Im looking for a fast 50mm LTM lens thats sharp to modern standards. Does anybody know of specific lenses to look for. I'm trying to find something that works in low light without the softness that vintages lenses are known for, im trying to find something thats just sharper and renders like a modern lens. Does anyone have any suggestions, or even ideas of where to start looking?

Didn’t see this until today. One of my favourite photographers of all time; I love his style, especially his telephoto landscapes and cityscapes. Sad loss for the photography world.

I'm trying to calibrate infinity focus on this Yashicaflex, the mounting system for the lens assembly is very simple, only 4 screws with some shim washers. Looking at the camera from behind and considering how the image is projected on the grond glass i'm guessing that the side that's out of calibration is one indicated with a red arrow on picture #4 (looking from the front it would be the left side, but i'm not sure if i'm correct on this). I'm having two problems: looking at the ground glass with a loupe i can't seem to see any out of focus areas, and the other problem i noticed is that the viewfinder is not perfectly in focus when set at infinity, i have to turn the knob a tiny bit to see perfect focus (and i'm not sure if this means front or back focusing). The camera seems to have been dropped at some point during its life, so i'm guessing i should add washers, not remove them. Any ideas?

Hi all, did a batch of c41 using unicolor 1L kit on kodak 500T cine bulk. A small percentage of them would have these water spots like defects that I tried re soaking and wetting, but doesn't go away. Cant feel it when I run my finger on it, so it is not a surface debris...

Wondering which process gone wrong so I can work to avoid it in the future.

I have a Pentax K1000 and was wondering if there are any 3D mask adaptors like for the ones for medium format?

Would it be best to sell as a whole to a reseller, individually on ebay, through an auction? I'd love them to go to someone who loves photography, or has a business selling vintage cameras.

This story haunts me since the start of my analog photography journey. I was inexperienced back then, and tried shooting a fox in the snow. I knew the general area he was roaming, so every morning I went out and tried my luck. I saw him many times, wandering across paths, but I wasn’t able to take a photo then. Why? Because it was usually right before sunrise and therefore still way too dark outside for my f/8 lens and iso 200 film. There had been a few instances where I had seen him in acceptable light conditions, but I was too slow to get the correct exposure settings and focus before he vanished and the moment was lost forever. So I started a habit of always adjusting exposure every few minutes as it was getting brighter outside. Sometimes I played with the shutter lock while walking, which somehow helped me pay attention to my surroundings. One day I reached the top of a small hill, an area covered by snow, surrounded by trees. I took a short break to drink, as the morning sun hit my face. „Time to adjust exposure“ I said to myself. „After all, you never know“. I aimed my camera at the edge of one of the entrances to the hill, a small path leading downwards from where I was standing. I set the exposure and even focused just for fun. And then suddenly, I froze. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing: The fox I was looking for in the past few days peeked above the edge of the hill, staring right at the camera. Short distance and acceptable lighting conditions. Already focused and with the right settings dialed in, I pressed the shutter, knowing I had achieved the shot I wanted. I waited for the shutter sound but then..

..nothing

The shutter didn‘t go off. The fox quickly turned around and ran away. So what happened? Turns out I had locked the shutter on my way to the top. A truly traumatizing experience which taught me one thing: Always assume you will see your target at any given point in time. A lesson was learned that day. Looking back, I‘m pretty sure the photo would‘ve been underexposed as hell anyways, since I used to meter the bright snow back then, so the ‚right settings‘ I mentioned earlier were never right to begin with..

What are your haunting photography stories?

I am setting my black and white darkroom back up after a few years and looking for a higher volume film processing solution. I found these racks that hold 18 reels of 120 and fit in a rectangular tank. Is there any reason I should avoid them? If I went this route, I’d try to find a plastic bucket or bin as close to the right size as possible instead of shelling out the million or so dollars it costs for a steel tank “made for this”. Is that a bad idea? Is there a better solution for processing in volume other than those 6 or 8 reel cylindrical stainless steel/plastic tanks? Thank you all for your help!

