Bronica S2A - Got my 1st 2 rolls back

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ishpop

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Man, I love the viewfinder on this camera. I was enjoying my Rolleiflex and Yashica but this to me is a vast improvement. The thing is heavy as hell, but I am sort of enjoying its girth. The shutter sound is really satisfying, thhwwackkk! Heh, definitely not a silent camera.

A few samples:

Kodak E100VS
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Kodak E100VS
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Kodak Portra 160NC
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Kodak Portra 160NC
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Wonderful!

Wonderful!

I have an S2 and a C. Here's a couple of shots with the 50mm.
Bronicas are not big but heavy. When they go off birds fly and little kids cry. I really don't think they can be hand held for less than a 60th (and with a lot of light to boot). These two shots are Velvia. I'll never sell mine. They're wonderful and have terrific glass.
 

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I recently bought a Bronica s2a. In the middle of my first roll now.

I wonder how slow it can go. It does go off with a thwaccck! but I don't think it is particularly shaky. I will try to do some macro shots with it (f/22, 1/8 sort of thing) and test the B setting with night scenes. I wonder if any brave soul has tried that before.

The lack of mirror lockup is regretful but the camera is nice and ages ahead of the Swedes in terms of technology.
 
The S2a has a particularly complicated shutter system to account for the falling mirror design, hence the big thwack, but I've made an audio recording of the sound and looked at the waveform, and it seems that most of the thwacking is happening after the exposure.

With a normal SLR, the mirror flips up to block out light from the view finder. On the S2a and earlier Bronicas, the mirror slides forward and down to make more room for wide lenses to protrude into the mirror box, so that they require less retrofocus correction than a typical SLR lens that has to make way for the mirror. That means that there is an extra shutter curtain to block light from entering through the viewfinder. The mirror also has to slip into a black metal sheath to keep light from reflecting up from the mirror onto the film. Then after the exposure, the focal plane shutter closes, the mirror returns to the viewing position, and the viewfinder curtain opens.
 
Well, I have some desert shots where I was stopped down to keep the foreground flowers in focus, and I didn't have a lot of luck at 1/30th. One would think that with that much mass it would have been more of an immovable mass. I really haven't heard the shutter separate from the entire mirror flop, but now I'll listen more carefully at longer exposures. At 1/4 second I would think that the two sounds would be very distinct.

The Nikkor glass is the best, and a has a Zeiss look to it.
 
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