Bronica ETRS

I am a bit of a tight-wad. I very rarely pay as much as £20 for a camera. While this makes for a fairly cheap hobby, it does preclude me from buying many models. For many years, I have been looking wistfully at medium format SLRs - such as Hasselblads, Mamiyas and Bronicas. Unfortunately, you just cannot buy these for under £20. 

I have recently retired and this excellent arrangement has bought with it a modest lump sum which has been burning a hole in my bank account. So, one Bronica ETRS has been purchased - at 10x my self-imposed limit (actual cost was £189). This has proved to be a confusing camera to buy. These medium format SLRs are very modular and, looking at Ebay, it is usual to sell each module separately. My problem was that, never having handled one of these before, I was not clear as to exactly which modules were essential and which were optional. I got around this by going to a shop (ffordes in Inverness) and buying a complete system from them with a reassurance that I was buying a complete camera. probably cost me a bit more this way but I also got a six month guarantee as well as peace of mind.

My camera is a basic set-up. It consists of four modules: a body, a lens, a film back and a viewfinder. The only module that is essential is the body - there are no choices here as far as I can ascertain. The lens I have is a 75 mm lens which is 'normal' for the 6 x 4.5 negative format of these cameras. There are other focal length lenses available ranging from 40 mm (equivalent to 25 mm on a 35 mm camera) to  250 mm (equivalent to 150 mm on a 35 mm camera). There are four options for the film back - 120, 220, Polaroid and 70 mm. Only the 120 back is usable as neither the 220, Polaroid or 70 mm film is made anymore.

There are several options for the viewfinder of which the most common are the waist-level finder and the prism finder. I have the prism finder which is essentially what all 35 mm SLRs have. I may avail myself of a waist-level finder in due course. 

There are many other options options available, none of which is essential. The only module I need that was not supplied is a neck strap. A lot of people do not use straps - even on very expensive cameras - but dropping things is far too easy not to use a strap. I have fitted a cheap and cheerful Chinese strap.

Description.

I am going to describe each of the four modules in turn and then describe the complete camera.

First, the body. With the other modules detached, the body does not look like very much. It does, however, contain all the electronic controls.

It is a cube - it measures 90 x 70 x 85 mm (OK, not exactly a cube, but near enough) and weighs xxxg. 

The top face is dominated by the focussing screen. This is plastic and measures 55 mm by 42 mm - the 6 x 4.5 in the camera name is the nominal negative size but the actual size is a bit smaller. This gives an aspect ratio of 1:1.3 - 35 mm cameras are 1:1.5 as are most digital cameras and full frame 120 cameras. This means that I shall have some adjusting to do when composing pictures and printing them. I usually print on A standard paper which has an aspect ratio of 1:1.4 - I shall have to either crop the picture or trim the paper.

The focussing screen is removable - several options are available - but this one has a plain field with a split-image centre surrounded by a circle of micro-prisms.

In front of the focussing screen is a row of ten electrical contacts. These are there to allow for the use of a metering viewfinder - by default, no metering is provided meaning I need to use a hand-held light meter which is my default method of working regardless.

Also on the top are the displays for shutter speed and frame counter both in windows on the sides and also a release button for the viewfinder.

The left-hand face of the body has the shutter speed selector. This is a knob and ranges from eight seconds to 1/500 seconds. Whole seconds are displayed in red, fractions in white.. This might seem a b it meagre by modern standards but is more than adequate with careful selection of film speed.

On the top corner of the left-hand face is a battery check button Pressing this lights a red LED in the corner of the focussing screen. half-way down the right-hand edge is a strap lug. below this is a button to release the film back. last item on this side of the body is a cable release socket threaded for a standard release cable. 

The right-hand face of the body is dominated by the film advance. This is a large crank handle that you turn one complete revolution to advance the film one frame, lower the mirror and cock the leaf shutter in the lens. Above this is a small lever. This turns through 90 degrees to allow for multiple exposures on one frame of film. Behind the film advance crank is the second strap lug.

