davelrods
Established
I guess it's been a couple months now since I plunged back into the dark hole of film of my youth and into rangefinders even with memories the whole way back to my Argus C3 and much more recently Olympus XA days.
The Bessa from a forum member here got me into the best of them all of course and probably close enough to Leica to do everything I could hope for, using its Color Scopar 35mm 2.5 lens and a Jupiter 50mm 1.5 do everything fast lens.
Seems like I got off to a good start. Then I engaged a journey into Russian Leica copies which is mixed at best. Some good possibilities some disasters, some bland mistakes, mostly just fun. The Bessa was a good choice right up front, though, no faulting it for sure.
Here are some observations about the Bessa and I"ll include some about the Russian cameras in another forum:
The Bessa is a picture of perfection. I've been told it has a viewfinder that gives you every last bit of brightness, plenty of precision and range and even the adjustibility of multiple viewfinders. The bright lines are extremely accurate and very easy to see even with glasses. The handling of the camera is light and quick and precise. It makes no mistakes.
All of my trials have been with Fuji 200 and Pro1s color print films. The 200 with hammer out contrast and saturation, the Pro1s softness and detail and total lack of grain even coaxing digital back into some corners. The difference between those two films is dramatic.
I have had both of them processed at Costco and scanned at their highest resolution, often challenging my Nikon film scanner. They truly are quite good.
Hopefully these are some useful observations to share with you.
The Bessa from a forum member here got me into the best of them all of course and probably close enough to Leica to do everything I could hope for, using its Color Scopar 35mm 2.5 lens and a Jupiter 50mm 1.5 do everything fast lens.
Seems like I got off to a good start. Then I engaged a journey into Russian Leica copies which is mixed at best. Some good possibilities some disasters, some bland mistakes, mostly just fun. The Bessa was a good choice right up front, though, no faulting it for sure.
Here are some observations about the Bessa and I"ll include some about the Russian cameras in another forum:
The Bessa is a picture of perfection. I've been told it has a viewfinder that gives you every last bit of brightness, plenty of precision and range and even the adjustibility of multiple viewfinders. The bright lines are extremely accurate and very easy to see even with glasses. The handling of the camera is light and quick and precise. It makes no mistakes.
All of my trials have been with Fuji 200 and Pro1s color print films. The 200 with hammer out contrast and saturation, the Pro1s softness and detail and total lack of grain even coaxing digital back into some corners. The difference between those two films is dramatic.
I have had both of them processed at Costco and scanned at their highest resolution, often challenging my Nikon film scanner. They truly are quite good.
Hopefully these are some useful observations to share with you.
