Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
I bought my first Leica, a IIIc, at Olden camera on Broadway in New York in 1963 ($35 then); a few months later I added a Serenar f1.8/50mm. A Leica IIc with a f2 Summar followed a couple of years later from a really nice store named "Fotoshop", just a couple of doors down 32nd Street from Willougby's.
In the course of the next 25 years, I managed to shoot an astonishing number of color slides, from my student days through my daughter's days in high school.
For those not doing a lot of color work in the 1960's and 1970's, slides were once very much cheaper than prints for those shooting in color. Depending on what film one used and where the film was processed, the difference between the two ranged from a factor of 3x to 6x in favor of transparencies. To put it another way, I could buy a 20 exp roll of "Dynachrome" in 1967 for $2 a roll with processing (Dynachrome was manufactured by3M, I haven't a clue who processed it when I sent in the mailer.) A twenty exposure roll of Kodacolor in those days ran about $11 for film cost and processing at a common discount store.
My slides have held up remarkably well over the years - even the Ektachrome and Dynachrome trnasparencies show little evidence of deterioration. My Agfachromes, however (again about $2/20 exposures and processed somewhere in Canada) are clearly fading a bit.
I recently bought a Honeywell "Repronar" unit. This is a rather elaborate copy unit for the duplication of 35mm transparencies. The Repronar resembles a copystand with an electronic flash in the base behind a frosted glass plate and a Pentax-clone comera with a purpose-designed copy lens and bellows. Evidently, the intent of the designers of the Repronar was that the unit could be used as a sort of darkroom for color transparency work, allowing enlargement and cropping of images from existing slides.
I've been using my Repronar to copy over the slide images to black and white (for further darkroom work by me) and to make color prints. The unit seems to be quite well suited for this. Should anyone be interested in technical detail, I've found that a useful exposure for a properly exposed (and not faded) outdoor slide is f19 (spot midway between f16 and f22) with the flash power on its "low" setting with ASA100 film. I twiddle the aperture for denser and lighter slides - one f-stop each way seems to work well.
I expect to copy over all of my archive to B&W over the next month or so and to spend a pleasant time this winter making prints.
In the course of the next 25 years, I managed to shoot an astonishing number of color slides, from my student days through my daughter's days in high school.
For those not doing a lot of color work in the 1960's and 1970's, slides were once very much cheaper than prints for those shooting in color. Depending on what film one used and where the film was processed, the difference between the two ranged from a factor of 3x to 6x in favor of transparencies. To put it another way, I could buy a 20 exp roll of "Dynachrome" in 1967 for $2 a roll with processing (Dynachrome was manufactured by3M, I haven't a clue who processed it when I sent in the mailer.) A twenty exposure roll of Kodacolor in those days ran about $11 for film cost and processing at a common discount store.
My slides have held up remarkably well over the years - even the Ektachrome and Dynachrome trnasparencies show little evidence of deterioration. My Agfachromes, however (again about $2/20 exposures and processed somewhere in Canada) are clearly fading a bit.
I recently bought a Honeywell "Repronar" unit. This is a rather elaborate copy unit for the duplication of 35mm transparencies. The Repronar resembles a copystand with an electronic flash in the base behind a frosted glass plate and a Pentax-clone comera with a purpose-designed copy lens and bellows. Evidently, the intent of the designers of the Repronar was that the unit could be used as a sort of darkroom for color transparency work, allowing enlargement and cropping of images from existing slides.
I've been using my Repronar to copy over the slide images to black and white (for further darkroom work by me) and to make color prints. The unit seems to be quite well suited for this. Should anyone be interested in technical detail, I've found that a useful exposure for a properly exposed (and not faded) outdoor slide is f19 (spot midway between f16 and f22) with the flash power on its "low" setting with ASA100 film. I twiddle the aperture for denser and lighter slides - one f-stop each way seems to work well.
I expect to copy over all of my archive to B&W over the next month or so and to spend a pleasant time this winter making prints.
VictorM.
Well-known
I bought my IIIf body from Willougby's in 1969 ($40) after a salesman at Olden offended me. With the next paycheque, I went to Wall Street Camera and bought a Nikkor 50/2 lens ($20). I still have them. Dynachrome was actually Ferrania slide film.
Graybeard
Longtime IIIf User
VictorM. said:
You never knew what sort of salesman you would run into at Olden. Evidently the sales staff were members of an enormous extended family, mainly from Europe and the Middle East. I once encountered a saleswoman there who didn't speak English - hard to imagine what whe was doing behind the counter other than qualifying for a green card.
Trius
Waiting on Maitani
Lord, what I'd do for a camera store like the old ones. Graybeard: What a wonderful winter project. I never used Dynachrome, but I was in love with Agfachrome films. Too bad the chromes weren't so stable over time. Great colour balance and contrast.
When Kodachrome goes I'll just give up.
When Kodachrome goes I'll just give up.