The bottom face of the body has the battery compartment which takes a single 6v battery. In front of this is the 1/4 inch UNC tripod boss.

The rear face of the body cube has fitting s for the film back and an exposed cog for the film advance. In the centre is a large hole which is blanked off by a hinged plate - more of this later.

The front face of the body cube is mostly the lens mount. This is huge by 35 mm and digital standards. It has four lugs and is specific to the ETR range of cameras. Inside the mount are six electrical contacts which are a part of the automatic exposure system. Also inside the mount is the reflex lens.

Below the mount are two chrome buttons. On the right (when holding the camera) is the shutter release button. This ass a knurled collar around it which can be turned to lock the shutter release. Turned fully anti-clockwise, it frees both the release button and the cable release. Turned 45 degrees clockwise, it locks the release button but still allows the cable release to fire the shutter. Turned 90 degrees clockwise, both the release button and the cable release are locked.

In the top corner is a PC socket for flash. No accessory shoe is provided as standard so any flash gun must be fitted to the tripod boss - or you can buy the accessory grip which has a hot shoe on it.

On the left is the lens release button. This needs to be turned and then depressed. While depressed, the lens can be turned clockwise for removal.

in order to have a functioning camera, three things need to be fitted to the camera body: viewfinder, film back and lens. Other options are available but these three are essential.

I am going to start with the viewfinder as this is the simplest. There are choices here - none is provided as standard - and I have the prism finder. This is the same as the viewfinder on a 35 mm SLR film camera or on a DSLR digital camera. It means I can see the image the right way up and the right way around.

A second option is a waist-level finder. this allows the camera to be used without lifting it to your eyes - usually on a tripod. With this finder the image is the right way up but back to front. This needs getting used to but I have no trouble adjusting to other cameras with waist-level finders.

The third option is that of a metering finder. this is essentially a prism finder with a built-in light meter to give TTL (Through The Lens) light readings. I am happy with my hand-held meter.

The film back has four versions. I have the 120 back - it takes 120 size film, believe it or not.  Also available are 220 backs, Polaroid backs and 70 mm backs but film is not available for any of these.

The film back holds the film (obviously) and can be removed from the camera with film in it. To do this, you have to insert a thin steel dark slide into a slot in the side of the film back. The film back can be opened tom allow for the inserting or removal of film. Inside the film back is a cradle for holding the film in place and advancing it. This needs to be removed to load film, but exposed film can be removed with the cradle in situ.

The cradle has two holders for the film spools, a cog to engage with the camera body for advancing the film and an external knob for manually advancing the film while loading. A nice touch is the presence on the rear door of the film back of a holder for the end of the film carton as an aide memoir.

The lens is quite a heavy lens. mine is a 75 mm lens. As well as containing the actual glass - five elements in four  groups - there is the diaphragm (f/2.8 to f/22) and the leaf shutter. If you have several lenses, each will have its own shutter. These are leaf shutters made by Seiko rather than the focal plane shutters most 'serious' cameras have.

In use.

In use, this camera is an anachronism. The shutter system is that used by Zeiss Ikon in their Contaflex cameras in the 1950s. There are actually two shutters in use. Between exposures, the leaf shutter is open, allowing the user to view the image through the lens. To prevent the film being fogged, there is a secondary shutter in the camera body behind the mirror - the hinged plate mentioned earlier. This secondary shutter is crude - it cannot be used for timed exposures. 

When you fire the shutter there is a complex sequence of events.:

1) the leaf shutter closes

2) the mirror lifts out of the way

3) the secondary shutter lifts out of the way

4) the leaf shutter opens for a timed exposure

5) the leaf shutter closes again.

When you advance the film, most of the opposite happens:

6) the secondary shutter closes

7) the mirror comes back down

8) the leaf shutter opens for viewing.

