Film What Film Cameras do you use?

Started off in my early teens, with a Zenith, then Praktika... moving to the Pentax range in my early 20's. Had a Pentax ME, lovely little camera, but in my early/mid 20's went onto the Pentax Super A. After a while sold that and got a Pentax LX (my pride and joy). I bought my wife (girlfriend then) a Pentax MG.


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Pentax LX with 1.2 / 50mm lens


Sold them in the early 90's... along with all our lenses, accessories and darkroom equipment.... (broke my heart).... but cash was needed for kids/mortgage/life etc....:( and downsized to the manual override olympus XA and for my wife, the automatic XA2, both with their detachable flash units... I wonder if it was this, that started my love for smaller, more compact cameras :confused:


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Mal.
 
Hmm, my first camera was a Kodak Brownie Starlett - the version without the build in flash bulb holder.

Second was a Balda 2 1/4 square camera with a folding bellows lens that had a Prontor SV 300 shutter. It was rather neat and took a great photo but the shutter broke and my father tried to repair it. In the process, he scratched the lens.

Third, I was joint owner (with my father) in a Konica Autoreflex T. It was the latest thing. After a couple of weeks, my father decided he didn't want to share it and bought me a Kodak Instamatic. I guess that was fair enough as I didn't contribute financially to the camera (I was about 10 or 11 years old at the time).

The first camera I bought was a Nikomat FT2 and had with it the 50mm f/2 kit lens, 28-45mm f/4.5 zoom and 85mm f/1.8. Neat lenses and all converted to Ai should I upgrade later. That lot got nicked.

The replacement came in the form of a Nikon F with 35mm f/2 and 85mm f/2 lenses. I had a clip on Nikon Model 2 light meter to go with that.

I supplimented that with a Nikon FM and had a lens on each body. There were a variety of lenses come and go but the 35mm f/2 and 85mm f/2 stayed though to the end when I sold off my main kit.

I had several point and shoot cameras. The nicest was a Chinon Bellami which was a very compact camera with a lens that retracted behind barn doors and a detachable flash that mounted on the side. I loved that little camera but the shutter eventually failed.

There was a Ricoh Zoom and a Konica Z-up 120, both pretty forgettable cameras.

The only film camera I still have is my Robot Star IIa with its Schneider Xenon 40mm f1.9 lens which I still use today with my Olympus E-P1. I bought the Robot Star second-hand and it is a 1953 vintage camera. Everything works like day 1 but it has a rather shabby looking body.

This is a flattering picture of my Robot Star...

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Robot_star by peterb666, on Flickr

I haven't shot a roll of film since 2003.
 
Love seeing all those old film cams. I shoot quite a bit of film and own over a dozen SLR's, but my favorites are my Pentax Spotmatic SP2 with is killer M42 super taks followed by my ME SUPERS. ( I have 3 of these that get regular use) After that It would be my AE-1. Thse are my most used. :) I will need to take some new pics of my babies :)
 
Love this thread. My first camera was a Leica IIIc (still have it). Still have a IIIf as well. A slew of Konica Autoreflex SLRs (basically one of each model and two of a couple models), a Nikon FM2n that I love, a Nikon FG, a Rolleiflex, Zeiss Super Ikonta (bellows need to be replaced), and too many compact 35mm RF cameras to mention. Most are in working condition, although admittedly I use them infrequently these days. Still run a roll of Velvia through every so often though. Hard to do without the immediate gratification of digital.
 
New acquisition I've been waiting for: Zeiss Super Ikonta III medium format folder. Trying my first rolls through it tonight.

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Left to right:

Leica M8 (digital)
Zeiss Super Ikonta III (film)
Panasonic GF1 (digital)
Leica CL (film)

Note that the Zeiss folder really is about the same size (and very close to the same weight) as the Leica M8 with a small lens.
 
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This is my first film camera. I absolutely love it.
 
OMG! I think I still have an old Zeiss Super Ikonta somewhere in my parents' home. I think it belonged to my grandfather or great-grandfather. We just knew it was an old camera. No one in the family wanted it so I just kept it along with the old gold cigarette case and a 1897 14K gold demi-hunter pocket watch.

Anyways, I still have my Nikon FA, F2A and F2AS plus a bunch of Nikon lenses sitting around.
 
Wow you guys are totally out of my league, I remember drooling over some of those cameras when I was a teen. Something magical about a black hunk of machined metal and glass...

