Testing a Konica Autoreflex TC (Part 1)

Sometimes my interest is sparked in some way when I watch Youtube videos. A few weeks ago, I watched a video called «Konica Autoreflex TC – The poor mans OM-1». To me, this title did not really make much sense. In my opinion, the Olympus OM-1 is extensive value for money and indeed very affordable both when it comes to lenses and camera bodies. They are also accurate like clockwork, and relatively hassle-free to service and maintain. I have shot a large number of rolls through my OM-1 and it has never given me any problems even in very cold winter days. So if there would be a cheaper camera that reliable, that had to be a gem for this blog indeed.

My lovely Konica Autoreflex TC with its marvelous Konica Hexanon AR 50mm f1,8 lens

I searched briefly online, and I actually found one incredibly cheap on a local Facebook sales page, and I got it for about 200 Norwegian Kroner (about 20 GBP) with shipping included. A real bargain there indeed. For the first tryout, I loaded it with a roll of Ilford FP4 plus that I shot at ISO50 and developed with Ilford Ilfotec Perceptol. I find that Perceptol really helps me get the winter tones I want for my shots, as well as a very fine grain.

The Konica turned out to be a lovely camera to work with. It is indeed a bit heavier and more bulky than the OM-1 but it fits my hand very well and everything is where you expect it to be, and it all seems to work rather well. I did not try the Aperture priority setting on the camera, but shot it on a variety of shutter speeds and aperture settings with a wide range of filters I found to be helpful for me at this location, which is an old museum. However, I do not see this camera and the Olympus OM-1 to be comparable as equipment.

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The Olympus OM-1 is a far more accurate camera with a broader selection of shutter speeds, all the way from a whole second to 1/1000th of a second plus BULB-mode. On the Konica, there is nothing between 1/8th and B, and the longer shutter speeds on my one «drags» a little bit. This could be the particular camera.

Konica Autoreflex TC w Konica Hexanon 50mm f1,8 lens. Ilford FP4 plus@50 F8 1/25th Yellow filter – Ilfotec Perceptol

Also in the perceived build quality, the Konica is clearly a cheaper and less sophisticated camera than the OM-1. But if you forget about the irrelevant comparison to a clearly better camera, the little Konica is a very pleasant camera to work with, and the 50mm Hexanon Lens, is just outstanding. It gives a really nice sharpness, even at wide apertures and it is easy to focus.

*Konica Autoreflex TC w Konica Hexanon 50mm f1,8 lens. Ilford FP4 plus@50 F2.8 1/8th Yellow filter – Ilfotec Perceptol*

Through my about 60 minutes photo-walk today, the Konica performed rather well for the first 20 minutes. After that, it coughed up a nice selection of issues and creative problems that I guess is it reacting with the cold weather. The temperature was about -12 degrees and some if these issues might be due to that.

Nr 1. Sticky shutter: After some shots the shutter started sticking every now and then. It did not matter which shutter speed the camera was set to. The only thing to do, was to tap the camera slightly so that the shutter would go off, and then shoot another frame to get one without immense camera shake.

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Nr 2. Slowed focusing. After a while out in the cold, the focusing ring got very slow, almost as if the lubrication thickened and became a gooey syrup.

Nr 3. Camera refused to rewind the film back into the cassette and ripped it instead. When I manually retrieved the film, it actually broke on another place as well. Luckily, I did not lose more than four shots, and all of them were bad. (happy days)

*Konica Autoreflex TC w Konica Hexanon 50mm f1,8 lens. Ilford FP4 plus@50 F11 1/25th Graduated Magenta filter – Ilfotec Perceptol*

All these issues aside, I like the Konica Autoreflex and the Hexanon lens. A ripped film could very well be my mistake and the other issues could be weather related. My next test out of this camera will be with a colour film, trying to capture some lovely, bleak winter colours.

