another new comer, soon with Bessa R3A

[jlindstrom]

Hello everybody,

Yet another "lurker" reporting for duty. I'm about to get my very own Bessa R3A with 40mm f1.4 Nokton this thursday. I'm already on hot coals...

My background reg. photography is purely hobbyist without anykind of ambition nor experience of any kind of pro or even semi-pro stuff.. Not my ballpark, I just enjoy snapping away and hopefully bring some joy to other ppl's lives as well with my photos. So far I've only shot digital with various p&s, compact & DSLR stuff.. mostly Nikon.

I used to be very happy with digital but lately have become very annoyed with the huge size of quality dslr's. So with a little help from a friend I ended up trying his Leica M6 rangefinder and generally got curious about rangefinders.. Since money is definately an issue, I ended up going for a decent second hand Bessa package.

I already got plenty of film in stock, managed to get some out of date Kodak UC 400 really cheap. The film is only 2 months over and I got it for 50c per roll (that's euro cents btw). Got it now safely stashed away in my freezer.. I reckon that's not a bad price for film?? 🙂 Ended up getting 50 rolls of it so it's gonna be plenty for awhile... And that same Leica shooting friend of mine is likely going to buy some off my hands anyway.

Well, didn't really have much to say.. decided to quickly post a brief intro and say "hi" to everybody. It's already been a pleasure reading these forums and hopefully will continue that way later on as well. I'll try and post some stuff later when I get the bessa in my hands.

//Juha

 

[paulo.maxim]

Hi Juha,
welcome to RFF!
im also new on the Rangefinder cameras, and my background is mostly DSLR.
I bought a Bessa R and im loving it!
50cents sounds a very good price for 2months outdated film.
have fun with your Bessa R3A
Cheers

 

[fixbones]

I might as well join in.
I am rather new here too. Started with a Konica Hexar AF 2 months ago.
Now, my D700 is being auctioned on Ebay as we speak and i am hoping to purchase a Zeiss Ikon ZM and the sonnar 50mm f1.5 soon!!

Oh... WELCOME !!! This forum is Great!!!

 

[hkrz]

Welcome!

I've also just got bitten by the RF bug and also by the R3A 🙂! It's a very nice camera, I'm sure it will serve you well. Rather refreshing after a DSLR ( I mean size 😉 )

Happy shooting!

 

[bmattock]

Welcome, Juha.

You don't need to slam digital cameras to be welcome here. In fact, some might tell you that digital haters will have a better time at www.apug.org.

 

[jlindstrom]

Thanks for the welcome guys!

One more night to go and tomorrow I'm getting it.. phew!

Well, enough of that 🙂 Just decided to comment a bit on the last post. I didn't mean to sound like bashing digital cams wether compact or dslr. I still have both at least for the time being.

I have a Nikon D90 with 16-85 VR for the occasions where slr's shine and also a Leica DL4 which as a digital compact I absolutely love. I have taken some great photos with it and plan to take some more in the future.

The comments I made about decent dslr's being bulky & big are more or less just the reasoning behind getting the bessa, besides the whole RF experience. And by decent dslr's I ment rigs like D300, D700 etc etc (from other brands as well, I just happen to know about Nikon)... No pun or bashing was intended, one just can't deny that they are big & bulky compared to many RF's.

Experiences reg. RF's are from my part very limited but I find them very interesting. I guess I'm also looking for a more relaxed experience photography wise. I'm the first to admit that I'm a total gearhead and maybe that's also why dsrl's don't do too good for me.. I'm easily distracted by their technical aspects from the actual picture taking. No, I don't meant I'm a pixel peeper but rather always looking to get a more advanced model with better iso performance or autofocus or what-no... Maybe that's why I felt somewhat liberated shooting with that earlier mentioned M6 I managed to borrow.

I'm actually hoping/wishing that shooting with the Bessa will be nice enough to make the D90 redundant thus justifying selling it to get more lenses for the Bessa.. That would be ideal. But as mentioned above my RF experiences are limited and thus it just might be a phase I'm going through. Keeping that in mind, it's a good thing I still have that D90 as an option. In that respect I have all my bases covered:

1) perfect p&s for those quick shoots
2) a dslr in case I need more tele or fast autofocus
3) a RF which I can really relax with while shooting, kind of slow things down and enjoy the experience - not just be the man behind camera at events etc

Hope this little rant makes sense for at least some of you (though it doesn't have to, they're my thoughts and make sense to me anyway 😀 ).

//Juha

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Do you plan to process your own film?

 

[jlindstrom]

No, at least for the beginning I'll be using a local lab where I'll have the film processed and scanned. The second step will be getting a decent scanner and so on...

That friend of mine with all the nice Leicas is doing his own processing and has promised to show me the bells and whistles of it, so at somepoint I'll watch him do it and then make my mind on how to go forwards. From what I've heard from him developing my own BW stuff could be an option in the future as that process is quite easy and also not many labs develop BW anymore.

But as said, first thing is to get going with the camera, "rangefindering" and analog photography. After that it's time to focus on the scanning and developing side of things.

//Juha