Anyway, I saved up my newspaper-route money for a Minolta SRT-102 and 50mm Rokkor-X f/1.4 and B&W darkroom. Then I was smitten by the first truly pocketable 35mm, the Minox 35EL. Followed by various uninspired and unreliable point and shoots. Finally returned to my senses and got a Pentax ZX-5n (mainly so I could buy cheap manual lenses on ebay). Yet I was again taken by a compact, the Canon Elph Jr -- fixed-lens version of the first APS-film Elph which you could keep in your jeans and forget it was there.

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I just had the compacts out today for my rant in another thread, about how -- on the basis of camera size, sensor size, and aperature size -- digital still seems like a step backward.

Oh wait, it's "what film cameras *do* you use?"... None :tongue:
 
OMG! I think I still have an old Zeiss Super Ikonta somewhere in my parents' home. I think it belonged to my grandfather or great-grandfather. We just knew it was an old camera. No one in the family wanted it so I just kept it along with the old gold cigarette case and a 1897 14K gold demi-hunter pocket watch.

They are lovely cameras and worth keeping in working order. I know Essex Camera works on them.
 
Oldie but goodies

Well: started in the 60's with the nikon F and nikkormat cameras.
Thenk went to Minolta sr and srt 101 and pretty much cameras came
and went until the digital age.

I do have a really nice Yashika Electro 35 in WIDE format and I just got
married to a beautiful black gorgeoous dame by the name of V. Surprising
what a little love in the afternoon will do for ya. :)

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Bessa L with the 15mm f4.5...and in mint condition
Cheers all,
Pete
 
I really enjoy using my OM-4T, it is a pleasure to use. It doesn't see much use but I did just buy ten rolls of Ektar 100 recently so I suppose I should get out and run a few off...

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It sounds really good to me because I am having the Canon Camera whose specifications are same as your camera have...
So I hope you will get really good pictures and must be satisfied by its result...
 
Right now I'm visiting my parents in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. They live not far from a local flea market. I was walking there yesterday and noticed a well-worn camera which happened to be Kiev II (made in 1955). It was sold with two lenses: Jupiter-8 (50 mm f/2) and Jupiter-12 (35mm f/2.8). I bought the whole package for 500 RUR (about $18), mainly because I wanted Jupiter-12 for my Kiev-3a.

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After closer inspection I came to the conclusion that the camera indeed is very well worn, but its shutter is in excellent condition. It's very silent (much more so than my recently serviced Kiev-3a) and shutter speeds seem fine. Rangefinder is very bright and contrasty. Jupiter-12 is in mint condition, Jupiter-8 is well-worn but the glass is clear. I think I will restore this camera and replace my Kiev-3a with it (mainly because I hate that huge light meter on top of 3a).
 
Congrats on your find, Pavel! I am a sucker for the designs of older cameras like this - they're so beautiful.

I do hope all you film folks will post your photos here and be sure to include your camera choices and details, when you do.
 
Don't use them much anymore...

Let's see...


OM1n
OM2n
Konica T2
Canon AE1P (hate this camera)
Konica TC
Minolta XE5
Konica Auto S2
Konica Auto S1.6
Konica Auto S3
Konica EE
Konica C35
Minolta Hi-Matic 9
Olympus Trip
Olympus 35RC
Minolta A5 (2 of them...one working and one not)
Voigtlander Bessamatic with 50/2.8 Color Skopar

Maybe I can do a family picture. :D
 
Dad used to let me use the Pentax ME and Minolta SR-T 101 when I was perhaps 11 or 12, which I now own.

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Much, much later I got into photography via digital, but I came into film in about 2007. I fell in love with the Fuji Natura Black and the Contax T3.

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A bit later, I found my way to a photography market and found a really fun secondhand Olympus XA2. This is the camera I wish I had when I was at school and university. It would have been in my pocket every day, filled with Fuji ISO400 colour neg or Tri-X. I would have shot at least one roll per week and captured memories to last a lifetime. But alas, t'was not meant to be. Now I make up for it! :D

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Of course, I have a Zeiss Ikon and Leica M7. They play host to the swarm of M-mount lenses I find mysteriously increasing in my drawer.

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What do I use these days?

The M7 swaps back and forth with the M9 when I need a film Leica fix, and rides shotgun to the large sensor compact in the bag, usually a Sigma or Ricoh. At other times I carry the T3, especially when I am going out somewhere photogenic. The Olympus XA2 comes out for fun snapping, and to give me a kind of retroactive faux-nostalgia, as I think about the photos from my teens and early twenties that could have been.
 
I have a Nikon FM2n, a Rollei 35S, a Nikon F6, and a Rolleiflex 3.5F. I try to use them all, I am close to finishing a roll of Ektar 100 on the Rollei 35s. Can anyone
recommend
a good film processing lab for color film?

DaveO
 
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