I developed the first roll of film shot with my Zorki 1C camera yesterday, but found that the negatives were full of white spots due to holes in the cloth shutter. I ordered new shutter curtains on Ebay, and in the meantime I have covered the holes on the old shutter with black paint.
It's a good thing that I got the extra FED 1 camera, I have been using it as a guinea pig for repairs. Last night I fully disassembled it to remove the shutter assembly, and then put it back together. It took a couple of tries to get it back together successfully, but I now know how everything fits together and works.
I finished developing and scanning the film from my test this morning. Here are a couple of samples. I was using Fuji Acros, and ID-11. The Acros seems a little slow for this camera, which made getting a sharp image handheld a little difficult. I'll use Neopan 400 on my next test.
The Acros was too slow because there were lots of shadows. I don't like black shadows, so I expose long enough to bring out the details which would otherwise not be visible, like the grass under the trees, or the woodwork on the bottom of the town gate. I also wanted more depth of field, which required a smaller aperture, and which made my exposure times even slower.
I don't have a separate light meter, but I have an Olympus OM4Ti camera with the spot meter feature. Using the OM4, I can spot meter up to 8 different parts of the scene, and the camera will average the readings out and give me the recommended exposure.
For these pictures I exposed at either 1/40 or 1/60 at F11.
I just loaded the camera with Neopan 400, which should work better.
Zorki 1, holes in shutter...
Posted - Sep 16 2009 : 8:50:03 PM
