Fed 3 Virgin

F

fishric

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Feb 22, 2005
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I haven't posted on this site before, the only R.F. in my camera collection being a canonet 28, but this week my new toy arrived. A Fed 3 with N-61 lens. So today I unearthed my old westonmaster, loaded up with kodak gold 400 and the results will be in the gallery as soon as it stops telling me the page is unavailable.
First impressions; The lens is nothing like my Pentax 1.7m none of the subtle tones and fine detail, but the contrast is amazing. It's just what I want for street photography, lots of gritty realism. It will be loaded with Hp5 or Xp2 with some cunning adjustments to the dev times. Will I be able to leave the Pentaxes at home ? Well maybe not the Me super and the 28mm, withdrawel symptoms can make the hand twitchy,
fishric
 
Yeah, that Industar-61 is one of the favorites in the 'contrastiest lens on the planet' contest... very sharp, too!
For something less harsh, more pleasing, you might try a Jupiter-8. And the 35mm J-12 is great for street-style, too!

Roman

PS: BTW, welcome to the forum - looking forward to seeing your pics (AFAIK it takes a few hours after registering before you can upload pictures, and you'll have to log in seperately on the gallery page).
 
Welcome to RFF, fishric! I too have a pile of Pentaxes that don't see as much use, what with the RF mania and all... :)
 
Well I hope nobody is holding their breath, every time I click the submit/upload button I get "Page cannot be displayed". Is it just me?
R>F>
 
One more of us, one less of them!

Yes, the Industar 61LD is my favourite lens on any camera. Produces wonderfully immediate pictures with great punch and drama. I've got the SMC Takumar 1.4M on my Fujica and it is far too sensible.

As you suggest you are relatively new to Feds can I offer one small piece of advice, always keep it wound on. It's all to easy to forget and then start changing the shutter speed which can sod it up.

Have fun!
 
Duncan Ross said:
One more of us, one less of them!

As you suggest you are relatively new to Feds can I offer one small piece of advice, always keep it wound on. It's all to easy to forget and then start changing the shutter speed which can sod it up.

Have fun!
Click to expand...

Or just shoot 200 asa and leave the shutter at 1/200
 
Thanks to all for your tips and advice. As promised, I took the Fed and some HP5 for a walk downtown, it turned out to be more of an FP4 day resulting in even more contrast than before. Real punchy negs despite being careful with time and temp in the dev tank. Also I have a slight film alignment problem, cropping the top of the scene/bottom of the neg. It might be the way I load it .
I can live with little problems like that as I really am enjoying the results. I reckon Robert Doisneau used one of these, cropped the results square and pretended he owned a T.L.R.
I can't show any of these pics yet because as I am still unable to get anything uploaded. What am I doing wrong!
Regards R.F.
 
You mean, the sprocket holes are reaching into the picture frame area? That's quite normal with old Russian (and many other vintage) cameras - apparently, film canister size wasn't standardized until some time in the 1950s, so they came in different heights and cameras were made to on o the other size.
A bit of consolation: even HCB had to deal with that, there are a few of his images with that 'problem'.

Roman
 
It doesn't go as far as the sprocket holes, I'm not too worried about it, just another interesting quirk.. I'll pretend I'm using a 45mm lens. My main frustration is failure to upload anything. Maybe the site is too busy or my scans/files are too big.
Cheers,
R.F.
 
Do you have a J-12 yet? You might notice another phenomenon (that is true for many cameras/lenses but especially pronounced with the J-12): Different lenses produce different-sized negs - pics taken with the J-12 are about 0.5 to 1 mm wider and longer than those taken with a J-8. I only noticed this after I tried including the frame edges with some prints, and while those from J-8 images gave nice broad edges with ma negative carrier, I only got a fine black line with J-12 negs. The reason is the diferrent angle of light-rays hitting the film surface, I guess...

Roman
 
About 600 pixels wide on the longest dimension (with 72 dpi resolution sufficient for web pics, but anything up to about 300 dpi will also work); then even with 'maximum' .jpg quality, your file sizes should be in the 100 to 150 kb range.

Roman
 
Thanks for all the advice, I seem to have made a breakthrough with your help. No longer a Fed3 virgin.
Thanks again,
R.F. aka fishric
 
Well the the saga continues, I am really enjoying this new toy. I downloaded the instructions in advance so I knew about the 'wind on before shutter speed' routine. My only fear was 36 frames of lens cap, but that hasn't happened (yet).
I must remember to check the light meter more often instead of my usual 'f8 and be there' routine.
My next move will be a 35mm and maybe a collapsable 50mm, and a Eurostar trip to Paris or Nantes for some street photography (err sorry darling I meant shopping).
I am really grateful for the help and advice I have had from this forum.
Thankyou,
R.F. (fishric)
 
Jupiter-12

Jupiter-12

The saga continues, my 35mm arrived today from DVDtechnik only seven days from clicking on the wibbly wobbly web. It's very clean and smooth operating in slinky black and the hooded front should help the contrast. When moving the focus off infinity the cap pops off, saving me from those annoying blanks on the neg strip. This may prove a little awkward as I like to set 35s on f8 and 4metres for most of my photo rambles.
I intend to take it for a walk later with some Delta 100 but the weather seems to be turning to HP5. I may upload something when the negs dry,
Regards,
R.F. (AKA fishric)
 
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