Thursday, November 13, 2008

Shanghai4 TLR shots

Here are some shots taken with the recently acquired Shanghai4 Twin Lens Reflex camera.

Initially, I was worried that the few specks of dirt on the picture taking lens and even the mirror would affect the picture quality, but apparently not. Either way, I've since sent the camera in for servicing (overly tight shutter due to dried lubricant, uneven lens plate surface and usual stuff that occurs with vintage cameras) and re-leathering. Basically this would mean pasting back the same leather so it holds on for a few more years of handling, or at least 1 year I hope.

Other accessories added include 2 X 34mm UV filters and 1 X 34 to 35.5mm step up ring, plus a 35.5mm Hoya metal lens hood.

This camera does not have a built in exposure meter, so having no handheld meter on hand, I used the caveman method of argaration. Used my trusty Nikon F601 to meter, took note of the aperture and shutter speed settings, then adjusted on the Shanghai4 accordingly or as close as I could. This resulted in less than ideal exposure but did give me a rather wider latitude for error and made the bulk of my focus areas' exposure decent enough. I cannot wait for my Sekonic L308 handheld meter to arrive in January 2009. :saliva8zc:

Here're the pictures, taken with Kodak Tri-X 400 B/W film. This camera will predominantly be shooting B/W.













One thing to note, if you're not looking to do multiple exposures, you must remember to advance the film after each shot because if you don't, the shutter release STILL fires. So all you purely digital pundits who wanna go into something like this, better get used to the PROPER photography techniques or you'd end up like this....



Yep, even as a seasoned FM2 user, where I need to manually advance the film after each shot, this mistake was made at least twice on this roll of film. Considering there were only 12 exposures, that's a 17% error possibility per roll. Sheeesh. I do kindda like the effect of this particular screw up though. :lol:

No post processing was done other than to resize it to 800 pixels wide and add a watermark.

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