A Pentax ME Super....

Well.... so much for the re-boot!

Long time no see... again...

It's so easy for life to overtake all one's plans for play.  I'd forgotten brownie to blad!

The Brownie 2C is still here sitting unused on a shelf, but it has been reunited with its lens at last so there's hope for it yet.... but not right now.  After all those unfulfilled good intentions trotted out in my last entry I'm going to wind things back a little before moving forward.

My first 'proper' SLR was a Zenit EM, bought as a teenager in 1980 with some Christmas and birthday money I'd saved.  I still have it!  But the wonderful Pentax ME Super that I graduated to a year on got lost later that decade during a grape picking  (drinking) holiday in France.  Last week, I saw one in a shop window, complete with a very sad looking gadget bag, lens, flash and case, all for £20.  Brownie to blad popped into my head... all except the last post about the 2C of course...  and so I bought it there and then, sure in my mind that there must be something in the 'kitty' to cover the twenty pounds and give the project a bit of a reboot.... again!

Ignoring the detour to the 2C for now, I'm going to get back on track to the blad with this Pentax. What of the kitty?  The Kiron cleared about thirty-five pounds and there was eighteen there already, so there's £33 and this ME Super to move off with.

So it's resurrection time for this blog.  Do people still 'blog'?

Into the bin went the gadget bag and the ever ready case, which were rotten, followed by the flash which was broken and wouldn't hold a charge.  That left the camera itself and what turns out to be a rather nice zoom lens.  More of that in a moment.

The  camera is in very good shape.  I've cleaned it up, renewed the light seals and added a battery so it's ready for its first film.  In fact it's in fantastic condition for a 35 year old camera and took me right back to 1982 as I turned it over in my hands.  I must have paid the best part of £150 then...  It was a toss up between this and an OM10, which was the dilemma of many at the time as they were the top selling cameras of their day.  It was those little buttons to change the shutter speed that clinched it for me and it was a good choice,  one that am going to enjoy revisiting over the next few days.

The lens is a little newer than the camera, but only by a year,  It's one of the first group of SMC A lenses that were produced to accompany the release of a new 'Auto' enabled camera in 1983; the 'Super A'.  This SMC A 35-105mm f3.5 has picked up a cult label... the 'stack of primes'.  There's something to put to the test!  The lens is also in remarkably good nick so I'm expecting good things.

Re-boot...

Time for a re-boot!
The Kiron lens has gone in what has become a very, very slow clearout of much of the surplus camera related stuff I've accumulated over the years.  But rather than carry on from where I left off I think it's time to start afresh and have another go at working up to a Blad.
So back to a Brownie!
I've found one that must have come to me some years ago now.  It was in amongst a box a junk bits and bobs that came with a camera I bought at a local saleroom, so in effect cost me nothing.  And nothing is what it may well be worth as it appears to have no lens, although the rest of it seems to work OK.
It's a Canadian made Model A 2C Brownie from the 1920s and produced images that were about 7x12 cm on the now obsolete 130 roll film.

2C Brownie

So it's big... almost large format, which opens up several options for putting it to some use.  I have a couple of the old wooden 130 reels so I could respool some 120, or perhaps some 7cm fujichrome that's hiding in the film fridge.  Paper negatives is another idea and I also have some Harman direct positive paper I could cut to size too. Would I be tempted to try some wet plate... ? It's been done with this camera before and by all accounts is very easy as no adaptation of the box is needed.. but, ... I suppose it's a option.
As for a lens, well, pinhole is the obvious and most simple way to go, but I think I should be able to find a suitable meniscus lens to stick behind the shutter.
Let's see how it goes.

My reading material at the moment is Geoff Dyer's the 'Ongoing Moment' which is as fascinating as it is frustrating.  The question of a photograph being defined by its creator or its subject is not new but is approached in a novel way which I find compelling, however the acknowledged lack of many of the images that are referred to in the text is hugely annoying.  The text reads like it should be a soundtrack to a slide show but the screen keeps going blank!  Maybe I'll create that slideshow.... :)

Anyway, I'll photograph with the Brownie and keep the 'Ongoing Moment' and its tropes in mind.

Well, nearly four years since my last post!  This time I had forgotten, but was going to start a new blog and rediscovered this one.

So an update is long overdue.

No, I haven't succeeded!  But I still have the wonderful Kiron lens which turned out to be a very good one indeed and, luckily for me, in working order with no sticky aperture problems which these lenses are supposed to be prone.

The Hoya 135mm went a couple of years ago for £18 so if I now sell the Kiron I'll be able to continue the quest...

Kiron 28mm f2

Well I'd almost forgotten about this quest - but not quite. The Contaflex sold for a disappointing £26. A real bargain for such a great piece of engineering. The cash didn't burn a whole in my pocket though and it was nearly a year before I spent it on a Kiron 28mm f2 lens at £15.99 and a Hoya 135mm f2.8 at £10. This time however I found them at a local charity shop.

The Kiron looks in very good shape, whilst the Hoya seems to be almost unused.

I'll try them out and report back before selling them. I think I did well on the Kiron - it has a good reputation - but I'm not so sure about the Hoya.

Total assets are therefore these two lenses and a leather case for the H2 Penatx which I still use on my S1A. I'll try and move this project along a little now and get a bit closer to that 'Blad.

Back Agin!

Wow, it's been a year since I last looked at this ... time for an update.

I fixed the Conataflex. It turned out to be a very simple stuck mirror, which did involve taking the top off the camera to get at a small lever that wasn't moving, but that was all. Back together it worked fine and I managed to put a roll through it.

Even the meter worked and so did the auto exposure, a feature that made this something of a landmark camera back in the early sixties. It was very easy to use but the lack of a quick return mirror was a litle frustrating as the view through the finder goes black after you push the shutter.

What next? I sold it, so time to find a new camera.

contaflex super b

The H2 was beyond economic repair for me so I sold it on and got ten pounds for the body. The lens sold separately for eleven pounds and I've kept the very nice brown leather case for now.
With £21 to spend I quickly found this Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super B. In fact it was only £18 which I was pleased with, however on receipt it turned out that the prism had moved so nothing is visible through the finder. The lens also needs a clean, but otherwise the camera is in very good condition working order.
It is beautifully well made as one might expect from zeiss and I'm looking forward to trying it out once I've sorted the prism. It is reputed to be one of the better users from the contaflex line up with it's recomputed tessar and auto aperture. We'll see.

asahi pentax H2

The primotar lens sold for £10 which I have promptly spent on one of the first mass produced SLR's the Pentax H2. It came fitted with an auto-takumar 55mm f2 lens which was standard equipment for the camera when it was on the market between 1959 and 1961. This one seems to be a 1959 model which also has it's original eveready case.

One of the major weaknesses of this camera was the shutter and this one won't work. The curtain is creased and doesn't complete it's journey so will need a good CLA. This might cost more than the camera is worth so may not happen - in which case I'll sell the body on and have a go at using the lens before passing that on. It is very compact and easy in use with the apertures set at the nose of the lens. It was also one of the first auto lenses - in fact semi automatic and has a lever to cock the aperture open for focusing before exposure. Quite easy to use on the digital and quite sharp even wide open and with very pleasant bokeh.
Of course, when I've finished playing with it it will return to ebay.