All this makes for quite a resounding clunk - compared to my 120 Ikoflex which only has the leaf shutter to move and is nearly silent and vibration free.

Test film.

This is encouraging. The shutter works fine, there are no light leaks, aperture and shutter speed are at least in the right ball park, film advance is correctly spaced. What is not evident on these small scans is the image quality - it is superb.

Voigtländer Bessa 66

This is a medium format folder from the German firm of Voigtländer. It dates from between 1938 and 1940. This model was also made after WWII from 1946 to 1950, but my camera is a very early model - more later. There was also a cheaper version available with a folding viewfinder and no automatic framing.  It is extremely similar to the later Perkeo that replaced it in 1950.

Voigtländer Bessa 66 (C) John Margetts

This camera has a lot of 'modern' features that make it stand out from earlier folding cameras. These include a body shutter release and automatic frame advance - no need to look in the red window when advancing the film, the camera spaces the film automatically (more or less, it does not work too well on my camera. I used the red window).

First, a basic description.  The camera measures 125 mm wide by 40 mm thick and 80 mm high when folded and 95 mm thick when open. This is very much a pocket camera even if the pocket needs to be robust enough to take the weight - 524 g without a film. As standard, the top plate is uncluttered. It is made from chrome plated brass  and has a reverse-Galilean viewfinder right at the right-hand end. On the opposite end is the film advance knob. Close to the advance knob is a frame counter - one of the 'modern' features I mentioned. That should be all that is on the top plate but a previous owner has glued an accessory shoe on using a large amount of epoxy glue.  Close to the rewind knob, on both the front and back faces of the top plate are two sliders. Without an instruction manual, it is not clear what these do. The one on the front clearly advances the frame counter and seems to free the advance system to allow the film to be advanced. When the film moves through the camera, a feeler shaft rotates and this serves to measure the amount of film that has moved and the film advance locks when one frame (62 mm) has moved. There is no clear use for the rear slider but I think it might have to do with setting the start of the film once the red window has been used to line up the first frame. I would welcome advice here from anyone who has a better knowledge of this camera. This system only works sporadically with my camera and when using the test film I relied on the red window for all frames.

As this is a folding camera, the lens is hidden behind a door that must be opened before using the camera. This is achieved with a button the the base. Pressing this causes the door to spring most of the way open - it might well have opened completely when new. When open, it locks the lens/shutter firmly in place. To close the lens door again, there is a chrome bar beneath the lens which must be firmly pressed to unlock the struts holding the door in place. 

As supplied new, this camera came with a hinged yellow filter ('Moment' filter) but this has long since broken off as is usual for cameras of this age. Also as a consequence of age, the bezel around the lens has come loose and fallen off (it was glued in place). This means I have no lens name or focal length information but I can gather this from information from the interweb. The lens has a serial number (located inside the camera on the rear of the lens). The pre-war versions of this camera were supplied with either a  three element Voigtar or four element Skopar lens. Of these, only the Skopar had a serial number so mine must be a Skopar lens. It is a 75 cm focal length lens (as was the Voigtar option) with a maximum aperture of f/3.5. The shortest marked focussing distance is 1 m, but the lens will move significantly further than this so the closest focus is going to be nearer to 0.7 m at a guess. The lens is not colour corrected (that would be a Color-Skopar) and is not coated but performed well regardless.

The shutter is a Compur shutter with a serial number of 3 751 602 - my records tell me that this dates from between 1935 and 1939. The lens serial number is 2 245 637 and this dates from between 1937 and 1942. (The range of dates is so vague because both Compur and Voigtlander lost most of their records in the destruction of WWII.) I have a piece of further dating information in that the slider on the front of the top plate was removed in 1939 so my camera must be from 1938 or early 1939.

