AJG

You mentioned that you thought that the contrast was low on your Contax 50 mm f/1.5 photos. Were they made with outdated film or old developer? My experience with my copy of that lens has been that the images have been sharp and have had good contrast, especially for a lens of that vintage. That's why I question the film and/or developer since they could account for this issue.

Daffodils in the snow--March in upstate NY:

It is minor stuff, just ineptly done. If the royal family wasn't on the one hand so public but on the other hand so secretive about things, nobody would care. But there have been lots of internet conspiracy theories about why she hasn't been seen in public for a couple of months and details like this are catnip for conspiracy buffs. I would be embarrassed to put something like this out in public, but people do pay me to do this work and have reasonable expectations for better quality.

Thanks for the kind words... It is difficult to shoot her work, but it is good enough to be worth the effort.

Trust me, the fruit is all glass. The stem on the grapes is translucent as are the stems on the pear and the apple. The bodies of the fruit start out as clear borosilicate glass tubing before being cased with colored glass (both rods and powdered glass frit). This happens over a 3000° propane-oxygen flame. Since the artist's goal is the utmost in realism within the possibilities of the glass medium, the lighting that I do is intended to enhance that realism. My wife had used other photographers before we met and was frequently frustrated with their results since most of them started out wanting to backlight her work to avoid glare.

I read recently about this question with regard to old movies, both theatrical prints and original negatives and some archivists are beginning to have second thoughts about digital copying and destroying originals due to the necessity of transferring digital copies repeatedly to new materials and formats to avoid obsolescence that could lead to these materials no longer being possible to see and use. In my lifetime I've seen a lot of digital storage formats come and go--anybody else remember 5 1/2 " floppies? Good luck playing any of those back now, although I'm sure somebody somewhere probably still has a functioning drive with the appropriately old computer/operating system that can play back the floppy if it hasn't deteriorated beyond use. Projecting nitrate 35 mm movies (which I have done) does require specialized equipment for safety--fully enclosed projectors of the kind that every commercial theater in the US routinely had from the 1920's through the 1950's, but storage isn't as difficult as that and probably isn't that much of a risk. William Michael's advice is probably the best way to go, especially the editing part. Only save and/or copy the good stuff and get rid of the rest.

My wife, an award winning glass artist would disagree--one light from above the camera position with a 20 ° honeycomb.

One week later, we have crocuses out: Pentax K 5 w/50-200 Pentax zoom

Snowdrops today--Pentax K 5 w/50-200 Pentax zoom:

When I shot a fair amount of 35 mm Fuji 800 color negative back in the day I never had an issue with light fogging when loading into various Pentax SLRs. I would suspect that this film isn't wound tightly enough around the take up spool or some other issue if you haven't had this problem with slower film in the same camera when working outdoors in bright daylight.

Fill flash could be a good way to shoot this, but the OP did mention that his subject was translucent, which could be a problem if the level of flash lighting isn't carefully controlled. And fill flash could have caused some problems with the images that Jose Angel shared--glare on the window behind the brushes could have been distracting and a big problem to deal with in a conventional darkroom print.

I would use a spot meter on the translucent objects and pick what Zone you want them to wind up as in your prints. The spot meter could also give you an idea as to how bright the background will be. Remember that the spot meter will give you a reading to give you middle grey in the print, so if you want the translucent object to be lighter you will have to give it more exposure.

Glad that helped--I never knew about the Kodak filter you've shown, but I did use the Kodak gel for a long time and still have it.

Kodak used to sell a Wratten # 90 gel (B&W viewing filter) that was made for the same purpose--a filter that would help a photographer to visualize how a photograph would look in black and white. I used to use one of these quite a bit when I shot a lot of 4x5 B&W. I bought the gel and mounted a piece of it in a 35 mm Gepe glass slide mount, which I also masked off to fit the 4x5 aspect ratio. I also drilled a hole in a corner of it to allow a neckstrap so I didn't have too go digging for it when I was out with my 4x5. With practice it also helped me to select which lens to use by holding it closer or further from my eye. The downside to this filter was that if you held it up to your eye for very long your eye adjusts to the filter and it no longer helps to visualize how the scene will look in B&W.

Several of my Manfrotto tripods had the option of a carrying strap that screwed in to a hole in the tripod yoke and had another strap at the other end that wraps around the ends of the tripod legs so they don't go every which way when you pick the tripod up. I always found this to be very useful and wondered why other brands didn't do the same thing.

