Friday, February 24, 2012

Shooting the Finetta IV D

Early on a Thursday morning, Albuquerque's Old Town was mostly deserted, with just me and my Finetta to appreciate the morning light.


I shot a roll of Fomapan 100 which I processed in HC-110, dilution B.  


These shots were mostly at f16 and 1/100.  The shutter release on the Finetta is a little rough, so it is important to pay attention to keeping the camera as steady as possible during exposure to get the most from the Finetar lens.


There is no auto-reset on the Finetta film counter.  Before you load your film you need to turn the Advance  knob to set the counter a couple stops ahead of the number one.  That is best done by pulling up and twisting the knob to hold it in the rewind position, making it easy to turn as needed to reach the starting point.  


The viewfinder is small on the Finetta, but seems bright enough.  The framing seems pretty accurate, and I did not encounter any problem with parallax in the close shots.  The frame spacing on rolls through the Finetta are a little variable from start to finish because the advance spindle seems to turn through an identical arc on each winding.  I did, however, get the full 24 frames from the roll with no over-laps.


I believe my Finetta dates from about 1950.  The company made several earlier and later models, and the last one was quite sophisticated with a motor wind, interchangeable lenses and a focal plane shutter.  While mine is a lot more basic in its feature set, it is still a very serviceable compact camera.



3 comments:

Jim said...

You always find the best shadows.

Norman Montifar said...

Great shots as usual, Mike. My favorite is the sun table and chairs.

Mike said...

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to look and comment. I was pleased to get some decent shots out of the camera that I have had sitting on a shelf for so long. I was also happy to see the Fomapan doing ok as well. I had previously bought some cheap Fomapan that was sold as outdated, but it turned out actually to be defective. I think the stuff offers a nice tonal range, and I think it is worth playing around with.