 various cokin filters (sepia, polarising, grads and centre spots) and the holder, a cable release with a locking screw, and a small anti-static brush.

The original manuals were all there as well, but I think the thing that hit home the hardest that this was a treasured possession was the envelope labeled ¨Camera Identity¨ containing the original customer copy of the guarantee and showing serial numbers and the date of purchase as 1st September 1971. It looked like it could have been written yesterday.

It´ll be the first film camera I´ll have used for nearly 20 years, and it´s older than I am - I hope to do it justice and look forward to letting it teach me a thing or two.

I plan to nip to the shops tomorrow and grab some film, but one of the things that I´m curious about is the battery - it has charge at the moment, but I´ve no idea how long for. Does anyone have any experience of the MR-9 adapters you can use? Do they actually work? I´ve found some on ebay for £15 and one from the Small battery company for £29, but also have read about using hearing aid batteries or wein cells.

Also, does anyone use the likes of the 7dayshop film and slide scanner, would they recommend them or is it just as good to get film developed at tescos/asda and put on a CD/DVD?

Cheers for any advice offered!

Dan
 
I hope you enjoy your new kit, the battery alternative is the 675 hearing aid air battery and at 1.4v is close to the original 1.35v as to make no difference and at a couple of quid for six on flea bay is your best option.



How to fit.

http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-111.html
 
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The SRT models are nice cameras and will take a M42 adapter for old screw lenses, the old battery in mine must be donkey's years old and still works, the only disadvantage of Minolta's is that their VG lenses are a bit more expensive and scarce compared to say Canon.
If you see their 35-70 f3.5 macro zoom going cheap it is very good and made with co-operation of Zeiss and identical to their version...I picked mine up at a boot sale for £5.
 
sounds like you have got a bargain there. To begin with I would just run a couple of films through it and get them devved and scanned at your local s'market, they are generally ok. As to home scanning, a lot of people on here have bought an Epson V500 which you can get for about £100 and will pay for itself fairly quickly if you end up using film a lot and which produces really good scans.
Looking forward to seeing some results

Andy
 
Depending on your intended end use, Supermarket/Boots scans might be good enough. IIRC, they scan the prints at a resolution of 300ppi so can be used to print more of the same size prints with little or no fiddling. You can even do mild enlargements of the files - only you can judge what's "good enough" for your purposes!

There are still plenty of current flatbed scanners that can deal with 35mm negs and slides - once you've got a system (aka workflow!) sorted, it's a drag but worth it! Another (quicker) solution is to use a slide copying attachment/lens and a DSLR to digitise the films.
 
Judging from the number of completely identical threads (and completely identical, helpful answers, I should add!), we really should have a "So you've got a film camera for the first time..." sticky...
 
^^^^^^^


:) :) :) :)
 
That's a bl**dy good idea FC.
 
Judging from the number of completely identical threads (and completely identical, helpful answers, I should add!), we really should have a "So you've got a film camera for the first time..." sticky...

Despite having shot quite a few rolls now I'd find this really handy too, especially if it had information about scanning and dev'ing, what being most cost effective and the pros/cons of Boots/Asda/Snappy Snaps vs Home scanning etc as I've got to the point where I want to shoot film, but £8.50 per dev/scan is mad!

Who's making it then :D?
 
Despite having shot quite a few rolls now I'd find this really handy too, especially if it had information about scanning and dev'ing, what being most cost effective and the pros/cons of Boots/Asda/Snappy Snaps vs Home scanning etc as I've got to the point where I want to shoot film, but £8.50 per dev/scan is mad!

Who's making it then :D?

Shot them? haven't seen them, were are they?:D
 
I hadn't considered using an adapter for M42 lenses, and much prefer to look at scanners etc that have been suggested on a forum, rather than a review from the likes of amazon which can be a bit ... varied.

Judging from the number of completely identical threads (and completely identical, helpful answers, I should add!), we really should have a "So you've got a film camera for the first time..." sticky...

I had thought about posting in the new toy thread, but wasn't sure that it was more of a camera acquisition disorder thread :D I understand people with that can be a little :cuckoo:
A thread for first time film camera questions would be a handy thing, especially if it prevents people like me repeating questions and tiring people out by hoping they'll answer those questions ... again.

Thanks for all the nudges in the right direction
 
It wasn't meant as a "oh dear, another thread on this", it was merely an observation that it would make a lot of sense to have our common answers centralised to one place (what batteries, what starter film, manuals etc.).

:)
 
It wasn't meant as a "oh dear, another thread on this", it was merely an observation that it would make a lot of sense to have our common answers centralised to one place (what batteries, what starter film, manuals etc.).

:)

I completely understood and it wasn't taken like that :) - I do think it would be a good idea to have a sticky, at the very least it might reduce the possibility of anything becoming and "oh dear, another thread on this", and it gives a central repository for the frequently asked "new to film and film camera" questions .
I find it tedious when family phone me up and ask the same PC tech support questions, I can only guess that others can feel the same and I wouldn't like to think of being a contributor to tedium :D
 
Judging from the number of completely identical threads (and completely identical, helpful answers, I should add!), we really should have a "So you've got a film camera for the first time..." sticky...

Somebody start it off and i'll sticky it for you...;)
 
Also, does anyone use the likes of the 7dayshop film and slide scanner, would they recommend them or is it just as good to get film developed at tescos/asda and put on a CD/DVD?

Don't bother with those cheap film and slide scanners as they are **** to put it mildly, all they consist of is a cheap webcam in a box with an LED light behind them, quality leaves very much to be desired and the '5 megapixels' that they advertise is always the result of interpolation.
 
I completely understood and it wasn't taken like that :) - I do think it would be a good idea to have a sticky, at the very least it might reduce the possibility of anything becoming and "oh dear, another thread on this", and it gives a central repository for the frequently asked "new to film and film camera" questions .
I find it tedious when family phone me up and ask the same PC tech support questions, I can only guess that others can feel the same and I wouldn't like to think of being a contributor to tedium :D

TBH this group really likes helping new folk get started; also, even the existing stickies are missed quite often. But it's easier to say "have a look at the sticky and come back with things you don't understand etc", so I DO think the sticky is a good thing.

One thing I'm not sure I understand; obviously the best thing is for the first post in the sticky to be updated with the latest/best info. But only the original poster can do that, presumably? The rest of us can add suggestions, but the OP has to edit them into the "knowledge base" at the start?
 
Some ideas for starters:

- things that apply to any new (old) camera (test speeds, test for leaks, look at seals, run cheap test film, get cheap processing)

- where to get cameras CLA'd (? not separate?)

- things that apply to 35mm or 120 cameras

- things that apply to exotic formats and LF

- things that apply to compacts, rangefinders, TLRs, SLRs (I realise this cuts across the last-but-one category)

- pointers to the processing thread

- film discussion (separate sticky?)

- scanner discussion (separate sticky?)

BTW, the sticky for the scanner test pics is still looking lonely, ages after Marvin the Martian resurfaced! Do we need it?
 
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