*Konica Autoreflex TC w Konica Hexanon 50mm f1,8 lens. Ilford FP4 plus@50 Ilfotec Perceptol*

Trying out Delta 400

When I first tried out Ilford HP5 plus, I completely fell in love with the film. I just loved the amazing latitude and the rich feel it gave my photos, and since then, I have mainly used HP5 plus whenever I needed a 400 or even a 200 speed film, which the occasional use of Tri-X-X when I want to push the film slightly, or just want to have a yellow cassette in my camera instead of a green one. At box-speed the two films are interchangeable in my humble opinion and I challenge you to spot which photo was shot with which of these two if I put up a selection.

A While back, before Covid and quarantines were an issue, I was in Aarhus in Denmark visiting a friend and enjoying the lovely Danish landscape and all the lovely pastries and coffee shops they have. I also visited Mimosa Photo shop in Aarhus city center, and picked up some rolls of film. Since I only had one roll of HP5 plus left, I needed a 400 speed film, and the only one they had in at that moment was Delta 400. I bought three rolls, and since then they have just been sitting around in the fridge, and not been tested. The other day, I went out for a little outing in the misty Norwegian winter-weather, and I decided to shoot with Ilford Delta 400.

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I put one of the rolls in my Minolta Dynax SPxi, and screwed on the yellow filter and went for a spin, trying to find black and dark grey contrasts against the misty, white skies. I have often found the yellow filter to help me get the results I want in winter time, lifting the darks, while helping me retain detail in the very bright whites. I was curious how this film would be different from the HP5 plus, but after only one tryout, I can obviously not say that I have the knowledge to make a comparison nor a good enough photographic bank of results to base any personal judgement on. But I do know what I would expect from HP5 plus in these situations. An my prediction was more or less the same, but with finer grain.

Minolta Dynax SPxi w Minolta AF Zoom 35-70mm f4,5 Yellow filter – Ilford Delta 400 professional Ilford Ilfotec DD-X

The grain on this test-roll was actually finer than I expected, but I did not get the same contrast boost that I would have expected comparing FP4 plus and Delta 100 which I know both of very well. But all in all, I do rather like my results. The Minolta Zoom lens is not by any means the sharpest of lenses, but I tried out different aperture settings and even at some points used «Aperture priority» mode to get the most out the lens that I had on. The camera has a few functions that I find to be very helpful.

First of all, I like the two sensors on the right hand handle that will automatically focus when you touch them. In rainy weather; however, it turned out that these sensors were actually reacting to the rain touching it as well as my fingers, to the AF went berserk a few times. Also the AF tends to select different spots and, as visible in the images, it back focuses somewhat. It would be interesting to try this camera out with a different lens, to see whether this is a camera or lens-issue.

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Second, I like the way you set the different parameters on different places on the camera. However, I do find it a bit fiddly and that you very easily forget which knob does what, and hence, shooting this in fully manual mode, is sometimes really exasperating. But the idea of having the controls on knobs and not on wheels, is something I really like. If Minolta only would have been friendly enough to mark these knobs with what they do.

Even with the AF on, as you can see, the focus gets very soft, and I suspect that there might be an issue with the AF system on this camera. But at the same time, I think that some of these photos gets some additional mood with that soft focus.

I chose to develop with Infotec DD-X which I know is made for the Delta series. I got the developer from Bjørn Joachimsen in November, and I would recommend you to look through his amazing catalogue of photos both here on WordPress and on Flickr.

More Christmas decorations

This entry is a sequel of the FP4 shoot with the Advent decorations. If you haven’t seen that entry, please scroll down and find it. In this entry, I have once again done like a cat, playing with the Christmas decorations. This time, I played with the Christmas tree and a roll of Kodak ProImage 100 and I used the Olympus OM-1 with the same 50mm lens that I often use it with. Originally my plan was to shoot this with the Praktica MTL5 B and the Helios 44-2 lens, but it turned out that the lovely Praktica didn’t really appreciate being hooked up with the shutter release cable, and it therefore decided to jam. Not the kind of jammed that you can easily fix yourself, the properly jammed jam. Therefore, I had to restart the shoot with the Olympus, which handled the cable just fine.

I shot the Zuiko Lens fully open at its maximum aperture of f1,8, but I chose to let the Christmas tree lights be my only light source and ended up using longer shutter speeds, such as 1/2, 1/4 and even one and three seconds.

