Analog Impressions

Starting September 10th, I’ll be joining a class in analog printing. For that I needed to have negatives to print, so I picked up film photography recently, something I’d been meaning to do for a long time. Instead of going for a “modern” film camera though, I was a lot more attracted to the idea of going really old style. My initial purchase was a Moskva 5 medium format camera. It’s a charming and clunky little fellow (well, not so little actually…) but the framing is really inaccurate and I might disregard it ultimately for that reason.

My main tool will most likely be the Spotmatic F that I picked for next to nothing on ebay just before the summer. I already had a bunch of M42 lenses which I’d used with an adapter on my digital camera, but I really love the Spotmatic. I think this will be my camera of choice for short trips when I can’t be bothered to take all my gear with me. I’ve found that there’s something profoudly different about focusing manually as opposed to using the autofocus, a near physical pleasure at the moment of shooting. Admittedly, I haven’t seen the results yet (I’m picking up my first processed films tomorrow) but assuming they’re good, I can see myself using the Spotmatic a lot. Just last night I received a Meyer Gorlitz 50mm 2.8 lens which, if satisfactory will likely become my default lens for the Spotmatic.

I have a third camera which I haven’t really tried out at all yet, which my dad was offered for a conference he spoke at in the 80s. It’s a Minox 35, still wrapped and never used. It’s a really neat little camera, and if it performs it could be an iphone substitute for where I want real sharp pics on the go…

I’ll be sharing some of those photos here as soon as I have things worth sharing!