[Cuthbert]

Cool camera. Does the Mir 20 come with it?


Steve

Bought this nice set:



From Fedka for $270 shipped here in London...it just lacks the long lenses (Jupiter 9 and 11) that however can be found for cheap on ebay.

However, since you two are the Official Supporters of Pentax Noobs of the Board, I've another question for you: this saturday I took the ugly Mx (I tried to clean her but the poor gal should have had a difficult life) downtown and shot a pair of rolls to check if she worked...and she worked, better than I expected...BUT in three shot I noticed a strange phenomena.





Over 37 shots on the Portra 400 three had this sort of band of fire, the others were fine:



No problem on the Ultramax, the fil formely known as Gold Color 400besides the fact that it's a shitty film,of course, and all the shades look like black spots on the pictures and everything is turned towards blue:





So what's your prognosis, doctors? Is the MX sick?

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Last edited by Cuthbert; 12-04-2013 at 02:42 PM.

[stevebrot]

Bought this nice set:



From Fedka for $270 shipped here in London...it just lacks the long lenses (Jupiter 9 and 11) that however can be found for cheap on ebay.

Cool. Two normal lenses? The Helios 81 Automat 50/2 (front and center) would have been bundled with the camera. The other 50/2 on the right looks to be a Helios 61 Automat 50/2 from a Kiev 10.

Looks like a great kit. When you get some photos, be sure to post them here, particularly if you find a J-9 and J-11 to match.


Steve

[Cuthbert]

Cool. Two normal lenses? The Helios 81 Automat 50/2 (front and center) would have been bundled with the camera. The other 50/2 on the right looks to be a Helios 61 Automat 50/2 from a Kiev 10.

Looks like a great kit. When you get some photos, be sure to post them here, particularly if you find a J-9 and J-11 to match.


Steve

Yes the Helios 81 does have problems when the camera is in Automat mode so Yuri added the 65 for free, I'm curious to see how it works because it seems to be a very sophisticad camera for that era with automatic exposure (shutter priority) totally mechanical and a good system...there were other lenses available like a protype 50 mm f1.5, a zoom and other lenses available in M42 like the Tair 11A and Granit 11, but they are impossible to find.

[stevebrot]

I'm curious to see how it works because it seems to be a very sophisticad camera for that era with automatic exposure (shutter priority) totally mechanical and a good system

I too would be curious. Having Tv exposure automation was not uncommon at the time of the original Kiev 10 (mid-to-late 1960s) for Japanese-made consumer rangefinder cameras and at least one pro-level SLR (Konica Auto-Reflex). By the time of the Kiev 15 TLL (1980), the feature was fairly common in cameras such as the Canon AE-1. That being said, such a feature was highly unusual for a Soviet camera at the time. The mechanism is actually pretty simple and consists of a mechanical stop for the aperture control that is driven by the metering system. The position of the stop is determined by light brightness biased by the set shutter speed and ASA (ISO) film speed setting). Depressing the shutter release moves the aperture control against the stop.


Steve

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Last edited by stevebrot; 12-04-2013 at 04:43 PM.

[Cuthbert]

Actually for what I've seen most of the japanese cameras of that era were aperture priority driven, not shutter priority...for getting SP in a Canon F-1 New you have to have a special viewfinder AND the motordrive, while AP is given with the camera like the K2.

Having said that the 15TEE is basically a modified 10 with a better lightmeter (no selenium cell) and a more sophisticated ASA/GOST dial and entered in production in 1974, so long time before the Canon A-1, the problem with these cameras is that if they are broken nobody can repair them, this is true for the Automat mode but also for the sophisticated fan shutter...hopefullly everything will go well.

However coming back in the Pentax territory what do you think about the stripe of fire in the pics above?

[arnold]

However coming back in the Pentax territory what do you think about the stripe of fire in the pics above?

Looks like a light leak at the door hinge or latch side.

[Cuthbert]

Looks like a light leak at the door hinge or latch side.

Just on three exposures?

[stevebrot]

However coming back in the Pentax territory what do you think about the stripe of fire in the pics above?

Light leak through the canister felt after the film was removed from the camera.

As for the prevalence of types of autoexposure...the shutter-priority cameras came first in the mid-to-late 1960s (various rangefinders, Konica SLRs) followed by the aperture-priority models in the 70s (Pentax, Ricoh, Nikon, Minolta, and a host of others) and electronically controlled shutter-priority from Canon (mid-to-late 1970s). At least, that is the sequence I remember seeing them on the shelves.


Steve

[Cuthbert]

I too would be curious. Having Tv exposure automation was not uncommon at the time of the original Kiev 10 (mid-to-late 1960s) for Japanese-made consumer rangefinder cameras and at least one pro-level SLR (Konica Auto-Reflex). By the time of the Kiev 15 TLL (1980), the feature was fairly common in cameras such as the Canon AE-1. That being said, such a feature was highly unusual for a Soviet camera at the time. The mechanism is actually pretty simple and consists of a mechanical stop for the aperture control that is driven by the metering system. The position of the stop is determined by light brightness biased by the set shutter speed and ASA (ISO) film speed setting). Depressing the shutter release moves the aperture control against the stop.


Steve

The Kiev 15 has been kidnapped by the customs that probably think it's a sort of old weapon or some spare parts to make a nuke, it hasn't been released yet, but however the Pentax K1000 has arrived last week, on Saturday I went to test it and here by your request there are the results on print:

Finally I was able to get some decent self portraits:





I love this one, even if I wasn't capable to frame it well:



I tested the macro capabilities of the Vivitar zoom, not too bad:





The K55mm f2.0 is luminous enough for night landscape with hand held camera:

Sharpness looks good too:



At Lothlorien, ehm, Hyde Park I found two bullying swans almost attacking old ladies for food:



In color the lens is good too:





However bokeh is not that special:



Should I stay or should I go?



Anyway, I think that you guys have enough of my bad pics at this point, I can say that now I see why the K1000 gained this reputation, even if it's a basic camera what it offers is pretty high level: the lightmeter is accurate, the construction is rugged (at least for this Japanese one, I handlese a MIHK serial number 799XXXX that felt solid but significantly lighter), the 55 mm is a good lens....all of this for $45 plus shipping sounds a good deal to me.

[PPPPPP42]

I also bought a K1000 simply because it was the thing to do and I don't regret it, its simplicity is a joy to use and I love match stick meters. I usually use my Super Program however because the additional 1/2000 shutter speed is super handy with my preferred Ilford Delta 400 film and the light meter is more advanced overall.

So on the topic of that K1000 serial database does anyone else have trouble making sense of the PDFs?
I was under the impression that production started in Japan, then got moved to Hong Kong (made in Japan dissapeared) then was moved to China and cost saving measures were introduced (plastic parts) and I think thats when the Asahi stuff got dropped. But looking in the PDF that is supposed to show things by production order rather than just straight serial number, the production locations are all mixed up and there are a lot of plastic parts non Asahi cameras listed in the 2nd production run.
It looks like they were recycling serials or at least unused serial number blocks in the Chinese production run and that wasn't accounted for or something.
I was just curious because with a brown SE non-MIJ 6029147 I seem to have a rather low serial number for the "2nd production run" apparently the lowest serial number on the whole list outside of one Chinese featured camera that I think is in the wrong category. Looks like mine is 1977 production most likely.