Christmas tree angel – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens. f1,8 shutter 1/2 seconds. Kodak Proimage 100

I know that there are many opinions on the Kodak ProImage 100 out and about. For my style and preference of photography, I find the ProImage to be brilliant for capturing winter colours where I often find Ektar too vibrant. Also, for indoor photography like this, I find this film to work perfectly, as I would often have to de-saturate Ektar in these situations. But again, this is personal preference. Personally, I like the «level between» Ektar and Portra as I see this film to be.

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These images are slightly colour corrected in Photoshop after scanning, there were no colour shifts, but I found that the images got scanned with slightly different white balance. Not a big deal though, as it was easily correctable with Photoshop. The film was developed using the Tetenal Colortec C41 kit, which I find to work very well and be easily controllable. When using this kit, I cannot understand why it took me so long before I dared to try developing colour myself.

*Shooting around the Christmas tree – Olympus OM-1 w 50mm Zuiko f1,8 lens. f1,8 shutter 1/2 seconds.*
*Kodak Proimage 100*

Thank you for reading and following me through 2020. Let us all hope for a better and less troublesome and pandemic 2021.

Trying out an expired film

I am normally not too enthusiastic about expired films. For me photography is more about precision and less about experimenting. However, a while back I bought a camera online, and with it came a full package of Svema Foto65 expired in 1986. As this package was full and dust-free, I guessed they had been stored properly, maybe frozen or refrigerated over time. Therefore I decided to give these films a go.

As they are 120 films, I rolled one of them into my Bronica ETR, and went back to my favorite old derelict train station. If you have followed my blog for a while, you will have seen me shooting at that location before. I chose to rate the film at ISO 20 and bracket one stop in each direction. As it turned out, ISO 10 would have been my best pick for this outing. The films original box-speed was once ISO 80, and with the «one stop pr decade» 10 would be the correct speed I guess.

Because I feared very low contrast in the images, I chose to shoot with an orange filter to give the film some extra contrast boost. It seems to have worked out the way I expected it to.

Bronica ETR w 150mm Zenzanon f3,5 – Orange filter – Svema Foto65 @Iso10 – Rodinal 1+100 70min

Despite the nasty mottling all over the frame, the Svema Foto65 seems to have been a very fine grain and sharp film once. My guess is that this mottling has come off the backing paper, there are visible discoloration on both the negatives and the backing paper. If I am mistaking, please let me know in the comments. All in all, the Svema performed acceptably I find, and maybe a well kept roll of this film would still make really nice images, despite its age.

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Capturing the winter colours

Shooting in winter time can sometimes be very uninspiring and difficult. There are no vibrant colours in the nature, and the weather is sometimes really and truly nasty. Therefore, I have made myself a project this winter. To capture the mood of the Norwegian winter with analog photography. I have not limited myself in terms of films, developers or styles. The goal with the project is to convey the Norwegian winter mood through my photography.

This is the second entry in the project, and in this one, I am working with one of the days where the weather is nice and where there are colours to work with.

To capture the colours, I chose to go with a very under-rated film that I find to work very well with the Norwegian winter tones. The Kodak Pro Image 100. I have used some rolls of this film previously, ordered on eBay as it was not sold in Europe. From what I have gathered online, this film was originally introduced in South America and Asia as an entry-level professional colour negative film. Based on the Kodak Gold, it was then altered, tweaked and improved to produce better skin tones, but keep the warm Kodak colour palette that the Kodak Gold is renown for.

Olympus OM-1 Zuiko Olympus 50mm f,18 w 1,6 stop Circular Polarizer. Kodak ProImage 100

When you google this film, you get a lot of «so-called experts in the field» who has written some kind of a review of this film based on their experience after shooting one roll of film. All of these conclude with something like «This film is so cheap, why would Kodak brand such a cheap film professional, Ektar is far better». I find this to be unfair to the Pro Image. KODAK Ektar is a brilliant film, and a film I use a lot myself, but I find it to be too vibrant for my winter shooting. I also mean, that you can never judge a film just by shooting one roll of it, and choice of film is a personal choice and relies heavily on personal preference. after fifteen rolls (three five-packs) of Pro-Image, I have found this film to work brilliantly for my preferences.

