A Borrowed Rollei and Colour film

Lomo 400 C-41 in 120, like a box of chocolates, you just don't know what you're going to get on a less than a sunny day.

Camera: Rolleiflex Automat K3B, 75 f3.5 Schneider Xenar lens.
Film: Lomo 400 C41.

Leslieville in the Rain

I've been shooting a lot more colour film over the past little while and colour and grey rainy days look even better.


Camera: Minolta SRT 202, MD Rokkor X 50 f1.7 lens.
Film: Kodak Portra 400

Riverside in the Rain

Some friends of mine from Toronto Photo Walks and I sort of created a mid week photowalk group of retirees and freelancers with flexible schedules. I planned this a week or two out and the forecast changed to heavy rains throughout the day. I suggested hey lets move it a day ahead, well Alan really wanted to shoot in the rain. We got rain. 

Actually I got some amazing shots from that, and I shot in colour too, Kodak Portra 400 rocks. I borrowed my brother's SRT 202, I wanted something mechanical to use with the rain and I used my Gossen meter to measure incident light.

Camera: Minolta SRT 202, MD Rokkor X 50 f1.7 lens. 

Film: Kodak Portra 400

More Beaches Fun

I told you I like what I'm getting out of Portra 160?

Minolta XD, MD and MC Rokkor X lenses.
Film Portra 160.

Trying out a Rollei 35, or, The Only Compact Point and Shoot I Want To Own.

I'm a sucker for Zeiss glass be it medium format, or 35mm. My brother loves Rollei 35's, they were a super compact zone focus point and shoot camera with optics that punch way above the camera's size.  Made from 1966 to about the early 1980s first in Germany and later in Singapore, the Rollei 35 came with either a 40 f3.5 Tessar or a 40 f2.8 Sonnar lens, there are some Made in Germany examples with the 40 f3.5 Schneider Xenar lens, be prepared to spend some money for this example. I shot with a made in Germany 40 f3.5 Tessar, the shutter was working perfectly, the meter, not so much, but that's ok as I had Sunny 16 on my side.

In term of ergonomics, the Rollei 35 is on the odd side, the film advance lever is on the left and loading film is upside and from right to left. That aside, the only really hard part is getting used to zone focusing. I took the easy way out by shooting 100 ISO Black and white film on a sunny day.

I want to get one of these cameras, yeah I dump on the whole compact camera craze, but those are the  1990s electronic answer to the Kodak Brownie, the Rollei 35 is a precision instrument. Make mine chrome, Made in Germany and with a Tessar lens.

Camera: Rollei 35, 40 f3.5 Zeiss Tessar Lens.
Film: Rollei RPX 100, Xtol 1+1.

Playing with a Nikon F4 Again.

While staying at my brother's a few weeks back I got a chance to try his Nikon F4 out again, I needed a break from shooting with Minolta gear non stop this. I should back up, it's not my first time shooting with this camera. I played with Alex's F4 when he was moving houses almost ten years ago, I didn't like back then. Now I do. What changed?

Well, matrix metering for starters, I tried it out on my N90s and loved it with the AF Nikkor lenses I own. With the F4 you can matrix meter with just about any Nikkor lens made. It was the last pro body that used dials for everything, I toyed with getting an F5 but buying more AA batteries and dealing with menu hell wasn't my idea of progress. With the F4 you either need four or six batteries.

I enjoyed shooting with Alex's F4S so much, over Labour Day weekend I got my own F4, I don't need as many frames per second and I'll be shooting Ai and Ais lenses on this camera mostly and it's slightly lighter.

Stay tuned I plan to write a more in-depth piece on the F4 in the future.


Camera: Nikon F4S, Nikkor Ai 50 f1.4 lens.
Film: Kodak Tri-X 400, Xtol 1+1.