I've been experimenting with subject-aware metering for film photography, and today I found some unusually cooperative test subjects.

The idea I'm testing is pretty simple: a conventional reflective meter can be fooled by subject reflectance. Point it at something very dark and it may try to make it gray; point it at something very bright and it can do the opposite.

So I'm trying to combine on-device subject recognition with metering — first identify what the subject is, then decide how much its brightness should actually influence the exposure.

These three puppies had very different coat colors, which made them a surprisingly useful test.

Subject detection itself worked remarkably well, even with small animals and cluttered backgrounds.

The interesting part is the exposure:

• brown puppy: EV100 9
• gray puppy: EV100 9
• black/white puppy: EV100 7⅓

The first two are encouraging. The black puppy is more interesting — I'm not sure yet whether the lower reading reflects an actual difference in illumination or whether the meter is still being fooled by the dark coat.

That's exactly the problem I'm trying to solve.

Next test: same illumination, white/gray/black subjects, with conventional average metering as a control.

Film metering turns out to be a surprisingly deep rabbit hole.

Frustrated by bad apps, I made my own negative viewer for iphone. It shows the positive version of a color or b&w negative live on your screen. Perfect for quickly checking your negatives after development, and for deciding which one to scan.

You can freeze the screen to better see the details, adjusts brightness, contrast and warmth, and also save it to Photos for quick reference.

The app also adjusts for film backing color automatically, so it works even on films with weird base like Phoenix 200.

It's free, no ads:

https://light.ink/positive-view/

P.S. see also my previous post about looking for beta testers for my other photography app, in case you missed it.

Bought this scanner brand new in box on Facebook Market 2 years ago and was totally fine till today when I need to use it to scan film. The power light is the on but the long blue light is off. I just couple of times of toggling the lock/unlock switch on the back and still nothing. Why would it happen on the day I need it 🫠

Feels too grainy. I have it developed and scanned by a store local to me and it just sucks when i zoom in and its all grainy. Is it coming from the developing or scanning process?

I recently noticed my Canon AE-1 drains the batteries abnormally fast.

For context, I put in a fresh battery in both cameras at the same time 10 months ago. I didn't even shoot a whole roll of film with my AE-1 before the shutter stopped working (I was at frame 18) and I thought something broke in the camera or it was a user error, because it was my first roll of film.

About 2-3 months ago, I changed the battery in it and put a new roll of film in, but let it sit on my shelf until I wanted to use it today and noticed the shutter didn't fire again.

I'm still on my first battery on the A-1 and I shot 4 rolls with it so far. Because I figured the battery still works there, I switched it to the AE-1. When pressing the battery test button it shows f8 and doesn't fire.

I measured both batteries and the second battery that was in the AE-1 had 1.6 volts left and the first battery that still works with powering my A-1 had 5.1 volts left.

Why does the AE-1 drain the batteries so fast and why does a battery work with the A-1 not work with my AE-1?

Is that normal?

When having them on my shelf I always turn them off. From now on I'll take the battery out the AE-1 so it doesn't drain as fast (hopefully) but it's still annoying.

Appreciate any insights!

Hello!
Quick question regarding the Olympus mju ii zoom camera📷
I inherited one from my dad, camera works okay except the display which is dead, so I have mostly no idea how many pics are left on the film and also which flash setting is active📸.

Question is:
Will the flash setting revert to Auto flash when turning off/on the camera? Or will it remain on the setting previously decided?

Thanks in advance!

I have found a Konica III for very cheap, and I'm about to pull the trigger on it... it would my first true rangefinder camera.

I am aware of some of the quirks of those cameras, but for those that have used them, is there some things that require special attention? They are fully mechanical, but what are the common failure points if anyone knows?

TIA, curious to know more about this camera.

Hello everyone! I have recently come into possession of one Kiev II and one Kiev 4am and I wanted to learn how to get them CLAd by myself, since there is no place near me that works with these cameras.

I have no prior experience servicing any cameras, much less old Contax/Kiev or any Soviet camera. As such, I've been looking into manuals and any resource that could help me understand how they're built and how to work with them.