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One of the lovely things about working in Norway in the winter, is that morning light happens at more comfortable times than in the summer. My «early morning shoot» started at 09.30 with a cup of coffee and ended around 11.00 with me rewinding the film back into the cassette and traveled home for development. Even so, I did not meet as many people as I expected on my little outing into the lovely lights and colours. And I find that I was able to capture the mood of this morning.

A sunny, cold winters day after many grey dull days, with some lovely almost purple colours in the skies and a yellowish tone on the ground near the lake.

I then ended my day with doing a C41 process. I had fresh chemicals which were mixed right before, and the cycle went like a dream. I see a slight cyan-cast in the scans. This could be because I had to pause the development between the Developer and the Blix due to a temperature fall in the Blix. I then left the films in the tank with some 38 degrees clean water for some minutes, while the Blix heated up again.

Experimenting with depth of field

Playing with the Christmas decorations is not an activity reserved for cats. When I tested the Petri 7s for the first time in the beginning of December, I noticed how good the lens seemed to be. Even though my test then showed that the camera had seen better days, the f1,8 lens turned out to give very nice, details and I decided to shoot some frames to test it out. I decided to go with the Christmas, or actually Advent, decorations. I lit a candle in a glass candle holder, and let that work as a foreground, and I placed the rest of the decoration approximately 80cm away from the lens, which would be the closest focus length for this camera.

My setup. Petri 7s on a black glass plate with the decorations. I have taped the camera because the back has a tendency to «pop open» at any point.

I went with shots at f1,8, f4 and f16 to see how much difference there would be in sharpness and how they would turn out. I did not change the lighting conditions, but I adjusted my shutter speeds to compensate for the smaller aperture. for the f16 image, that was two and ha half minutes with compensation for the Schwarzschild effect.

Petri 7s – Ilford FP4 plus Xtol Stock. f1,8 1/8 seconds – f16 180 seconds – f4 1/2 seconds

All in all I think the lens gave me the results I anticipated. The f1,8 gives me a very nice bokeh, but the focus is a little bit off, so maybe the focus ring isn’t as accurate as I would hope for. The f4 image gives more sharpness and retains the nice bokeh feel, and the f16 gives a very sharp image.

The mood changes a lot between the images, and I am not sure which one is my favorite. You can make a judgement yourself, and I hope the images are to your liking.

Capturing the mood

Some days ago, I was tidying up my darkroom, and I found what I assume to be a previous test-roll. I assumed that the roll was around half, but it turned out to be around 24 exposures of HP5 plus. I then got the Idea of trying to capture the miserable weather we have had in the area lately. I figured HP5 plus would be brilliant at that, it has grain, but not too much and coarse. I also chose to go with Ilford’s Perceptol developer, to reduce the grain in the whites a bit, but not eradicate it.

My aim was not to get razor sharp images, but rather to capture the feeling and mood of this time of year. I am thinking more in the direction of a charcoal drawing than a crystal clear image of the mood. I know some photographers would have gone with a Holga or something similar to that on an outing like this, but I have never really befriended my Holga camera, and I prefer the effect the Petri Racer gives.

Snowy and wet December day – Petri Racer w Ilford HP5 plus@250. F8 1/60s – Ilford Perceptol stock

For that reason, I chose to bring along the Petri Racer. For long term readers of this blog, you know the Petri Racer camera very well. It was the first camera I bought for this blog, and the camera that inspired me to make a blog about cheap cameras, hence CCadventures – Cheap Camera Adventures. Not that all cameras featured on this blog is «Cheap», but they are reasonable and affordable alternatives that in some way sparks my interest.

