Camera

[Guest]

here are a couple of pics or my dads camera

he has a much bigger lens in a case with a nice smooth cloth inside but i carnt find it as its somewhere in the house but when i do ill take some pics

[Guest]

Blimey, I bet that was a serious piece of kit in its day.

[Guest]

Hi Simon

my dad loves that camera but unlike digital you can delete the pic and retake it unlike using film but the other big lens he has for its a good 20 to 30cm even more its somewhere

[Guest]

Nice to see an LTL3 Jonny. I've got one tucked away, and will never part with it, even though it seized up years ago. It was my first serious camera as a teenager several (cough) years ago, and I saved up for it while at university. In those days a lot of people had East German cameras as their first SLR - either a Praktica or a Zenit. They were good value, and brought serious photography to people who couldn't afford Nikons and Pentaxes, and their screw thread lenses were excellent. They were also built like tanks and good for banging in tent pegs should the need arise.

I bet there are plenty of youngsters on here who also had one of these, or a Zenit E or an early screw thread Pentax.

Bruce

[Guest]

Hi Bruce

nice to see that some people use these sort of cameras i used it qwite often when on the broads when you take a pic you get that click sound it still works realy well despite its age

[Broadlander3]

Hi Jonny

Love the Camera...Always fancied one myself, but coudn't raise enough wonger to get one...just out of my range The thing I liked about them was that the shutter release was on the front of the camera body as was my very first camera...An Ilford Prontor SVS (Not an SLR)

Very interesting... All the Best...Terry B

[pks1702]

My first SLR was a Practika also, it was the camera that started me thinking about photography rather than just taking snaps

[Julz]

I am lucky enough to own a Voiklander (probably spelt it wrong ) from the late 50's with a Colorskopa lens, it used to belong to my Dad's boss, and when he retired he gave it to me, having been a keen wildlife and nature photographer all his life, he was awarded some new gear by the company on his retirement

Its a brilliant camra, and despite having to fiddle with putting the 35mm film rolls in, I still use it today for special occasions such as weddings,and new Baby pics, with great results

i was offered quite a tidy sum of money for it by an enthusiast a couple of years ago, but would never part with it for sentimental reasons

Julz

[Guest]

My grandad used to run a general stores many moons ago and had a little dark room out the back of the shop. It was long since out of use by the time I was old enough to remember anything.

He died about 25 years ago but periodically since then some of the cameras he used to have come to the surface from time to time. I am pretty sure I've seen three makes - Olympus, Pentax and Zenith (definitely had an "H" on the end) but I really can't remember the individual cameras and who knows where they might be now. Two of them went on a family holiday in 1991 when we went on safari in Kenya. It was the only really big family holiday we ever had and I am pretty sure I had the Zenith but really didn't understand enough to get the best of out of it, mostly as I didn't grasp depth of field. Indeed I got very little that was any good of it. The lenses were all screw fit primes and, if I recall correctly, I was using a 135mm prime with a 2x tele converter. I spent a large chunk of 1997 in Australia and I took one of the others (Pentax?) with me (only because my mum wouldn't lend me her compact), much to the amusement of my then girlfriend who had a mid level Canon AF body. I don't believe any of the cameras have ever been seen since and in 2001 I bought a very basic AF SLR anyway.

I took the following in Oz in 1997 on that old Pentax - showing clearly that it was capable of very sharp shots but that I still hadn't got the concept of depth of field.

[Guest]

well i think its nice to know what other types of cameras people use rather than these flashy SLR's

[Guest]

Jonny, it is an SLR - but not as flashy as it used to be! It's because it's an SLR that it makes that nice shutter sound you referred to - it's the mirror going up and down when you release the shutter. The Practikas had a particulalry pleasing "clunk".

Simon, was the camera one of these: http://www.rolandandcaroline.co.uk/zenite.html? If so, as you can see, it was Zenit rather than Zenith. Perhaps there was another camera with an M42 thread called a Zenith.

Bruce

[Guest]

Jonny, it is an SLR - but not as flashy as it used to be! It's because it's an SLR that it makes that nice shutter sound you referred to - it's the mirror going up and down when you release the shutter. The Practikas had a particulalry pleasing "clunk".

yes Bruce it does

[Guest]

I'll ask my dad, Bruce. If the cameras still exist his house is where they'll be. On the other, even finding yesterday's paper can be a trial there so finding decades old SLR's may be a non-starter.

[teadaemon]

I've got a Praktica too, albeit a more recent model, a BCA (aperture-priority automatic with bayonet lens mount, not quite the model I was after, but for £1.27 on eBay I wasn't complaining). I'm keeping my eye open for cheap second hand glass (and a body from the range that had manual controls, preferably a BMS) from the same source, so in a few months time I should hopefully have a decent set of prime lenses and a couple of zooms (I've got an M42 adapter as well, so most of the glass should be usable with a digital SLR+adapter in the future).

I've also been looking at getting a Zenit (or Zenith, it's the same company, but rendered in either the Roman or Cyrillic alphabets) Photosniper FS-2, a lovely piece of kit consisting of a Zenit SLR and 300mm telephoto lens mounted on a rifle stock with pistol grip and trigger for the shutter release, and a large focus knob built into the stock near to the front. A mate of mine had one when I was at Uni (and wasn't particularly interested in photography, I'm afraid to say), and he got some great pictures with it, and claimed it was really easy to use - it's certainly intuitive for anyone that's ever used an air rifle, let alone anything more powerful.

[teadaemon]

One thing I would say about using old M42 lenses on a DSLR is that you may well find it a pain using it in full manual mode (compared with say the kit lens that you'll probably have with it) and manual focussing isn't quite as easy either without the cut-glass focussing screens of old...

True, I don't envisage using them very often, but equally it's very nice to have the option if it's required, and at the price that some things are going for (£5-10 per lens) it's difficult to go too far wrong on a purchase.

[Guest]

Jozo

on that Praktica website the first pic on the right that big lens is what my dad has