Canon FTb

FrancoD said:

By "I had an RF before" do you mean a range finder camera that you don't remember the model name or a camera called RF ?

Click to expand...

Rangefinder that was loaned to me by my father's boss.

For some reason I thought it was a Voigtlander but I have never been able to find an image of the camera model that I used for about a year.

grsnovi said:

I'd hate to find out after processing that: a) I didn't get the film loaded correctly or b) that somehow, I've managed to get half-frame advances and/or double exposures.

Click to expand...

Remember the check for the first one -- rewind lever should be spinning as you advance the film. As for the second... I have had some cameras with film-transport issues, but I also find that I don't always get the lever cranked the whole way... I'm being too gentle.

grsnovi said:

I started watching some YouTube videos on the Mamiya 645

Click to expand...

Got one not too long ago... great camera, my favorite MF by far, and the first (for me) to make a compelling case for MF over 35mm.

grsnovi said:

and along the way I saw one where the guy was arguing that film was cheaper than digital. I believe his point involved the cost of the digital camera because a 36-exposure roll (of Ilford 35mm) cost me $9 USD for the film and $10 USD for processing or 53 cents a shot.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. I wrote an article for PopPhoto about how I shoot B&W for less than 25 cents/frame and could be spending less (primarily bulk rolling and home development/scanning). I figured that if I went severe on my budget (Kentmere and L-76), the cost of a new Z7 and lens would keep me in a roll a week for 10 years, with enough change left over to buy a nice 35mm camera -- and that's ignoring how many great 35mm cameras regularly sell for $50 or less.

Granted, I'm primarily a B&W shooter -- but I'm confident what I spend on film and developing is far less than what avid digitographers spend on gear when they replace their cameras every 2-3 years. We sometimes forget that digital cameras have some degree of obsolescence, whereas a film camera from 1963 can produce the same image quality as a film camera from 2003.

grsnovi said:

Hopefully film cameras won't turn out to have the same effect on me that electric guitars did at one time.

Click to expand...

I'll remind you of that in 12 months when you're this forum's top poster!

Aaron

Autonerd said:

Autonerd said:

Hopefully film cameras won't turn out to have the same effect on me that electric guitars did at one time.

Click to expand...

I'll remind you of that in 12 months when you're this forum's top poster!

Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply, Aaron!

What scares me is that last night I saw a 645 at KEH in excellent condition and I was thinking that I ought to go ahead and pull the trigger DESPITE the fact that I have yet to process one exposure through the FTb yet.

grsnovi said:

What scares me is that last night I saw a 645 at KEH in excellent condition and I was thinking that I ought to go ahead and pull the trigger DESPITE the fact that I have yet to process one exposure through the FTb yet.

Click to expand...

If it helps, one thing I have learned in buying/acquiring way too many film cameras (also works for model trains) is that another one will always come along. I've been looking for a Pentax PC35AF for several months... took a while (and I got one dud I had to send back) but I got a good one at a much better price than I was expecting to pay. Was just shooting with it a little while ago, in fact. Fairy tales do come true, it can happen to you!

And you don't want to know how little I paid for my 645s...

Aaron

grsnovi said:

What scares me is that last night I saw a 645 at KEH in excellent condition and I was thinking that I ought to go ahead and pull the trigger DESPITE the fact that I have yet to process one exposure through the FTb yet.

Click to expand...

Patience, Gary! You'll get the hang of 35mm again soon enough, but medium format can turn out to be a tak headache. My Rollei 6006 system has been plagued by little and big problems -- I wish I still had my Mamiya TLR system (which was sadly stolen 20 years ago, and too expensive to replace, even then).

Thanks Parry,

...I've never been particularly patient.

I just need to get out and shoot!

Well, I shot the rest of the roll by using the metered setting then going over and under by 2 clicks on the aperture ring. Hoping these 36 exposures will a) give me a sense of where the internal metering is and b) allow me to practice scanning negatives.