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The day was very snowy and it was unpleasant walking around in the snowy weather. I also had to wipe and dry the Petri a few times during the outing, to make sure it was not soaking or that the lens got fogged up. The camera had been in the car for a few hours before the shoot to «climatize» somewhat, but the wet snow and humidity made it fog up slightly anyway. I therefore let the film reach room-temperature before developing it. I often do this when the weather is cold to avoid swift temperature changes during the process. Not that the weather this day was very cold, only around -2 degrees, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Even capturing the snow falling – Petri Racer w Ilford HP5 plus@250 f8, 1/4 sec – Ilford Perceptol stock

The whole outing took me around half an hour, and I was soaked afterwards after wading in deep snow to reach a dam with view over the little lake Skumsjøen close to Gjøvik.

For the images, I am quite satisfied with the images as I find that they convey the mood and feeling I was aiming at conveying. These are not my strongest photographic moment by any means, but in terms of conveying the unpleasant Norwegian December-wet snow, I think I did a decent job.

Petri Racer. -Ilford HP5 plus@250 f8 – 1/60 sec. Ilford Perceptol stock.

Playing with a Point and Shoot

The market for film cameras has changed substantially over the last two-three decades. In the 90s there were a range of very simple easy cameras that you could use to get some pictures without knowing anything about photography nor wanting to learn about it. They were simple, fully automatic and would give you acceptable images with minimum effort. These were the fully automatic point and shoot cameras. They’d set the film speed through DX coding on the cassette, they would set the aperture and shutter speed accordingly. The small catch, you had to press the shutter release button yourself. The bigger catch, you had no idea what the images would look like.

This morning, I played around with one of these cameras. I haven’t used one of them for a long time, and I was curious about what it would «bring to the table» of images and quality. The camera was bought cheaply online and arrived by Norwegian snail mail two weeks after it was posted from a town reasonably nearby. Well done Snail Mail. After this wait, I was the confused owner of a Chinon Pocket Zoom AF.

The Chinon Pocket-Zoom AF – 38-60mm lens (probably f8 or something like that as widest aperture)

I was eager to test it out, and I gave it a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. The electronic and automatic wind-on mechanism did its job and rolled on a few frames that could have been used, and the display on the back showed «1». The Chinon was ready. I went out in very dull weather and the Chinon did not seem to be too fond of dull and «boring» light. It constantly set off the flash, and I had to manually reset it to «flash off» every time I changed compositions, as it would have reverted to flash mode automatically. It is a bit like an overbearing parent, the security net is always there.

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Shooting the Chinon was like shooting with your phone. You aim vaguely in the direction of what you want to photograph, you press the shutter button and wait for a while while the small elves inside the camera gets to work setting up your exposure. This takes a while, and you would probably not use this camera to photograph running animals or people in action. If you used it to photograph someone playing football, they would be done with their game and home for dinner before the camera takes a shot. After a while, when you hear the reassuring sound of the shutter and the winding mechanism, you are ready for your next shot.

Chinon Pocket Zoom AF – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol Stock

When looking at the final images, they are not that sharp and crisp as you would hope. But since I have not had any control in the making of there images other than pressing the shutter release button, I don’t really feel it is my fault.

Some issues I see. The lens is probably not that bright and certainly not very sharp, and the images seem all slightly under exposed. They have a strange vignetting, much like the one you get while shooting a Holga camera, and the lens perfomance isn’t that much better on this Chinon. Also, you get these imprinted numbers on all your frames, and I was not aware that it would be printing numbers on my frames. I have left them here in all their atrociousness.

My conclusion. I will sell this camera to someone who will use it. I will certainly not use this camera again and if anyone wants it, please contact me.

I like this image because of the mood, and that it is evenly blurry all the way over.
*Chinon Pocket Zoom AF – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol Stock*

Did I choose the wrong film?

When I drove home from work today, I noticed that the contrast between the December darkness and the artificial light from lamp-posts, lit buildings and petrol stations actually would make very nice images indeed. I thought about going for long exposures with either Tri-X or HP5 plus, and I composed some nice images in my head. My chosen subject, Skibladnerhuset.

Skibladner is an old paddle steamer the people who lives around the lake Mjøsa are very proud of. It is currently the oldest paddle steamer in scheduled traffic, and it will sail on the lake in the summer months. When the winter comes, it will be parked on display in its own, specifically designed house. A special building with I find to look incredible with its triangles and diagonal pillars and poles. The house was drawn by the architects at Kontur in Gjøvik and was built in 2001. It has become a landmark for Gjøvik and is visible from RV4 as you drive through the town.

