photo from week 329 - Tele-Wide Outdoor Camera

A piece of street art, this one taken with the wide angle lens.

photo from week 329 - Tele-Wide Outdoor Camera

This is an outdoor camera, but I managed to take an indoor shot back taking a mirror off the wall and propping against a window to catch some late afternoon direct sunlight. The circle at the top of the image is lens flare as a result of this. This one used the "tele" lens.

photo from week 329 - Tele-Wide Outdoor Camera

Not surprisingly the quality was not very good from this camera, the framing in the viewfinder is particularly inaccurate, with subjects that were central in the viewfinder being to the left on the photos. This is a square crop to get rid of a large area of black tarmac.

Week 329 - Tele-Wide Outdoor Camera

An insert in the original box which this camera came in shows it to have been a promotional gift from Readers Digest magazine. There is a sliding mechanism which changes the focla length from 32mm to 45mm, the latter is hardly "wide" and the latter is certainly not "tele" but I suppose it was mainly done for novelty reasons. I'll be using some expired film in it, as I don't expect the quality to be up to much.

photo from week 328 - Leidolf Lordomat

There is a little flare evident on this photo, taken into the light in the Victorian prison in Lincoln Castle.

photo from week 328 - Leidolf Lordomat

Another handheld shot at full aperture, I braced myself and used 1/15th sec here.

photo from week 328 - Leidolf Lordomat

I used Fomapan 100 black and white film in the camera, this rather old-fashioned emulsion seemed appropriate for the era the camera was made in. This is an indoor shot, using 1/30th sec at full aperture.

Week 328 - Leidolf Lordomat

This is a precision made rangefinder camera from Germany. It has a breech lock interchangable lens mount, but I only have the 50mm lens with mine. It came from a charity shop for £9.99, but unfortunately has a significant dent in the top plate. This doesn't seem to effect the function of the camera, but would substantuilly reduce its value to a collector.
I've loaded it with Fomapan ISO 100 black and white negative film.

photo from week 327 - Yashica Auto Focus

This is a piece of street art in the Sharrowvale area of Sheffield.

photo from week 327 - Yashica Auto Focus

The auto-focus seemed to cope OK with this mirror shot, quite often older auto-focus systems don't cope very well in this situation.

photo from week 327 - Yashica Auto Focus

Sometimes it can be difficult to find enough subjects, so I took five consecutive frames of the Bishops House in Sheffield, walking around the outside between shots.

Week 327 - Yashica Auto Focus

The Yashica Auto Focus is an early auto-focus camera from Japan. There were several versions, this is the first, which has manual film winding, later models were motor driven. As well as auto-focus, there is an automatic exposure system.

photo from week 326 - beroquick SL125

For several of these outdoor photos in Castleton, I held a red filter in front of the lens to bring out the clouds by darkening the blue sky.

photo from week 326 - beroquick SL125

There is a "B" setting on this camera, so I used a tripod and a small aperture to ensure that this close range shot was in focus. The exposure was around 1 second. While there are some parallax correction marks in the viewfinder, I either misused them, or they are not very accurate.

photo from week 326 - beroquick SL125

I used a roll of Ilford HP5 plus which expired in 1993. The graininess is probably at least in part due to the age of the film.

Week 326 - beroquick SL125

This is one of many budget cameras that were produced by the German Beier factory, they often appeared as "own brands" in the UK notably as Boots and Dixons. There is little to go wrong with the camera, it has three shutter speeds, plus B and an f2.9 45mm Meritar lens. I assume that the 125 in the camera's name comes from the fastest shutter speed.

photo from week 325 - Hanimex Compact R

This is the Skyrider, which is Sheffield City centre for the next three months.

photo from week 325 - Hanimex Compact R

The shutter speeds go down to 1/15th second, which is what I used here, to allow me to use a small aperture and maximise depth of field.

photo from week 325 - Hanimex Compact R

The Compact R performed OK this week, the coupled rangefinder made focusing quick and simple.