- Joined
- Jan 22, 2006
- Messages
- 252
- Format
- Multi Format
Wellcome me into the world of medium format 
My camera has arrived today.
It's a Seagull 109. I expected it to be a lousy shoebox of a camera, though it feels quite sophisticated in the hands. But maybe that's just the first impression.
I've learned everything there is to learn about handling it in 10 minutes. It's pretty simple and intuitive.
Some people have complained about winding mechanism on the seagull. It doesn't feel that heavy, and it doesn't make noise. Maybe it does on older models, I don't know I've never seen any seagull exept this one before and this one is the best and latest model.
With some practice, loading film isn't much of a problem, but it's also not as easy and fast as loading 35mm, but then this is not a load and shoot in a second camera anyway, nor did I expect it to use it in that way (I still got my minolta SLR for that)
I never knew loading a roll of 120 film can be such a satisfaction.
Loading a 135 roll is really an anti-climax, you unpack it, and then you just put it in there, and its over too fast.
when loading a 120 roll, it feels like you are working, lol, like you did something..
Focusing is much harder than with a SLR, so I think I'll stick with smaller apertures.
The lens is supose to perform best at f11 and f16 anyway, we'll see
So far I've taken only one picture, and it feels like I've shot an entire roll, due to so much time I've spent carefully framing, focusing, metering with my SLR, setting up lights etc.
It seems such a simplistic MF cameras as this one makes one more carefull and patient, plus only 12 frames per roll makes you think carefully about each shot, which raises the number of successfull shots to almost 100%
There is great value in all that for me, and I'm supose to be an impatient youngster.
On one place the black sticky wrap thing (the thing that the whole camera is covered with) is a bit loose on one corner around one knob, but nothing serious, just needs some more glue.
Other than that, there are no signs of bad built quality,the camera seems to be well crafted and the lenses were clean out of the box.
We'll see how mechanically well built it is, but for now everything is working and runs smooth.
The shutter is quiet, very quiet, all the way from 1s to 1/500s.
In fact what you hear is the button being pressed, the button makes a soft metalic noise (even when the shutter is not cocked), and that's all you hear, there is no separate sound that I can hear comming from the shutter itself.
My first roll loaded (after the already-ruined old EPR practice roll) was a roll of Kodak EPP. My first picture was a portrait of my grandmother with some tungsten hotlights (with Rosco cinegels for color balance). I really can't wait to get it developed.
Next week I'm going to buy some Provia or E100G to try it out with some more high-tech films
Oh, and I'll be proudly switching to "multi-format" in the user settings of the forum
My camera has arrived today.
It's a Seagull 109. I expected it to be a lousy shoebox of a camera, though it feels quite sophisticated in the hands. But maybe that's just the first impression.
I've learned everything there is to learn about handling it in 10 minutes. It's pretty simple and intuitive.
Some people have complained about winding mechanism on the seagull. It doesn't feel that heavy, and it doesn't make noise. Maybe it does on older models, I don't know I've never seen any seagull exept this one before and this one is the best and latest model.
With some practice, loading film isn't much of a problem, but it's also not as easy and fast as loading 35mm, but then this is not a load and shoot in a second camera anyway, nor did I expect it to use it in that way (I still got my minolta SLR for that)
I never knew loading a roll of 120 film can be such a satisfaction.
Loading a 135 roll is really an anti-climax, you unpack it, and then you just put it in there, and its over too fast.
when loading a 120 roll, it feels like you are working, lol, like you did something..
Focusing is much harder than with a SLR, so I think I'll stick with smaller apertures.
The lens is supose to perform best at f11 and f16 anyway, we'll see
So far I've taken only one picture, and it feels like I've shot an entire roll, due to so much time I've spent carefully framing, focusing, metering with my SLR, setting up lights etc.
It seems such a simplistic MF cameras as this one makes one more carefull and patient, plus only 12 frames per roll makes you think carefully about each shot, which raises the number of successfull shots to almost 100%
There is great value in all that for me, and I'm supose to be an impatient youngster.
On one place the black sticky wrap thing (the thing that the whole camera is covered with) is a bit loose on one corner around one knob, but nothing serious, just needs some more glue.
Other than that, there are no signs of bad built quality,the camera seems to be well crafted and the lenses were clean out of the box.
We'll see how mechanically well built it is, but for now everything is working and runs smooth.
The shutter is quiet, very quiet, all the way from 1s to 1/500s.
In fact what you hear is the button being pressed, the button makes a soft metalic noise (even when the shutter is not cocked), and that's all you hear, there is no separate sound that I can hear comming from the shutter itself.
My first roll loaded (after the already-ruined old EPR practice roll) was a roll of Kodak EPP. My first picture was a portrait of my grandmother with some tungsten hotlights (with Rosco cinegels for color balance). I really can't wait to get it developed.
Next week I'm going to buy some Provia or E100G to try it out with some more high-tech films
Oh, and I'll be proudly switching to "multi-format" in the user settings of the forum
I love the square format, and have from the very beginning when I got my Hassy. Have a great time with your new camera, and can't wait to see some pics! 
