John Noble
Established
- Local time
- 2:03 PM
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 101
Well, this RF newbie's CL ("gateway drug") adventures continue.
Old machines are cool: they were usually designed with maintenance in mind. On the other hand, they usually needed a lot of maintenance.
My CL is no different (there are many CLs, but this one is mine...). Mine arrived with some vertical RF misalignment, but a little searching in The Google turned up this helpful pointer. A little judicious tweaking was required, but the RF is now dead on, as far as I can tell: wide open, minimum focus shots from a test roll look pretty darn good.
The camera's meter was highly suspect after my second test roll came back seriously overexposed. The previous owner wasn't sure if it was calibrated to the alkaline battery that was installed when he got it; I think it read a consistent 2 stops or so low. I tracked down a local source for the Wein PX625 replacment and popped it in ... now it was obviously WAY off, so maybe it had been set up for alkalines. No matter, because armed with this calibration tutorial, some tools, a L-308S, and a do-or-die DIY ethic, I was able to dial it in so closely that the CL's meter is now usable as a semi-spot companion to my Sekonic. I'll probably change to silver oxide when the Wein wears out, but it's nice to know that I don't need to spend $$ or, more importantly, be without a camera for weeks when the meter needs a little tweaking.
Oh, I also grabbed a CV 50mm f2 Heliar Classic. The short mini-report: feels heavy/dense (c. 300g!), collapses smoothly, nice bayonet hood, focusing is a little less than smooth-like-buttah, takes really nice pictures. I was prepared to spend three or four times this much to get the look I was after, but I'm glad I didn't have to. I'll post some examples in the CV forum when I have something worthwhile and well-exposed to show.
Among the test shots were a series of four or five handheld snaps taken wide open with the Heliar at 1/15s at a distance of maybe five feet. I commented to my wife when I took them that we'd have some nice blurry pictures but I needed test the slow shutter speeds. How wrong I was: only one of them was unusable due to camera shake! For the benefit of those considering RF newbie-ness, the hype is true: you can handhold these quiet little cameras at shutter speeds unknown in the SLR world. The rest of you olde pharts have known this for a long time, I'm sure, but allow me to be excited for you. It's quite a relevation, to say the least.
In our next episode, our hero tries to see if he can get away with using a CV 21mm P without an external VF. Is it really true that there's more than 90 degrees of view buried in the grungy corners of a CL's viewfinder? Or will our hero simply be heroic and claim that it's just quicker to use hyperfocal and guesstiframing so as not to miss The Critical Moment?
Stay tuned...
Old machines are cool: they were usually designed with maintenance in mind. On the other hand, they usually needed a lot of maintenance.
My CL is no different (there are many CLs, but this one is mine...). Mine arrived with some vertical RF misalignment, but a little searching in The Google turned up this helpful pointer. A little judicious tweaking was required, but the RF is now dead on, as far as I can tell: wide open, minimum focus shots from a test roll look pretty darn good.
The camera's meter was highly suspect after my second test roll came back seriously overexposed. The previous owner wasn't sure if it was calibrated to the alkaline battery that was installed when he got it; I think it read a consistent 2 stops or so low. I tracked down a local source for the Wein PX625 replacment and popped it in ... now it was obviously WAY off, so maybe it had been set up for alkalines. No matter, because armed with this calibration tutorial, some tools, a L-308S, and a do-or-die DIY ethic, I was able to dial it in so closely that the CL's meter is now usable as a semi-spot companion to my Sekonic. I'll probably change to silver oxide when the Wein wears out, but it's nice to know that I don't need to spend $$ or, more importantly, be without a camera for weeks when the meter needs a little tweaking.
Oh, I also grabbed a CV 50mm f2 Heliar Classic. The short mini-report: feels heavy/dense (c. 300g!), collapses smoothly, nice bayonet hood, focusing is a little less than smooth-like-buttah, takes really nice pictures. I was prepared to spend three or four times this much to get the look I was after, but I'm glad I didn't have to. I'll post some examples in the CV forum when I have something worthwhile and well-exposed to show.
Among the test shots were a series of four or five handheld snaps taken wide open with the Heliar at 1/15s at a distance of maybe five feet. I commented to my wife when I took them that we'd have some nice blurry pictures but I needed test the slow shutter speeds. How wrong I was: only one of them was unusable due to camera shake! For the benefit of those considering RF newbie-ness, the hype is true: you can handhold these quiet little cameras at shutter speeds unknown in the SLR world. The rest of you olde pharts have known this for a long time, I'm sure, but allow me to be excited for you. It's quite a relevation, to say the least.
In our next episode, our hero tries to see if he can get away with using a CV 21mm P without an external VF. Is it really true that there's more than 90 degrees of view buried in the grungy corners of a CL's viewfinder? Or will our hero simply be heroic and claim that it's just quicker to use hyperfocal and guesstiframing so as not to miss The Critical Moment?
Stay tuned...
