Week 252 - Eastar S2

The Eastar S2 is a Chinese made 35mm film rangefinder camera produced from 1965 to 1990 by the Tianjin Camera Factory. It uses a coated Eastar f=50mm 1:2.8 lens and a viewfinder with coupled rangefinder and parallax-corrected bright frame. It has a leaf shutter with speeds from 1 sec. to 1/300 sec. and PC-type flash synchronization. It uses a cold shoe for holding strobes. The film counter rest on top of the film advance lever. Film rewinding is with a folding crank on top of the body. It has a self-timer and was delivered with a case.
From: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Eastar_S2

photo from week 251 - Ricoh TF-200

Flags flying in the quasi-autonomous region of Ikea, near to the city of Eastwood (where D.H.Lawrence was born).

photo from week 251 - Ricoh TF-200

This old laundry was one of my regular subjects when I walk past. This is all that it left now.

photo from week 251 - Ricoh TF-200

Auto-focus often struggles with windows or mirrors, and this is a good example of that difficulty!

Week 251 - Ricoh TF-200

This was £2 in a charity shop, it has two focal lengths, 38mm and 65mm, there is auto-focus and full auto-exposure. It was in its original box, with a price label of £179.99 - a lot of money in the 1980s. Luckily it came with a battery, which would otherwise have cost several times what I paid for the camera. I've loaded it with a roll of Agfa Vista ISO400 from Poundland.

photo from week 250 - Kodak No.2 Brownie (Model E)

Another outdoor shot at the annual sculpture show at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. The piece in the foreground is called "Wingblade".

photo from week 250 - Kodak No.2 Brownie (Model E)

There is a "B" setting, but no cable release socket, so I opened the shutter with a piece of black card in front of the lens, before taking up my position for the 2 minute exposure. I used the smallest of the three stop in order to maximise depth of field as there is no way of focusing the lens. The subject movement during the long exposure is all too evident!

photo from week 250 - Kodak No.2 Brownie (Model E)

Although the film is still in date, it shows evidence of deterioration, with backing paper markings being visible, and some mottling, nevertheless the nonagenarian Brownie performed well.

Week 250 - Kodak No.2 Brownie (Model E)

The No.2 Brownie was introduced in 1903, and continued in production until 1931, the design evolved over the years, though it remained recognisably the same camera. This particular iteration was made between 1920 and 1924, making this camera at least 90 years old. According to one source, this was the first camera to take 120 film.

photos from week 249 - Nikon Nuvis 75

A quasi panoramic image made from two consecutive frames.

photo from week 249 - Nikon Nuvis 75

I was fairly confident that there was enough light for this to be a hand-holdable shutter speed. The auto-focus seems to have coped well with the mirror.

photo from week 249 - Nikon Nuvis 75

This was taken without flash, with the camera resting on a hand rail to steady it for a relatively slow shutter speed.

Week 249 - Nikon Nuvis 75

The Nuvis 75 uses the short-lived and now obsolete APS format. I think I paid about £2 for this one, and I really only bought it as it came with a couple of films which I intended to use in one of my more sophisticated APS cameras. Since I was given a supply of APS film earlier this year, I now feel able to use it in the more pedestrian APS models in my collection.

photo from week 248 - SupaSnaps Flicker

This is the closest I've come yet to a complete failure in my camera of the week project. The shutter was firing OK when I checked the camera prior to loading, by setting the shutter with the lever which is operated by the passing film perforation. While in use, I had my suspicions that the shutter wasn't firing, and I have no idea why it suddenly worked for just one of the 24 frames, a boring shot that was one of the last few to finish the film off before developing.
I quite like the pattern of all the blank frames, with the one little glimmer of hope from the week!

Week 248 - SupaSnaps Flicker

This was a promotional gift camera from SupaSnaps, it's an ultra-basic 110 model which doesn't even enclose the film cartridge in use. I'm not sure where it came from, it was in a box of junk cameras in my dad's garage.

photo from week 247 - Olympus XA

Another photo from the correfoc, this time a dragon is spraying fire at the legs and feet of the crowd!

photo from week 247 - Olympus XA

Even with ISO400 film, and in a brightly lit bathroom, this one was at the limits of hand-holdability.

photo from week 247 - Olympus XA

The Correfoc, or fire-run involves groups of people running through the streets spraying fireworks onto willing spectators, this was taken in the moment between ignitions.