Jarvis
in quest of "the light"
Over the past weeks I had the opportunity to test 3 cameras, each from early morning until late afternoon. A friendly second hand photo shop her in Salzburg provided this great service.
As can be read in earlier threads on this forum I was interested in switching to Leica M, I also envisioned a Bessa 3R . What I was looking for was a camera which would give me the opportunity to fully manually operate, somewhat like the operation on my Hasselblad 503CX which I thoroughly enjoy, but is to bulky to lug around all of the time. Principally I was in the market for a 135 50mm setup. I contemplated 35mm, but 50mm suits my needs better, I have this “standard” lens vision in my head, I always shoor 80mm on hasselblad, although I have the 50mm as well.
My test procedure would include a standard delta 100 and 400 pushed to 1600 which I would develop myself, Provia 100 slidefilm and Fuji reala normal colour picture film.
My first day was spent with a relatively young M6 TTL and a standard 50mm summicron, the touch and feel was great, feels like solid engineering, taking the lens off and putting it back on again felt good and tight, the looks where good to and the handling was a bit fidgety for my huge hands. At first my first thought was to skip the other test and buy this directly, I’me glad I didn’t once I had to change the film, this is a hassle, no matter how one tries to compensate this action with numerous arguments that you’ll get use to it… it is a hassle. Secondly, compared to the other exposures I sincerely doubt that the shutter speed is accurate, this is particularly noticeable when using provia 100, B&W exposures were great I need to say, I was also confronted with a max shutterspeed of 1/1000 since it was a beautiful sunny day and I like to shoot at large app’s. Grey filters would do the job … but still….
A 1799€ cameraset with which I wasn’t completely pleased, but would do … Thinking whilst lying in my bed thinking about the events of the day that if the camera was called Canon for instance I would of passed it by immediately.
Second day was the bessa 3R test, I picked it up and put it down, simply doesn’t feel like a real camera compared to the leica anyway, but still I took it out and made the pics with a colour scopar lens, I must say the slides, film and B&w exposures impressed me, over the line as good as leica’s. But I wasn’t at all pleased with the touch and feel thing, I am a clumsy 6”10 guy with quite a bad hand-eye coordination, I will bump, bang and drop my camera multiple times and the Bessa according to my feeling would live up to that……
Absolute impasse, the Bessa was to flimsy, but good pics, the Leica to harsh and ancient….
The salesman at the shop came up with an alternative… Nikon FM3a with a 50mm 1,4 …. I took it out for the day, shot film, replaced fim and … the results were great, the touch and feel of the FM3a is great, the handling is great the exposures are different to the Leica ones but I like them… so instead of the rangefinder I ended up with the FM3a and 50mm 1,4 and best of all this was the cheapest setup … camera and lens in original packaging, 17 months old, not a mark on neither, B&W filter set Pol, UV, Sky, Red, Orange, Yellow, for 825€ … I am a happy man…… not only because of the FM3a but that I am cured of this Leica thing I had, all this camera has is the name and the looks…. certainly not the technology ……
As can be read in earlier threads on this forum I was interested in switching to Leica M, I also envisioned a Bessa 3R . What I was looking for was a camera which would give me the opportunity to fully manually operate, somewhat like the operation on my Hasselblad 503CX which I thoroughly enjoy, but is to bulky to lug around all of the time. Principally I was in the market for a 135 50mm setup. I contemplated 35mm, but 50mm suits my needs better, I have this “standard” lens vision in my head, I always shoor 80mm on hasselblad, although I have the 50mm as well.
My test procedure would include a standard delta 100 and 400 pushed to 1600 which I would develop myself, Provia 100 slidefilm and Fuji reala normal colour picture film.
My first day was spent with a relatively young M6 TTL and a standard 50mm summicron, the touch and feel was great, feels like solid engineering, taking the lens off and putting it back on again felt good and tight, the looks where good to and the handling was a bit fidgety for my huge hands. At first my first thought was to skip the other test and buy this directly, I’me glad I didn’t once I had to change the film, this is a hassle, no matter how one tries to compensate this action with numerous arguments that you’ll get use to it… it is a hassle. Secondly, compared to the other exposures I sincerely doubt that the shutter speed is accurate, this is particularly noticeable when using provia 100, B&W exposures were great I need to say, I was also confronted with a max shutterspeed of 1/1000 since it was a beautiful sunny day and I like to shoot at large app’s. Grey filters would do the job … but still….
A 1799€ cameraset with which I wasn’t completely pleased, but would do … Thinking whilst lying in my bed thinking about the events of the day that if the camera was called Canon for instance I would of passed it by immediately.
Second day was the bessa 3R test, I picked it up and put it down, simply doesn’t feel like a real camera compared to the leica anyway, but still I took it out and made the pics with a colour scopar lens, I must say the slides, film and B&w exposures impressed me, over the line as good as leica’s. But I wasn’t at all pleased with the touch and feel thing, I am a clumsy 6”10 guy with quite a bad hand-eye coordination, I will bump, bang and drop my camera multiple times and the Bessa according to my feeling would live up to that……
Absolute impasse, the Bessa was to flimsy, but good pics, the Leica to harsh and ancient….
The salesman at the shop came up with an alternative… Nikon FM3a with a 50mm 1,4 …. I took it out for the day, shot film, replaced fim and … the results were great, the touch and feel of the FM3a is great, the handling is great the exposures are different to the Leica ones but I like them… so instead of the rangefinder I ended up with the FM3a and 50mm 1,4 and best of all this was the cheapest setup … camera and lens in original packaging, 17 months old, not a mark on neither, B&W filter set Pol, UV, Sky, Red, Orange, Yellow, for 825€ … I am a happy man…… not only because of the FM3a but that I am cured of this Leica thing I had, all this camera has is the name and the looks…. certainly not the technology ……