The Compur shutter has a fastest speed of 1/300 seconds (later models had a Compur-Rapid shutter with a nominal 1/500 second speed) and apertures from f/3.5 to f/16. Both of these are very usable in 2015 with modern film. What is missing from this shutter is a delay timer and any flash connectors. For my test film, I used Kodak Portra 160 ISO film in sunny weather in April and shot most of the film at either 1/100 or 1/300 and f/11 or f/16. As is usual for this date, the shutter needs cocking before use. While the primary shutter release is on the shutter housing, the actual release is a lever that protrudes through the lens door. This is strictly left-handed in use, leaving your right hand to have a firm grasp of the camera.  Exacta did things the same way.

The base plate has three items. On the left is a lever with two functions. In the closed position, it prevents the back being opened and when swung out, it acts as a foot to allow the camera to be securely placed on a flat surface for longer exposures (together with a cable release, which the shutter is threaded for). There is no delay timer, so no selfies with this camera. In the centre of this lever is a tripod boss. This is a 3/8 inch Whitworth socket with a 1/4 inch Whitworth insert.  At the other end of the top plate is a depth of field calculator. You rotate the disc to set the distance you are focussing at to the pointer and then read off the depth of field against the aperture you are using.  The third item on the base plate is the release for the lens door.

In use, this is a simple, easy camera to use. The hardest part is the viewfinder which, as was normal in its day, is rather small and not usable while wearing glasses. With the left-hand shutter release, you can get a really good grip on the camera while actuating the shutter release with your left index finger. It is easy to cock the shutter with your right hand while still gripping the camera. 

The hardest part is reading the numbers on the shutter speed, aperture and focus scales. They are rather small for my ageing eyes.

As is common of Voigtländer cameras, there are Happy Snapper settings on the lens. These are marked by a small triangle and a small circle. If you set the focus to the triangle and the aperture to f/8 then all between 2.5 m and 5 m will be in focus (ideal for portraits) and if you set the focus to the small circle, and the aperture to f/8 then all between 5 m and infinity will be in focus (ideal for landscapes).

Even though the lens is neither colour corrected nor coated, it has performed well. There is no visible colour fringing (the panchromatic films in use in the 1930s would have needed well corrected lenses) nor is there any significant flare visible in my test pictures. Where I have shot Contra Jour, there is some slight evidence of flare but it is very minor. I have much worse lenses in my collection.

The film I used for my test was Kodak Portra 160, developed and scanned by Snappy Snaps in Lincoln.  Loading the film is easy - both spool holders are hinged. The camera takes either 120 or 620 film (only 120 is currently available). The dark bar along the right-hand edge of some frames is a scanning artefact, not the camera.

Shot into the light - some flare on the right-hand edge

Balda Super Baldina

This is my second Balda Baldina. The first is a folding Baldina from the 1930s. The Super in the name indicates that it has a coupled rangefinder. This new Baldina is from the 1950s and is not a folder but nods in that direction with a collapsible lens. This is fairly effective - it reduces the thickness of the camera by two cm which means it easily fits in a jacket pocket. The camera leatherette is stamped "Made in Germany" and the focus scale is in feet, indicating that this is an official import into the UK.

Balda Super Baldina (C) John Margetts

The top plate is as you might expect from a mid-1950s German camera. In the middle is a large hump containing the viewfinder and rangefinder. This has both the viewfinder and rangefinder eyepieces in one - my Franka Solida of the same period has separate viewfinder and rangefinder eyepieces which makes using the camera awkward. On the top of the viewfinder/rangefinder hump is an accessory shoe - no electrical contacts at this date, so a cold shoe.

Balda Super Baldina top plate.

On the left of this hump is the rewind knob. This is surrounded by a film type reminder. There are four options for this - film speed in DIN, film speed in ASA, colour positive or colour negative.  To the right of the hump is the film advance. This is a lever with a large, coarsely milled thumb post.This moves through 180 degrees to advance one frame which is easily done in one throw of the thumb. At the base of this is the frame counter. This counts up from one to thirty six. In front of the film advance is the shutter release. This is a fair-sized button, threaded for a standard cable release. I have a slight niggle here as the shutter release button is slightly below the level of the film advance level which makes finding the release button by feel less obvious than it could be.

