Broken Viewfinder & Rangefinder; Anything I Can Do?

I'm extremely new to photography. By that I mean I've shot one roll of film in a disposable camera when I was 12 and a few packs of Polaroid 600 film, and that's it. A few years back I bought a Bolsey Model B2 for about $15 from a local antiques shop but I ended up putting it aside. I found it a few days ago and after a bit of research it seems that the rangefinder is totally wrecked and that pieces of the rangefinder have managed to fall into the viewfinder. From what I understand (which is very little, please correct me if I'm wrong) the rangefinder is used to help focus the camera. If the rangefinder is wrecked, can I still semi-accurately focus it? Is there anything I can do with the camera in this state besides take very blurry photos? The shutter also seems a bit sluggish, but only on the slowest setting. The others all seem fine to my eyes and ears. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, please let me know where it belongs if it's not in the right spot.

Welcome to Photrio.
I believe that camera has a focusing scale marked in feet or meters. You could scale focus - meaning you estimate the distance from camera to subject, set that distance on the scale, and then take the photo.
It takes a little bit of practice to get good at it, but it is doable. I've used cameras that way for years. The Retinette b you see in the avatar picture beside this post works that way.
Have fun with your camera!

You're pretty much asking for trouble w/ that camera, it's not what you would want starting out. Buy yourself something small and light like a Nikon EM or one of the little Pentax cameras. You can get one w/ a 50 lens for $30-$50.

They have good meters, the AE will take care of the shots, and you can concentrate on learning things like depth of field, selective focus, composition, and most important of all, cat portraits.

Caleb Hauge said:

I'm extremely new to photography. By that I mean I've shot one roll of film in a disposable camera when I was 12 and a few packs of Polaroid Impulse film, and that's it. A few years back I bought a Bolsey Model B2 for about $15 from a local antiques shop but I ended up putting it aside. I found it a few days ago and after a bit of research it seems that the rangefinder is totally wrecked and that pieces of the rangefinder have managed to fall into the viewfinder. From what I understand (which is very little, please correct me if I'm wrong) the rangefinder is used to help focus the camera. If the rangefinder is wrecked, can I still semi-accurately focus it? Is there anything I can do with the camera in this state besides take very blurry photos? The shutter also seems a bit sluggish, but only on the slowest setting. The others all seem fine to my eyes and ears. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, please let me know where it belongs if it's not in the right spot.

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We are here to help work through this and find a working solution for you.

momus said:

You're pretty much asking for trouble w/ that camera, it's not what you would want starting out. Buy yourself something small and light like a Nikon EM or one of the little Pentax cameras. You can get one w/ a 50 lens for $30-$50.

They have good meters, the AE will take care of the shots, and you can concentrate on learning things like depth of field, selective focus, composition, and most important of all, cat portraits.

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What makes a Bolsey B2 bad for a beginner? I mostly like to use slightly more complicated ways of doing things when I'm learning new stuff just so I can have a better understanding of everything.
Besides, I've already got that Polaroid Impulse for cat pics, though the newer instant film seems to fade very quickly (about 6-8 months in my experience) so maybe I should stick with "normal" film for that.

MattKing said:

Welcome to Photrio.
I believe that camera has a focusing scale marked in feet or meters. You could scale focus - meaning you estimate the distance from camera to subject, set that distance on the scale, and then take the photo.
It takes a little bit of practice to get good at it, but it is doable. I've used cameras that way for years. The Retinette b you see in the avatar picture beside this post works that way.
Have fun with your camera!

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Thank you! I don't know how but I've never seen those marks on here before you mentioned them. I'll have to give that a try once I get some film on Friday.

Zone focus as described by Matt, set aperture to f11, shutter speed to 200, load some 400iso film ( b&w film is less fussy) go outside on a sunny day and enjoy.

To use Matt's advice: if the aperture is f/11, set the high distance [infinity, 30 feet, 20 feet, ...] across from f11 on the range scale and make sure that the low side of the range covers the close end that you want in focus. Adjust as necessary.