I chose to roll up the Zenza Bronica ETR with a roll of JCH Streetpan 400, and test out how an extremely contrasty film would deal with the lighting conditions in a Norwegian December afternoon. In retrospect, this might have been the wrong film for this outing, I should have gone for Tri-X og HP5 plus.

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First of all, I could not find any information about the reciprocity features and long exposure compensation anywhere. Therefore, I went for combining the information from the Ilford HP5 plus and Kodak Tri-X. This means compensation from 1 second and more. My logic became – If the meter gives me 1 second, I’ll shoot 2 seconds, if it gives me 2s, I’ll go for 4. It could seem; however, that this was not anywhere near enough compensation.

Marina light – Zenza Bronica ETR w 50mm Zenzanon f2,8 – JCH Streetpan 400@400 1 second at f8

My negatives got very thin, so thin, that I wouldn’t imagine printing them in the darkroom. Three negatives came out reasonably OK, and showed the contrast level I was aiming for, however, the other 12, not so much.

I developed the film in Xtol stock, both because I have a batch of Xtol that is about to go out and I want to use it, and because I just did not «love» the prospect of doing development for 17 minutes with 30s agitation frequency. Call me lazy, but this is who I am.

I also considered using Rodinal 1+100 and do Semi-Stand development, but I wanted a more specific development cycle that I knew would give me the correct film-speed. And with Rodinal at that dilution and development times of an hour plus, I don’t really get that level of control.

Skibladnerhuset – Exposure times 4 and 8 seconds.

This was just an experiment and a shot in the dark (pun intended), but I learnt quite a bit about the Streetpan 400, and when not to use it. I might do a reshoot of this outing with a roll of Tri-X at some point, to pay the amazing architecture the respect it deserves.

Please enjoy the images.

Emptying the roll of RPX25

In my last entry, and video, I tried out the very slow Rollei RPX25 film. I shot it with my Olympus OM-1 and I used a yellow filter because of the lightning conditions that I found to be ideal for yellow filter. Also, I must say that I got images that I am very pleased with. I only shot half a roll of the film, and cut it out of the camera, much because I was not sure what to expect in terms of contrast and metering.

Today, I rolled up the rest of the RPX25 in the OM-1, and went for a little outing to shoot the rest of the roll. The weather was absolutely horrendously nasty, with snow/rain blend and temperatures around 0. A typical nasty early winter day in Norway, and I went to a location I know very well. A little lake close to where I live, Skumsjøen, and looked for something that would allow me to shoot wide-open, at f1,8 with the 50mm Zuiko lens.

Tree root abstraction – Olympus OM-1 w Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1,8. Shot wide open f1,8 with Rollei RPX25. Semi-stand development Rodinal 1+100 70 minutes, agitated beginning and midle of cycle.

I went for some very abstract close-ups of tree roots near the frozen water. I even took the risk of walking on the newly formed ice, as it felt safe, to get the best angles. Luckily I did not fall through.

From my last outing with this film, I remembered that I got very hard contrasts in the negatives, and I gave it a whole stop of over exposure to retain more grey-tones in the details. Another measure I chose to reduce some of the contrast while retaining the sharpness, was a cycle of stand-development with Rodnial 1+100. This is not a type of process I often use, but for slower films, I have found it to work well with my style. It also gives a certain «character» to the shots, that I find to suit my eye.

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I am not in anyway competent to comment on the performance of this film, nor its abilities. I have not used it enough to know how to handle it properly yet, and I am no film expert. However, I find it rather enjoyable to play with this filming trying to rethink my exposures to get the results I want. Also, I have only shot the film in dull, overcast weather, but I find that the Rollei RPX25 gives me a fun challenge to work with. In short, this film is fun to work with.

*Olympus OM-1 w Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1,8. Shot wide open f1,8 with Rollei RPX25. Semi-stand development Rodinal 1+100 70 minutes, agitated beginning and midle of cycle.*

A video will be available on Youtube soon. Search for Ccadventures.