On either end of the top plate is a lug for attaching a strap - this is far more important than camera manufacturers seem to understand.

With lens collapsed.

With lens extended.

The front of the camera is dominated by the collapsible shutter/lens housing. This is quite well organised with the parts easy to get at. The shutter/lens housing is mounted on a square stainless steel bezel. On the top right of this bezel is a button to release the collapsible housing. When pressed, the shutter/lens housing pops out with a satisfying clunk.

Around the base of the housing is the focusing ring. This has a large knob on it below the lens which makes focusing at eye-level with the rangefinder very easy. Between the focusing ring and the lens release button is a depth of field scale - something regrettably missing from more modern cameras.

The next control on this housing is the aperture selector. This varies between f/3.5 and f/16. There are no click-stops so intermediate positions can be selected. Outside of this is the shutter speed selector - this is a conventional ring. The shutter is a Prontor SVS (a Compur Rapid was also available) so shutter speeds are from one second to 1/300 seconds.  The 'S' in the shutter name tells us it is synchronised for flash - two 'S's tells us it can be synchronised for M (bulbs) or X (electronic) flash guns. The V stands for Vorlaufwerk which indicates a self-timer is available.  There is a PC (Prontor Compur) socket set into this housing for attaching a flash gun.

Balda Super Baldina rear/internal view.

The shutter controls have Happy Snapper settings - f/8 is in red and there is a red dot at nine feet and a green dot at around thirty feet. The red dot is intended for portraits and will give you a focus range of six feet to twelve feet - suitable for a head-and-shoulders shot or a small group. The green dot is for landscaped and is the hyperfocal distance at an aperture of f/8 - it gives a focal range of 12/13 feet to infinity.

The focusing knob moves the whole shutter/lens assembly. this means that the whole lens moves to focus rather than just the front element. This means that the lens always performs at its optimum - whatever that optimum might be. The lens is a Baldinar which is made for Balda rather than by them. There were a host of lens-makers in Germany making lenses for camera manufacturers and this could have come from any of them or, indeed, several of them. The lens is a triplet (three pieces of glass) which is unlikely to perform well with a wide aperture. my experience of German triplets is that they perform very well once stopped down to f/8 or smaller. At the date this camera was made, the lens will be coated - and there is the tell-tale blue sheen to the lens to confirm this.

The inside of the lens front is threaded for filters. I make it to be 35mm diameter but that could be plus or minus a millimetre or so.

On the rear of the top plate, to the left of the viewfinder eyepiece, is a large screw. I suspect this is to adjust the rangefinder but as the rangefinder is working fine I am not going to fiddle with it to find out for sure. The rangefinder works as they usually do. There is a central spot that needs to be aligned to the main image by moving the focusing knob on the front of the camera. This spot is clear, even in poor light, which makes the rangefinder useful in practice - not something I find you can safely assume. One quirk here is that the rangefinder spot is pale blue in colour rather than the more usual yellow but that does not affect its usefulness.

Agilux Agifold

AGI, who made this camera, are an aeronautical instrument maker - still in business - rather than a camera maker and it shows. During WWII, AGI made military instruments and that pedigree is followed in this camera. It is large and heavy and has no small controls so easy to use with cold hands, with gloves on, when frightened . . . 

lens: Agilux anastigmat

focal length:  9 cm

apertures: f/4.5 to f/32

focus range: 3 feet to infinity

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Agifold

speeds: 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/125, B, T

flash: two pin connector

film size: 120 or 620

Outwardly it is much like any other folding camera - Kodak, Zeiss Ikon, Voigtlander, Agfa all made similar. The main physical difference is the large double viewfinder. This consists of one large housing containing both an eye-level finder and a waist-level finder. The waist-level finder is pretty much a pre-war brilliant finder. This viewfinder housing also double as the catch for the lens board - it moves to one side to open the front. This housing is central on the top of the camera. Beside it is a shutter release button. This button links, via a series of links, to the shutter release on the shutter housing - again, standard fare for a mid-twentieth century folding camera. On the other side of the shutter housing is the film advance knob. this is nice and large and easy to use. Being a 120 format camera, there is no film rewind.

