I have been given a new toy to play with

[jamesoliverstone]

One of the guys who works at the firm I am doing some freelance work for is a photography enthusiast, and I found out the other day that he has around 35 film bodies ranging from the 40's onwards which is pretty cool. We have talked loads about the joy of film and especially how I wanted a rangefinder for descrete shooting and portability.

I came into work today to do a shoot and he came over and told me he wanted me to have a play with one of his cameras... he gave me a Voigtlander Bessa with a super wide heliar 15mm.

Now I have never used a body without a viewfinder before, so I have put it on infinity focus, loaded it with a roll of ilford HP5 B+W and I am going to have a play in london with it tommorrow.

I cant wait to try some real shoot from the hip type shots with this ultra wide lens.

I know you guys have probably done all this before, but I am geniunely excited to have a play with something that forces you to think outside the box

Has anyone used one of these before and have any tips on the metering? I have head that its best to get the meter to show green and then drop it down a stop as it can get easily confused with high contrast scenes?

 

[pepper]

I've got a Bessa R and the worst thing I think I did was sell my Superwide lens with viewfinder when I should really have kept hold of the lens!

I've since upgraded to an R2a and in some ways its better and some ways its worse.

I prefer the M mount as I'm now able to use both types of lenses, which means I get use my yummy 35mm Summicron

I've still got to put the original Bessa R up for sale, I have so many cameras and am getting worse and worse at selling them

Good luck with your borrow of the Bessa they are ace!

 

[zeroeseight]

The 15mm is a wide lens so its quite easy to get a lot of sky in which can affect your meter reading. I tend to point the camera downwards while metering so that the sky has less effect on the reading. I expose for a green reading or green and red for slight overexposure. The Bessa L is a fun camera, enjoy

 

[jamesoliverstone]

Just shot 20 exposures while I was travelling up to london

I didnt realise how loud the shutter was when the tube stopped moving, so I got a few funny looks when it went "ker-chunk" when the din of the train suddenly stopped

 

[Andysnap]

He he, its great isn't it, just like real photography. How do you feel about having to wait to get them developed, it nearly kills me.

Andy

 

[excalibur2]

Cheapskate film user and a story if you have nothing else to do:-
Well I bought another Fuji STX-2 for £4 (previous one jammed) and decided to try the standard fujinon lens with and WO a fuji converter, so popped in some 10p Fuji c200 and took some shots..very boring so put the film into a MTL3 to give that a workout, in the meantime a 2Xs Kiron match mate came in the post for a Minolta, noted the frame number of the MTL3 and wound the film back erm straight into the cassette even though I was careful....oh well! out with the changing bag and forced the end off the cassette to get the leader out, then reloaded into a Minolta Srt, well my opinion of the SRT has taken a knock as the Kiron wouldn't work properly on it but ok on a X-700.
So after taking a few dud shots with SRT noted the frame number and wound back the film and reloaded into the X-700 and eventually took shots with lenses to see if the converter is any good.
End of story...yawn