Recent content by 4season

My local thrift store isn't a good place to find old cameras, but I did recently find an analog multimeter kit there. It was an easy but fun build. Such kits were once readily available in the USA, but today, your best bet might be AliExpress. When that Practical Wireless article was published...

Actually, it existed, at least if you were a head of state or other high-ranking individual: https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Red_Flag_20

I've got some suspicions about Fujifilm: They soldered batteries for TW-3 and GX680 film backs into place. I think their assumption was that all of their cameras, from entry-level to professional models, were consumable items.

And around the same time, they spent a ton of money on a brand new building, which apparently never worked well as a camera factory, and which wasn't popular with staff.

To the best of my knowledge, no. The last PRC-made, enthusiast-grade rangefinder cameras that I'm aware of were the Yasuhara T981/Great Wall JG50, both based on a Kyocera-made film transport, and designed by a man who passed away a few years ago.

It's not always appropriate to follow manufacturer's recommended service procedures too closely, because said procedures assumed that replacement parts were cheap, and the technician's labor was expensive. Hence, the emphasis on replacing complete PCBs instead of troubleshooting the old part at...

I imagine that you can thank drone-maker DJI for saving what was left of the old Hasselblad company: Thank goodness for Chinese fanboys!

AA's prints display best under a lot of light, which is what the AA Gallery in Yosemite NP does. Photos of people weren't his specialty, but there's a marvelous snapshot he took of Georgia O'Keefe and Orville Cox.

I'd try removing the more obvious fasteners, and see if the top cover lifts off with shutter speed dial in place.

PKR64 was good, but Fujifilm's Velvia was better.

Good OOC raw files are supposed to look flat and "blah" when viewed on a computer monitor. Your job as a photographer is to figure out how best to squash those files to fit the capabilities of the computer monitor or photo printer. Or, if you don't want to do that, just shoot JPEG.

I am a generalist, and I service cameras which seem interesting, often just a single example, and I am satisfied. More recently, I've sought out cameras which have a certain charm, or which have a more unusual design, such as a mirror box which also acts as the shutter (Exa 1A, Lomography...

I rarely visit that part of town, but I've wondered if the guy operating as The Camera Trader had any connection to the old National Camera or Infotech. He's a pretty good source for junk parts cameras.

I never found any rangefinder camera particularly quick to focus, but one of the clearest rangefinder patches that I have encountered is the one on the Minolta Hi Matic F, of all things. I mostly zone-focused my Leica M photos using the distance scale on the lens, and confirmed using the...

If the money isn't important, why not keep the M system for awhile longer, in case you change your mind? In some ways, Leica rangefinders are the perfect 35 mm cameras for collector/enthusiasts because they're attractive, pleasant to use, and there are plenty of M-system enthusiasts in...