FED 3

The FED 3 was produced in the Soviet Union from 1962 to 1980. The long production run can be accounted for by the incorporation of a number of design enhancements that were lacking in earlier Leica-copy cameras. In addition to a solid, well-made feel and uncluttered look, the camera by 1964 had a rapid advance lever. There was also a removable back, a fixed take-up spool, and shutter speeds from 1 to 1/500 seconds. A variety of Leica-thread-mount (LTM) normal lenses were supplied with the camera over the years; mine came with an Industar 3.5/50. The viewfinder/rangefinder is reasonably bright, but lacks paralax correction or a bright-line frame. Lateral adjustment of the rangefinder on this camera is done very easily with an adjustment screw from the camera front after the removal of a small cover screw.

While a lot of thought went into the FED 3 design to make it better than its predecessors, there are a couple small feature changes which many users would have liked. A rewind crank would have speeded things up, though that may have been purposefully omitted in the interest of robustness. From a functional standpoint, the omission of strap lugs may be more significant, and that is compounded by a never-ready case with the top section riveted to the back of the case. One way to sling the camera more handily around your neck is to cut around the rivet/snap to separate the back from the rest of the case; there's an illustration at Matt Denton's site of that procedure.

Perhaps the best reason for getting one of the LTM cameras is the availability of some very nice and inexpensive Soviet-era lenses, most of them copies of Leitz and Zeiss designs. I received as a gift from a generous on-line friend the highly regarded 2.8/55 Industar-61. I also obtained a recently-serviced 3.5/35mm Jupiter 12 in trade for my old Dolly Super Sport. The latter wide-angle lens is one of my favorites for 35mm work, and I already had a very nice accessory viewfinder which I had used with my other FSU camera, a Kiev IIa.

I've been impressed with the FED 3's operation in the short time I have worked with it. The film advance is quite smooth and snaps back well. The shutter appears accurate, and it seems somewhat less noisy than earlier models. The camera's controls are easily accessed. Like most of these Soviet era cameras, the FED 3 shutter demands that the shutter be cocked with the film advance prior to setting or changing the shutter speed. I did see small amount of light leakage evident along one edge of the film I put through the camera. According to a note a saw by Rick Oleson, the light may be coming in over the edge of the shutter curtain. I added a little light seal along the shutter curtain channel, but haven't yet tested the effectiveness of that fix. I later learned that an easier fix might just be to put on a lens cap before rewinding the film.

Some examples from the FED 3 fitted with the Jupiter 12 lens:

A copy of the FED 3 Owner's Manual may be viewed on line.

C-41 B&W

Digging around in my refrigerator bin for film, I found a roll of Kodak B&W 400, a C-41 film that is processed in the same chemistry as color negative film.  I shot the roll in my Kodak Retina lla and took it along with the color roll from my Vito II to Picture Perfect.

Railrunner -- Santa Fe to Belen

Albuquerque Station

Explora -- the Albuquerque Science Museum

Tiguex Park and the NM Museum of Natural History

I used to shoot a lot of this stuff as it was cheap, nearly grainless and wide-latitude.  You can still get it on line, but the cheapest I've seen is $6.50 per roll at B&H Photo Video.  Add in shipping and processing, and you're looking at fifteen bucks for a roll of negs -- more than I'm willing to spend these days.  It does make some nice pictures, though.

Local Color

The only place I know in Albuquerque that will still locally process film is Picture Perfect at the corner of Menaul and Juan Tabó.

Picture Perfect will process any kind of film.  If you get it in early, you might get it back the same day.  They also do digital, and they will accept work by snail mail or email.  Film processing costs $7 per roll.

Here are some samples of their processing, shot with my Voigtlander Vito II on Fuji 200:

I only used Picture Perfect a few times in the past when I could still go down to my corner Walgreen's and get my color negs back in as little as twenty minutes.  Of course, that was only good for 35mm, and Picture Perfect could dunk my medium format color and get it back within a day.  I would have been happy to use them for all my color work, but they are located clear across town and there was considerable added time and expense as a result.  Now, I'm having to rethink the process since Walgreens, Walmart, Target, CVS and Costco have all gotten out of the 1-hour film business.

