I have had my eye on the Zorki 6 for a long time. The flip-open back makes film loading easier than in the previous Barnack-style models, as well as facilitating lens collimation. Another feature that is particularly attractive to me is the diopter adjustment for the viewfinder. When an ebay posting came up with a $30 pricetag, there was no hesitation on my part.
I decided to test the camera at the Albuquerque Rail Yards which becomes a farmers and crafts market on the weekends. Thanks to the generosity of Jim Grey I was able to use a roll of Agent Shadow 400 to get the job done. The camera seemed to perform faultlessly. The Industar 26M was smooth in operation and its click-stop aperture is a nice feature.
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There was a small light leak apparent in the bottom corners of the images, but I think that will be easily remedied with a small foam strip. I'm looking forward now to trying some of my other FED, Jupiter and Industar lenses with the camera.
I sat down at my computer to scan the roll of film when we got home from the Rail Yards and discovered that my old Dell Windows XP machine which I have used for years for scanning and image editing would not boot. A visit to the computer repair shop produced a diagnosis of a dead motherboard. That came as quite a shock, and I spent the better part of the next day sorting out hardware and software choices. As it turned out, I was able to connect my Epson 2450 Photo scanner to my old 2010 IMAC. I tried a MAC-compatible version of Silverfast scanning software, but it seemed impossibly slow and awkward to use.
I finally settled on Viewscan for scanning and it seems pretty close to my old Windows version of Silverfast in terms of features and speed. For image editing I currently only have GIMP-2.10. That program seems to have all the needed operational features, but in use they are totally unintuitive. I'll eventually learn enough about GIMP to get most of what I want from an editor, but I'm going to start looking hard for a version of Photoshop CS2 that will run on the IMAC. So, while I briefly had some doubts that film photography was going to continue being an option for me, it seems I am still in the game.
VueScan markets itself as the lost driver software for any scanner so you can use it on your newest computer. It's a big part of why my wife can use my old Epson scanner on her laptop. What is your newest computer? I wonder whether you can use your scanner on it through VueScan.
ReplyDeleteI have VueScan running on my 2010 IMAC. It works ok. The remaining issue is what to do about image editing. I really liked Photoshop CS2 on the old XP machine, but I don't have it for the IMAC and the installation disks on ebay for CS2 run about a hundred bucks. I'll just limp along with GIMP until I can find something affordable that I like better.
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