We have a slight difference in terminology here - "scale focus" meaning if you estimate 10 feet, set it to 5 (oops) 10 feet.
"Zone focus" tends to be something more like: "really close", "close (4 - 8 feet)", "medium (8 - 20 feet)", distant ("20 feet to Infinity". Some cameras have distance scales set up that way.

Sirius Glass said:

To use Matt's advice: if the aperture is f/11, set the high distance [infinity, 30 feet, 20 feet, ...] across from f11 on the range scale and make sure that the low side of the range covers the close end that you want in focus. Adjust as necessary.

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MattKing said:

We have a slight difference in terminology here - "scale focus" meaning if you estimate 10 feet, set it to 5 (oops) 10 feet.
"Zone focus" tends to be something more like: "really close", "close (4 - 8 feet)", "medium (8 - 20 feet)", distant ("20 feet to Infinity". Some cameras have distance scales set up that way.

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Clarification:
High distance = The far end of the focus range
Low distance [side] = The close end of the focus range

We are saying the same thing, just different words.

Sirius Glass said:

We are saying the same thing, just different words.

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We might have been, until I fixed the typo

awty said:

Zone focus as described by Matt, set aperture to f11, shutter speed to 200, load some 400iso film ( b&w film is less fussy) go outside on a sunny day and enjoy.

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Thanks for all this information! I just cracked open an old Polaroid Fun Shooter (400 ISO) disposable camera and yoinked the film from that, but it expired in 2009. I've heard that you're supposed to go up by 1 stop for every decade past expiration and I understand that up 1 stop would be double the amount of light, but I'm not exactly sure what settings I'd change to do that. Could you explain that a bit? I read a bit about the Sunny 16 rule and gave that a couple shots but with the speed set to 1/200th instead of 1/400th, partly because 1/200th is the fastest my camera goes and partly because I heard somewhere that half the speed would go up 1 stop and the Sunny 16 rule said to set the speed to your film ISO number. Did I do that right? It's got 39 exposures and I only used 3, so I'm not wasting a ton if I did that wrong.

Assuming that you set your aperture to f16 (and that your camera's shutter is accurate), it sounds like you're nailing exposure. If you want more information about exposure, then the google results for "exposure triangle" would be a great to take a look at. If you want a more accurate way of measuring exposure than the sunny 16 method, there are lots of free light meter apps for your phone. I use one and it's served me well. To increase the exposure by one stop, you would want to tell your light meter that your film is iso 200 instead of iso 400. The light meter will compensate for film that is half as sensitive by doubling the amount of light.

Btw it's great to start out with an old manual camera like the Bolsey; you are asking for trouble, but if you can make that camera work then you'll master any camera in no time.

donotpaint said:

Assuming that you set your aperture to f16 (and that your camera's shutter is accurate), it sounds like you're nailing exposure. If you want more information about exposure, then the google results for "exposure triangle" would be a great to take a look at. If you want a more accurate way of measuring exposure than the sunny 16 method, there are lots of free light meter apps for your phone. I use one and it's served me well. To increase the exposure by one stop, you would want to tell your light meter that your film is iso 200 instead of iso 400. The light meter will compensate for film that is half as sensitive by doubling the amount of light.

Btw it's great to start out with an old manual camera like the Bolsey; you are asking for trouble, but if you can make that camera work then you'll master any camera in no time.

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Thanks, I hadn't thought about using a light meter app. I'll give that a try.

This table from Wikipedia seems to say that I'd want to increase aperture in darker conditions. Is that right, or would I want to have a longer shutter speed instead? I only got the film out of that disposable camera at about 8 PM and while sunset is at roughly 9:08 PM for me, it had been stormy earlier in the day so it was a bit darker than it normally is at sunset. I took a few pictures of some lilacs at f5.6 because it was very overcast outside and it's normally still bright out at 8 PM. The pics were taken about 2.5 feet away with the focus set at 2.5 feet according to the focusing scale thing and the speed was set to 1/200th. Would that be about right for those conditions, or would that be wrong?

