Any photographers here? (images inside)

[Boroda]

This is probably the most peacefull thread posted here by Boroda :-)

I want to boast a little :-) I bought a Soligor 28-200mm f3.5-5.3 lens for my Kiev-19 SLR camera! Still making test pictures. Kiev-19 has a Nikon bayonet lens mount, so I always wanted to test it with foreign zoom lens. Kiev-19 is a "classic" mechanical SLR camera, heavy and reliable as a bolt-action rifle. The one I have was made in 1988, a good old "Made in USSR" thing, not a modern plastic toy :-) A great buy fot $40. And I know that nothing is better in a street fight! ;-))



My other lenses are Helios-81H MC (50mm/f2) and Kaleinar-5H MC (100mm/f2.8). Optics is traditionaly good, some people even prefer it to Nikon lenses...

My amateur photography hobby started when I was 12. I still can give you the correct exposition and aperture with no more then one step error in daylight.

My first camera was my Grandfather's Zorki-4, rangefinder, Soviet development of Leika. Made in 1964 it's still in perfect working condition.

At school me and one of myfriends were "photo-maniacs". We shot 2-3 films every day, developed and printed them at homeafter school and brought pictures to school next day.

Last time I worked with "traditional" b/w film was maybe in 1996. Making everything youself gives you a very special feeling. Very sad it's impossible to get old-fashioned "silver" b/w film, paper and chemicals now...

Another rangefinder camera I used was my Father's Kiev-4A, a copy of a German 1940s Contax. Kievs are extremely reliable and hard to break. Father broke 4 ribs against it when hiking at Kamchatka in 1967, and the camera is still OK. He has a full set of lenses, 35mm, 50mm and 135mm for it. Great optics.

The first SLR I used was Father's Zenit-19, a Soviet electronic SLR. I had it with me when I went to the US. I couldn't find East German ORWO or even Czech FOMA positive (slide) color film, so I had to buy Soviet TsO-32 instead. Yes, "32" means 32 GOST/ISO units! In the US I once saw a sign on a photo lab: "We develop any kind of film in one hour". I thought about disappointing them, but then decided that my slides are too precious to spoil :-)

My first own SLR was a Zenit-122, a plastic version of Zenit-TTL/Zenit-12SD. I sold it when I bought Kiev. Compared to Kiev it was extremely fragile, but optics was still great.

Here is a picture I made last summer with Zenit:



Pictures taken by my friend with the same camera on a 300th anniversary of Russian Navy in SPb:





I still wait for an occasion to shoot something nice. Hope to make some pictures on May holidays in the forest.

Here is a picture of my ugly self with a new toy

[boxboy28]

Very Nice boroda

[Curval]

REALLY like pic 1 & 3.

Pic 2 would have been great except for that inconsiderate pedestrian who got their big noggin in the way.

[Martlet]

Here's mine.

Maybe I'll scan some pics later.

[gofaster]

Nice shots!  For the bridge photo, it looks like you used a tripod with remote shutter release.

I started with Chinon 35mm SLR, full manual, with a Pentax K-mount, a Chinon 50mm lens, and a K-mart Optics 200mm zoom (I was a poor college student, hence the discount store brand lens), Vivitar flash, and Sears tripod.

When the K-mart lens got real bad vignetting from years of outdoor use (and mediocre build quality) and the Chinon locked up on me once at an air show, I decided to upgrade to an autofocus camera for sports and air show photography: Pentax ZX-5n, a Pentax 25-70mm zoom, a Tamron 100-300mm zoom, and a Pentax 50mm (all AF).  I still have the Chinon and use it as a 2nd camera, and I'm still using the same camera bag I used in college 20 years ago.

The Chinon, a name I'd never heard of, has a more accurate light meter than the Pentax.  I later learned that Chinon is a Japanese company trying to enter the US market, hence the low discount price (at the time) for such a great camera.  Now Chinon has gotten out of film photography to focus on the digital photo revolution.

I shot some color photos recently at an air show and will post them up as soon as I load them from the picture cd.

edit: I looked at the Canon and Nikon lines, favored the Canon but didn't like the menu system, liked the Nikon quality but not the price, went with the straight-forward dial system of the Pentax instead.  Too bad Pentax no longer makes the K-1000.

