Stikkord: old equipment

The Nikon-guy using a Canon.

The endless debate.. The friend-breaker. The source of family feud and potentially divorces. Canon or Nikon. People tend to be very sworn to one of them and show some (somewhat humorous) hatred for the other. Personally, I usually shoot Nikon Cameras. I own a fair amount of them both digital and analog, and the main reason for my choice of Nikon over Canon, is that I find their ergonomics to suit my hands and style more than the Canons. If shown images or specs, I am not able to tell any difference between the two brands, and I see them as equally brilliant manufacturers.

Even so, I have never before very recently owned a Canon camera. A little while back, I came across a Canon T70, and its extremely complex nature sparked my interest. Its incredible «inboard» 8 bit chip and how it was sort of the bridge between Canons older generation of very manual cameras, to the soon-to-follow EOS systems was, I found, intriguing and I started my search to get one for CC-adventures money – less than 100 Euros. I got lucky, and found one way cheaper with 50mm lens included. As a very happy man, I was now the owner of my first Canon camera, a T70.

My very clean and nice Canon T70 from the mid 80s.

Operating a new camera is always interesting, and the T70 has a very interesting button based menu system. It does not read DX-coding, but you set the ISO by pressing the ISO-button and one of the two buttons on the top over the LCD-screen named «Up» and «Down». It is programmed to go 1/3 steps and setting the ISO is very easy and the buttons are big enough to be operated with gloves in winter time.

Reklamer

Another lovely feature with this camera, that I notices straight away, was the fact that it takes AA batteries instead of the CR123A batteries. Both these types are readily available and can be picked up cheaply in most shops, but you more often tend to have AA batteries lying around than CR123A, and hence you are less likely te find yourself in a Cannot Shoot Situation with the T70.

I also like the different safety features it has. You need to press a button to unlock the release mechanism for the film loading door, preventing you from accidentally opening it «mid roll». It has an extra slider beside the rewind button, preventing you from accidentally rewinding the film too early, and it has a little button to unlock the «Power ON» button. A feature that helps you save battery. On the downside, mine has clearly a tiny light-leak, but nothing that in any way affects the images.

Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Fomapan200@160 – Adox Atomal 49 Stock

Using the camera is a real treat. It is very easy to focus and set, and the main setting is an aperture priority where you set your aperture and the camera will find the suiting shutter speed to go with it based on your entered ISO-speed. You also have settings for full Program-mode and you have two additional settings, one called «wide» where the camera will bias towards a higher f-stop to get deeper depth of field, and one called «TELE» where it will bias towards higher shutter speeds and shallower depth of field. I did not try out these fully automatic modes in my first tryout, but based on the function of the rest of this camera, it would surprise me if it wasn’t spotless.

Holding the T70 is an interesting sensation. The plastic body feels very cheap in you hand, but it is as heavy as a brick and has the noise-level of a helicopter. Even so, this camera feels like what it is, a quality piece of kit, with that feel of «80s science fiction» over its design and the «buttonyness» of an old Volvo dashboard.

This is a very nice camera to use, and clearly one I will use again many times.

Canon T70 w Canon 50mm f1,8 FD lens – Fomapan200@160 – Adox Atomal 49 Stock

Messing up a test

Testing old, cheap cameras is always exciting. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but in mist cases, you get something. In this test, I got something, but I managed to damage the film when winding it out. More of that to come.

Some weeks ago, I found an interesting camera on eBay, that I had never heard of before. The camera is called «Condor I» and was produced in Italy from 1947 by the Italian manufacturer of optics Officine Gallileo. After a while, Ferrania entered and most of the cameras were sold with the Ferrania logo on it. Mine, however did not. Whether this means that mine is among the earlier cameras, I don’t know, but – in mild terms – the camera does have some patina.

My dirty and somewhat tatty copy of the Condor I.

The first thing that really struck me when I played around with this camera, was the unusual selection of aperture stops. 3,5 and 4,5 are not that strange, but 6, 18 and 25 are stops I have never seen before on any manual camera. However, the aperture selector is the only part of this camera that is easy and smooth to operate. It seems to me that this camera has not been used for a long while, and that it will take some «jiggling» and maybe some sewing machine oil to get the focusing mechanism and the shutter speed dial to move with ease.

Reklamer

After cleaning both the rangefinder windows (there are two of them on this camera) and the viewfinder window as well as a light wash with some glass cleaner over the whole camera, I loaded it with a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. Previously this day, I had spotted two lines of bicycle stands that I thought had an interesting look to them. I decided to shoot some frames, cut the film out of the camera and develop the film to check whether it does work.

So far so good, I shot some frames and went home ready for developing the film. I loaded everything I needed into the changing bag and cut the film out of the camera as intended. But for some weird reason, the take-up spool would not accept the «rewind setting» and roll backwards. I fiddled a bit with it, and after a little while, the film spun up into my hand, and I was able to carefully wind it off manually. It does seem, however, that I was not able to do this carefully enough. I got nasty scratches and marks on my negatives, and I can only blame myself.

Condor I – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol 1+0 9.30 at 20 degrees

The nasty scratches aside, the lens seems very sharp and the exposures fairly accurate from what I would expect with the settings. All shots are f4,5 at 1/100th and the Rollei film is shot at box speed. Also, the I love the smoothness of the grain I see in these scans.

Condor I – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol 1+0 9.30 at 20 degrees

I do definitely have to take this camera on a new test. The images seem to be decently sharp and pleasant for a messed up shoot like this. I’ll make a video about this little quirky camera and my next time shooting it.