Still Special

I took my No.1 Autographic Kodak Special to the Albuquerque train station.  The Amtrak Express was being fueled for a trip north.

With its high-res Tessar lens and a snappy Wollensak Optimo shutter, this is my favorite Kodak.  I would shoot it more often were it not for a persistent light leak that I haven't been able to stamp out.  That is not for lack of trying.  The commonest source of such problems is pinholes in the bellows.  I did find some early on which I was able to eliminate with opaque fabric paint.

My usual routine in looking for the source of light leaks is to extend the bellows, open the camera back and hold the camera up to the sun.  Usually, pinhole leaks will be visible as bright specks of light in the corners and creases of the bellows.  Not all can be found in that way, however, so I usually then go on to inspect the bellows in the dark using a small led light like the keychain flashlight above.  Having meticulously examined the bellows, I'm suspicious that the light leak in the No.1 Special may be somewhere in the slide-open back.  I've added some light seal material to the back as well as half-covering the ruby window from the inside and putting a strip of black tape over the outside which I lift only when advancing the film.  No luck so far.

Goodbye to Craig

Craig Nelson was a fine photographer and a fine fellow. He had an insatiable urge to connect with other people which fueled his development as a photographer.  He shared his passions freely, enriched many lives and left behind an inspiring body of work.

CE Nelson at Flickr

Tributes to Craig at Nelsonfoto Forums

Shooting the Kodak Bantam

I stopped up the last pinhole in the bellows of my Kodak Bantam 4.5 model and ran some TMAX 100 through it.

The image quality showed some definite improvement without the light leaks.  The Anastigmat Special lens on this camera is the same as the one on the later Flash model, but it lacks the bluish coating, which may result in just a little less sharpness, partly due to a greater tendency to flare the highlights.

I again used 35mm film in the camera, which is actually designed to take small rolls of 828 roll film.  The ends of a strip of 35mm is taped to both spools and loaded in darkness into the camera.  The reel is a tight fit on the take-up side, and requires some patience to get properly seated without being able to see what you are doing.  Some care must be taken at the same time so as to not put too much stress on the spool end disks which are a press-fit onto the spindles and can be dislodged.

In shooting 35mm film in the 828 Bantam, it is useful to bear in mind that the bottom film rail is narrower than the top.  The result is that the image will be displaced vertically and the bottom row of sprocket holes will intrude into the image.  To compensate for that difference and properly center the image, it is necessary to aim a little high in framing your subject.

the weather

The weatherman was threatening low temps and snow, so we decided to get out for a short bike ride.  We drove down to the ponds at Tingley Beach.  Margaret took along a spare loaf of bread that didn't make it into the turkey.  The ducks and geese were appreciative of the gesture.

Ojito

I had a fine walk yesterday in the Ojito Wilderness about forty minutes north of Albuquerque.

B-47

The Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque has recently added a B-47 to its outdoor exhibit space.  The aircraft was the first U.S. operational jet bomber.  It was very close in length and wingspan to the WWII B-29, but the performance capabilities provided by the jet engines were truly revolutionary.

Specifications (B-29) First flight: 21 Sept. 1942 Crew: 11 Length: 99 ft Wingspan: 141 ft 3 in Maximum speed: 357 mph Rate of climb: 900 ft/min

Specifications (B-47E) First flight: 7 Dec. 1947 Crew: 3 Length: 107 ft Wingspan: 116 Maximum speed: 607 mph Rate of climb: 4,660 ft/min

Wikipedia has very thorough articles on both the B-29 and the B-47.

Questions

If you tell someone in the course of a conversation that you are a photographer, there are a couple of questions that are likely to follow.  The most common is probably "What do you like to take pictures of?".  Not very good English, perhaps, but that is usually the way it is phrased.

My answer to that question is usually "Anything at all"; sometimes I also specify that I never make family snapshots.  Those responses are clearly never satisfying for the questioner, but I'll guess they would be preferred to what I am really thinking about as a response, which is something like giving the person a wake-up kick to the shins.

 Another question I have faced -- of a more philosophical nature -- is "What makes a good photo?".