[rc51]

Where is the neeekid chicks?

[lord dolf vader]

K-1000S RULE

you can get one for little or nothing in pawn shops probly for the next 50 years.


they are dang near bulletpruf

[Dnil]

have a buttload of cameras.  Nikon d100, nikon n70, 2 canon a1s an old pentax spotmatic (all manual) no battery.  Plust a couple point and shoot digitals.

[beet1e]

I like Olympus cameras - currently have the C920 Zoom (1.3 megapixel). I don't use film any more - only digital. I was quite good at taking pictures that could be made to look interesting - the subject doesn't have to be bang in the centre of the shot - a classic newbie error. In my film camera days, I took a lot of pics using a Ricoh that I had for my 16th birthday. Later upgraded to a Canon. I wish I had £1 for every time someone looked at my pics and asked what sort of camera I had used. Many people believe that the secret of a good photograph is an expensive camera. My only secret, with a film camera, is always to use 35mm, and not some other crappy format like my wife's cheapo Vivitar. But just as folks in AH say "it's the pilot, not the plane", in photography it's the photographer, not the camera.

[BUG_EAF322]

I have a simple 1.0 MP HP digital
I would like to have some good digital above 3.0 some day

But that old russian camera definitly got some nostalgic charm.

Maybe it get worth some money some day.

[Animal]

Damn commies.

First they copy the B-29, then they copied my old Canon camera

[beet1e]

Here are a few of mine. This first one was taken with the new Olympus 1.3 megapixel with zoom lens. It was taken in San Francisco, and shows one of those Japanese trees that grow at odd angles!  The white house at the left is on the corner of Divisadero and Vallejo, and was used for the location shots of the home of Walt Chalmers in the 1968 movie, Bullitt. (Chalmers was played by Robert Vaughn, with Steve McQueen playing the eponymous role of Frank Bullitt.) Golden Gate bridge can be seen to the left of the white house in the distance.



Using the same camera, I was very pleased with this shot, taken in Yosemite National Park, California. I didn't see all of the park, but this was the most spectacular view I did find. Taft Point.



Finally, here's one I treasure. A view from New York's WTC looking North towards the Empire State Building (centre). Roosevelt Island, the East River and Queensboro bridge are visible at the right, and the Hudson river at the left with New Jersey the other side.  This was taken with an earlier Olympus camera.

[Octavius]

I also own an Olympus digital camera.  What sort of storage card do you use?

Have you ever encountered any sort of smartmedia card corruption?  Ie, you can view the pictures on the camera but they will cannot be seen through some sort of USB card reader?  

I have 400+ beautiful pictures from a trip to Germany/Austria/Switzerland and have this very problem.  I'd sure love to post a few!

[beet1e]

Octavius - In my current camera, I'm using the smart media card that came with the camera. I don't know its capacity in terms of megs, but I estimate 12-16MB. I can take 122 pics the size of the ones above, or 36 at high quality - these fill my 19 inch monitor screen. I've never had any problems with smart media corruption.

The earlier camera started out with a 2MB SMC, but I upgraded to an 8MB SMC so that I could store 80 pics instead of 20. The file size of the .JPG picture files produced by the newer camera is smaller.

I tried one of those cards you're talking about - where you insert your SMC into an adaptor, and insert the whole thing into the floppy drive. Mine would not work either!  So I returned it to the shop and now I just download via the cable and serial port. Kind of slow, but works well. I use the  Camedia software which was supplied with the camera.

[Octavius]

Eek, yeah the Serial connection is very slow through the Camdia program.  I used that until I bought the reader last year.  

I have the original 8MB card that came with the camera and a 64MB card I just bought for my trip.  The 64 holds some 900 lower quality pics (SQ I believe) and 400 some HQ quality.  I filled the whole thing and I desperately need to have them recovered  

I found a few links with a few suggestions on how to go about doing it.  Some give steps on how to recover them using a tedius Hex editor (blah), some offer services at a price by physically mailing the card to a company.  

Overall, it seems this card corruption is actually common.  Hopefully it isn't too serious... I may consider suicide if these pictures are lost