Also, checked all the film advance sprockets and they seem fine.

grsnovi said:

Well, I shot the rest of the roll by using the metered setting then going over and under by 2 clicks on the aperture ring. ....

Click to expand...

Just checking - you know Ftb has (semi) spot metering? It's quite sensitive to where you point the central meter area.

Yes, the metering area is that rectangle frame visible in the VF

I am familiar with the behavior - the FTb was my first SLR almost exactly 50 years ago.

Mine isn't as pixelated as that...

I finally got film back from my FTb test roll. Here is a nice range of gray tones from my next door neighbor's tree. I have shutter speed and f-stop numbers however I'm also having computer issues so I'm on an old computer without access to my regular files. I haven't scanned the negatives yet, this is a scan of a 4" x 6" print. The good news is that the light meter seems to be giving me reasonable results and the film advance issues that I thought I was having weren't a problem. Admittedly focus seems soft. I blame my eyes. I finished a roll of Ilford HP+ in the Voigtlander and that will go to a different (hopefully faster lab).



Not sure why this is showing small, click View: Original Size

grsnovi said:

1. I finally got film back from my FTb test roll. Here is a nice range of gray tones from my next door neighbor's tree. I have shutter speed and f-stop numbers however I'm also having computer issues so I'm on an old computer without access to my regular files. I haven't scanned the negatives yet, this is a scan of a 4" x 6" print. The good news is that the light meter seems to be giving me reasonable results and the film advance issues that I thought I was having weren't a problem. Admittedly focus seems soft. I blame my eyes. I finished a roll of Ilford HP+ in the Voigtlander and that will go to a different (hopefully faster lab).

Not sure why this is showing small, click View: Original Size

Click to expand...

You won't really know how accurate your meter is until you try a roll of slide film, but it seems to work well enough filte film.

Once you do some direct scanning / copying from the negatives, you ought to get more detail in the highlights. On the old "zone system" tonal grades, you're getting fairly deep shadows (ii) in the bark of the tree to pure white (X), so that's about the best you'll get without very low contrast. With slide film, most of the tree trunk will be very dark and considerably blown highlights (5-6 stops or grades, max.)

Hi Parry, thanks for your reply. I'm in a quandary, my "real" computer seems to have bit the dust and needs to either: a) have Windows 10 installed under all of the apps and data on it or b) get wiped and have a new OS installed (in which acse my backup is 3 months old). I'm hoping that it can be surgically opened, backed-up and then have new Windows installed. I wasn't thrilled with my scan of a print. Of course the print is small and I didn't even really clean the glass on the scanner (and then I saw all sorts of stuff on the scan).

Once I get my computer issues resolved I'll scan this shot myself.

The next roll I'm getting scanned as well as prints (and there are more likely to be "real" photographs on the roll from the Voigtlander).

I'll be curious to see if I can see a difference between shots from the FTb and the Voigtlander.

grsnovi said:

Hi Parry, thanks for your reply. I'm in a quandary, my "real" computer seems to have bit the dust and needs to either: a) have Windows 10 installed under all of the apps and data on it or b) get wiped and have a new OS installed (in which acse my backup is 3 months old). I'm hoping that it can be surgically opened, backed-up and then have new Windows installed. I wasn't thrilled with my scan of a print. Of course the print is small and I didn't even really clean the glass on the scanner (and then I saw all sorts of stuff on the scan).

Once I get my computer issues resolved I'll scan this shot myself.

The next roll I'm getting scanned as well as prints (and there are more likely to be "real" photographs on the roll from the Voigtlander).

I'll be curious to see if I can see a difference between shots from the FTb and the Voigtlander.

Click to expand...

It'll be interesting, no matter what; and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Don't forget that you can scan/photograph at different exposures and merge them as a pseudo-HDR image. You know already how much more informafion is actually in the negative, and in some ways that's better than what was possible in digital not too many years ago.

Good luck with the next batch, Gary.