That question is asking for guidance as to how one might judge a photograph to be  "good" or "bad".  My response to that is usually something like a shrug of a shoulder.  I know that people are just mostly trying to make polite conversation around the topic.  Still, it is tempting to point out that the question of whether photography is an art has long been settled, and there are whole libraries devoted to what constitutes good art.

I suppose I should come up with some standard answers to these questions that are a little less bellicose and a little more representative of my actual feelings about the issues.  I have actually advocated more than a few times for the idea that critical thinking and communication about art is a skill that can be learned.  In that regard, I always cite the fine little book by Terry Barrett, Criticizing Photographs.

Speaking as a photographer rather than as a critic, however, I do not think it is really incumbent on me to provide explanations.  My role, as I see it, is to offer up the images.  The creation of those images is not, for the most part, the result of an analytic process.  Rather, the images flow out of a lifetime of visual engagement and expression.

A goal I set for my photographic efforts about ten years ago was to make the best pictures possible with each of the old cameras in my collection.  Many of the pictures that appear in my blog postings are illustrations of technical issues.  The pictures that I feel somehow transcend technical competence are posted to to the Flickr photo-sharing site.  So, people who might want to know what subjects interest me or what I think constitutes a good photograph are best advised to visit my photo stream at Flickr.

End to End

Albuquerque's BioPark is anchored on the north end by the Botanical Garden and the Aquarium, and on the south end by the Zoo.  I got to both with my Ikonta 520.  The fishing boat is moored permanently in an artificial lagoon at the Aquarium.

The Zoo's new star is little Jazmine.  According to the keeper, she weighs about 350 pounds at present.  I snapped her picture with the last frame of a roll of Tri-X in my Ikonta 520.  I shot a few more with the digital and put the pictures on my other blog.

I was pleased to see that my bottle of Adonal developer is still working well.  I've had it in the refrigerator for about a year, and I wasn't sure how well it was holding up.  Everything I have read says the Adox Adonal is an exact replica of Rodinal which had a near infinite shelf life, and that seems to be true.

museum pieces

I liked my Kodak Flash Bantam so much that I decided to get the earlier model Bantam without the flash capability so I could compare the two closely related cameras.

Aside from the flash capability the differences between the two cameras are mostly cosmetic.  Production of the f4.5 Bantam started up in 1938, but the post-war f4.5 Bantam overlapped the production of the Flash model for a year in 1947, and it had essentially the same coated four-element lens.

My Bantam came with an intriguingly inked inscription on the inside of the back: CUBA -- 1940.  Cuba could be the Caribbean island, or the little town of that name in northern New Mexico.  The 1940 date seems too early given the camera's coated Anastigmat Special lens.  A mystery.

The front lens of the viewfinder had a crack in it.  The shutter was very sluggish.  I swapped the finder with that from my Flash Bantam.  The shutter took quite a lot of work to get it going.  I was unable to screw out the inner lens group, and ended up just squirting some electrical parts cleaner into the openings of the shutter.  I was able to remove the rear lens, which let me clean the rear of the shutter blades, and that got it working at all speeds including T and B.

update:
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The images I got from my first two roll through this Bantam were lacking in contrast and had some hot spots.  Not what I was expecting from one of Kodak's fine Special lenses.  At first I was ready to blame my developer, but the more logical explanation was a light leak.  Sure enough, holding the camera up to the sun with the back open revealed one small pinhole that was likely the source of the problem.  A little black fabric paint took care of that, so I'm ready to roll again.

trees in the park

one more marigold

Marigold Special

The little Kodak Flash Bantam represents one of the all-time high points in camera design.  The designers took the best aspects of 50 years of small camera experience and combined them with the 828 roll film format to produce a camera of unparalleled compactness and full-featured quality.

To shoot the Day of the Dead Marigold Parade in Albuquerque, I loaded a strip of 35mm Tri-X into the Bantam by taping the film ends onto the little 828 reels.  The frame-counting window was covered with black tape, and some black paper behind the pressure plate also helped to keep the window light-tight.  I rated the film at 200 ASA for development in Ilfosol 3.  The Tri-X is not as forgiving of exposure errors as TMAX, but it can produce very nice sharpness and tonalities when you get it right.