Also, how can I tell whether my shutter is accurate? I know the 1/10th speed isn't accurate, as it tends to last about 5 to 10 seconds with a lot of variation. Sometimes it's under a second, sometimes it's well over 10 seconds. Whacking the camera seems to unstick it, but I don't know if that actually does anything or if it naturally unstuck itself at that time because I've never had it stay stuck. 1/25th and faster are definitely less than a second and never seem "stuck", but I have no idea whether they're the speed they're supposed to be or not. All I know is each faster speed is quicker than the last, with 1/200th being so fast that I can only see it if I have the aperture all the way open (IIRC f3.2).

In darker conditions, you could either increase the aperture or increase the shutter speed. Both would work well. The difference between the two is the creative effects. If your shutter speed is too long, then your image might appear blurry from the shakiness of your hands. This could be mitigated by using a tripod. For the 44mm lens on your Bolsey, any shutter speed equal to or faster than 1/50th will prevent camera shake. Your aperture impacts your depth of field. Wider apertures result in less depth of field, meaning your zone focusing would have to be more accurate too. Smaller apertures result in more depth of field, meaning you have more wiggle room with your zone focusing. Very wide and very tiny apertures also decrease the sharpness of your image, but that shouldn't be a big issue on the Bolsey B2. Photography is a game of trade-offs; a tiny aperture might be ideal, but your image might be really shaky because you had to compensate for that small aperture with a long shutter speed. A short shutter speed might be ideal, but your image might be our of focus because you had to compensate with a wide aperture and small depth of field. Instead of considering only aperture or shutter speed, you should try to balance the trade-offs.

It seems to me like f5.6 and 1/200th at iso 200 is probably good enough for overcast. It's impossible to know without a light meter, but color negative film has a wide exposure latitude so slight under/over exposure shouldn't be an issue. I don't know if expired film holds its exposure latitude, but hey, that'll be interesting to figure out when you get your shots developed.

There are machines designed to test shutter speeds. I don't have one, so I try to measure shutter speed by ear. If you have a digital camera that you know is accurate, you can listen to different shutter speeds and compare them to your Bolsey. You could also do this by eye, but I find that my hearing is better than my vision.

If you're mechanically inclined, then maybe you could try repairing the Bolsey's slow speeds. I really like old manual cameras because they're simple to repair.

donotpaint said:

For the 44mm lens on your Bolsey, any shutter speed equal to or faster than 1/50th will prevent camera shake.

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I agree with what donotpaint says, except I would word this as "For the 44mm lens on your Bolsey, with reasonable care and attention you should be able to minimize the effect of camera shake by using any shutter speed equal to or faster than 1/50th."
It is important to hold the camera still and slowly squeeze the shutter release - jabbing at it will give you blurry pictures.

So from a bit of Googling, going up/down by one notch in aperture size would be up/down by one stop of light. A bit more Googling says that half/double the shutter speed would be up/down one stop of light. So if I've got this straight, if I change aperture but want the same amount of light I'd want to compensate by changing the shutter speed by however many stops I changed aperture, and same for changing shutter speed and compensating with aperture?

My other question (probably the last one or one of the last) is this: what speeds of film would make sense in a camera like this? The quickest it can go is 1/200th, so should I mostly stick to ≤200 ISO film if I don't want to overexpose? It sounds like color negative film does have some room for a bit of overexposure, so maybe 400 ISO is fine too?

Anyways, thanks for all the help! This has been really useful, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without the help of all of you.

EDIT: Just noticed how crazy film pricing is right now. With how small the price difference between Gold 200/UltraMax 400 and Ektar 100 is, I may as well start learning with Ektar 100. That way whatever pictures do turn out right end up looking nice too. I know Gold and UltraMax can look great too, but from comparisons I've seen I prefer the look of Ektar 100 for the type of pictures I plan on taking, which would be mostly landscapes.

Seems like you've got this down

Thanks for the clarification MattKing