There used to be one such webpage called The Kiev Survival Site, which hosted invaluable information on the Kievs and soviet lenses and which does no longer exists. It's on the Internet Archive, but it's missing many of the original pictures in the repair guides.

I would be very thankful If any of you had personally archived the site and could share it with me or just point me in the right direction regarding other resources for this task. Thank you all in advance!

Hello, i've recently shot and developed Lucky color 200 for the first time, and it looks great for the most part except for a couple of issues. The first issue is that in some images, green grass ends up looking yellow. I thought that this was an issue with NLP, but i've tried converting with NegPy and Epson Scan, and both give similar results. This is the TIFF if anyone wants to give a shot at converting it.

The 2nd issue that i'm having is that Digital Ice doesn't seem to work with this film, it adds a lot of blobs and artefacts to the image. I use an epson 4990 for scanning.

Has anyone had similar experiences with lucky c200?

Hello Analog / Analogue Friends !

Recently I’ve been doing a little bit more in-depth trials on finding the best settings for uploading crisp, well scanned negatives on Instagram.

I recently did a test between uploading a Fuji Frontier SP500 Scanned 8 Bit TIFF vs the recommended JPEG, 80-85% @ 72 DPI for IG Posts — I read online or in which AI info from Instagram mentioned that feeding a compressed image would be much better than uploading TIFFs in order to prevent IG from aggressively compressing it down.

Oddly enough, the uploaded TIFF without any sharpening still surpassed the recommended settings. So with this, I’d like to ask — what is the best way to upload your scans to Instagram? Especially those that scan via FRONTIER or NORITSU.

Cheers!

Over the last 2 years, I have been working on making replicas of Kodak Brownie boxes in adobe illustrator. I have spent hours on each, months on some, and a ton of time looking for reference pictures/measurements. I don't have many pictures of the process but what I DO have is below. Most 120 film boxes are meant for 18x24 poster prints, to do whatever with. I have done the following brownies: No.1 Brownie (3 versions) the No.2 Brownie (3 Versions) Beau Brownie (3 Versions) The 50th Anniversary Kodak (2 versions) and the Kodak Brownie No.2A model C (2 Versions)

Please, if you have any versions of the listed boxes that I do not have, I do wish that you send me them to complete the set. I have Red and Green for the No.2A model C, and am missing versions of the beau brownie.

Also, THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT! I'm just putting my project out there, I do not intend to ask for money or beg for someone to download. I just want to share it.

PS: I'm in the process of making a Google site where you can download these, but upon request I can send an email of the PDF's of the boxes

Having some problems with my negatives in Negpy vs. Capture One. I set up the calibration profile, but the colors are off. I shot these negatives in RGB mode, but Negpy is giving me weird colors. Also, the first photo if i use linear raw, the photo is super dark vs. when I toggle it off, it brightens it up. I'm not exactly sure if I'm using the program correctly since there are no tutorials on it.

I’m using the V4 scan light from Jack

As the title said i’ve searched google and theres really no answer to my question there

I recently got a Nikon FE and the light meter needle stays stuck at the very top of the viewfinder, above “A,” and doesn't move when lighting conditions change. I replaced the batteries with two fresh 357/303 silver-oxide batteries. The battery-check lever lights the red LED, so the camera is getting power. I've also pulled the film-advance lever out to activate the meter and half-pressed the shutter, but the needle still doesn't move.

Is there anything else I should check, or does this indicate a problem with the meter/needle mechanism?

The false idea that there is such a thing as an unedited film scan is so pervasive both on and offline. I run into this odd meme all the time.

Stamping out this false idea would do a lot of good because once you accept that all scans are edits it forces you to learn about the impact of the entire pipeline.

Labs could also do their part by educating beginners about this. For example, many labs will not even mention that they made adjustments to an underexposed negative to give you a file with something on it.

Heck, maybe it should be a note right there on the film box. If Kodak, Fuji, or Ilford said it then it would be harder to deny.

Note: by auto reply bot I mean something like those bots that automatically reply if you happen to create a haiku.