Equipment questions like this always come back to personal taste. Once you get past a certain level of reasonable technical quality and reliability, the differences between competing brands really come down to whether or not a particular camera and lens(es) make sense to the photographer. For most of my life for practical reasons my cameras have all been reflex (35 mm or Rolleiflex) or 4x5 view cameras. I did own a Mamiya Universal with three lenses and multiple backs including Polaroid that I used for certain assignments but never really loved, despite the quality of the images I made with it. Over the last ten years I have gotten into Contax RF cameras and lenses from the 1930's and 1950's for my own personal work. I have enjoyed the change from my commercial work which has been done with DSLRs both for the use of B&W film and the change to old time metal construction from the plasticky feel of most modern digital cameras, no matter how much better they really are in terms of sharpness and color accuracy. I still own two Rolleiflexes--a 3.5 E and a 2.8 D. The 3.5 E fits my hands perfectly and it is the most intuitive camera that I have ever owned. Image quality from its Zeiss Planar lens has always been superb, and I would use it more now if 120 film hadn't gone up so much in price. So if the Rollei works for you, don't feel the least bit guilty about moving the Mamiya 6 on to someone else who will really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I think the answer is to find a different lab. I don't know if you have access to any "dip and dunk" labs, but when film was still the professional medium of choice that was the way to go.

The AC would work but would consume a lot more energy than a tray of ice cubes for cooling chemistry.

I haven't tried your cooler idea, but I would be skeptical of the precision of the temperature control on a device like this. As we know from looking at a developer time-temperature chart 2 or 3 degrees can make a big difference in the developer timing for good results. In my first studio, where it got really hot in the summer and digital didn't exist yet, the tray with ice cubes gave me good and consistent results. There were lots of expensive ways to control temperature but I couldn't justify the expense for the amount of processing that I was doing for myself and I didn't want to become a lab for other people to have the automation make financial sense. I kept a couple of trays of ice in the small refrigerator/freezer that I had for film storage, and that worked well for me.

The real question is: how badly do you need it? I would love to have higher sync speeds once in a while, but not for that price once you include duplicating my extensive lens collection in Pentax K mount.

Congratulations! I hope it holds up for you.

Don't expect 1/1250 to be that precise, but I have used it on my Contaxes. I have only shot B&W negatives with these cameras, so any over exposure wouldn't matter that much. Any camera that old and with a mechanical shutter probably will run slower than marked speeds. The post war IIa and IIIa models will sometimes "cap" at high speeds like 1/1250 and 1/500, but the Kiev and pre war Contaxes usually don't have that problem.

Setting the shutter speed on a Contax II/III is the same as the Kiev--not an ergonomic triumph. As for the shutter release feel, none of my Contax bodies feel notchy in that respect. They are quite smooth and predictable. I also have a Kiev from 1972 that feels OK as far as the shutter release goes, so yours must be a problem from the later production period. Internet wisdom indicates that the older the Kiev is the better constructed it is likely to be, although like all cameras, problems are likely to arise with greater age. The body focusing wheel is an acquired taste, since it is really easy to cover the rangefinder window with a finger when reaching for the wheel. With practice it can be done but I find myself releasing the lock with 50 mm lenses and grabbing the lens to focus instead. With wide angle and telephoto lenses the lock on the focusing wheel is overridden when those lenses are mounted on Contax II and later models. On my recently acquired Contax I ( an early one without the lock over ride) it is necessary to release the lock to focus any lens. Zeiss always recommended strongly not to use the focusing wheel for lenses longer than 50 mm since the mechanism isn't really strong enough to move that much mass.

My Contax cameras have all come from eBay but all but one of my 5 bodies (2 pre-war and 3 post war) have been overhauled by Henry Scherer and they too work like new, along with most of my Zeiss lenses for these cameras. I didn't mean to imply that Contax cameras are unreliable since my experience indicates otherwise. But having bought one of those black "Contax" cameras at a much lower price than they want now, I wouldn't do it again. It worked for a month or two and then the shutter died. Shipping it back to Ukraine even before the war wasn't worth it so it is now a shelf queen along with its "Sonnar" lens. The black "Zeiss" lens cap is handsome, though...

I would pass on these unless you could trust the seller to have done a complete overhaul along with the re-labeling. My guess is that such an overhaul isn't happening given the prices that are being asked. The shutter mechanism in these cameras is complicated and unusual, and the later Kiev cameras aren't exactly known for quality control.