The shutter is made by AGI themselves but outwardly it looks much like a Compur or Prontor shutter. The adjustments are in the same place the main difference being the shutter cocking lever which is on the underside of the housing - rather inconveniently. The shutter release is also on the underside where it nicely links to the body release. The actual shutter itself is not in the same league as Compur or Prontor - it has only two leaves and is rather reminiscent of a box camera shutter. The speed selection is non-standard as well. 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 are much as I would expect from 1948 but the next speed is 1/125 - the increase in speed is so small as to be pointless. It is usual for the shutter speeds to double in speed from one setting to the other which is one stop reduction in exposure but this is a 25% reduction and it is hard to see a use for it.

The lens is also made by AGI themselves (at least as far as I can gather from information on the Interweb) and is a 9 cm focal length (or 90 mm in modern parlance). The negative size is 6x6 cm so a normal lens would have a focal length of 85 mm. That makes this lens slightly longer than normal for the negative format, but not seriously so. The lens is coated (not a given in 1948) but I suspect only on the front surface. This has the distinct blue cast of a coated lens but the rear element is clearly not coated - no blue cast.

Being a 120 format camera, there is a window on the back to allow the user to see the frame numbers when winding the film on. Traditionally, these are red - red because early film was orthochromatic and not sensitive to red light - but on this camera you get a choice of red or green. There is a slider to uncover one or the other of these two coloured windows. What there is not is a cover for both windows which would have gone further in preventing fogging of the film.

I have been referring to this as a 120 camera but in fact it is a dual format camera - it will take either 120 or 620 film. The only difference between the two is the spool (the actual film being the same size with the same frame number spacing) and the spool holders here will take both sizes. The camera came to me with a 620 spool in place and I have now fitted a 120 spool to check the fit.

There is no accessory shoe so no way to fit either a rangefinder or a flash gun.  However, there are flash contacts - not the industry standard PC socket but two metal posts on the side of the shutter housing. These can be seen in the photograph of the lens above on the top right of the shutter housing.

When I took delivery of this camera, it was in quite a sad state. It had obviously been in a smokers house - it was covered in a sticky brown deposit - and also stored somewhere damp. Diligent use of WD40 and cotton buds has brought the camera up nicely - not quite in showroom condition but just about presentable. The shutter is not quite as I would like. An hour or so of dry-firing the shutter has it firing reliably and it sounds to be in the right general area speed-wise. One fault it has is that when set to 1/100 seconds and fired a few times the shutter resets itself to 1/50 seconds.

I am still in two minds as to whether I am going to try a film in this camera but if I do I will post the results here in due course.

Petri 7s rangefinder

I recently made a decision to add a few rangefinder cameras to my collection. I have had a Minolta Uniomat for a few years and recently bought a Zorki 4. These two cameras represent the two lines of rangefinders that were available in the world of film.

The Zorki is from the line of interchangeable lens rangefinders that follow on from the Leica. Most of these are fairly straight copies of Leicas - all German patents were declared void after the end of WWII - with varying degrees of development.

The Uniomat is from the other - fixed lens - line. These fixed lens rangefinders are cheaper, though never cheap. Not having an interchangeable lens means they can - and do - have between-the-lens leaf shutters.

Petri 7s - front view [(C) John Margetts]

My collection of fixed lens rangefinders now numbers five (I am only including those with a coupled rangefinder) - Vitomatic II, Contessa LKE, Uniomat, Minister III and now this Petri 7s.

This Petri 7s is exactly the same size and shape as the Minister III - I could almost suspect they used a common casting for the body. The weight is not too different, either - 632g with a film loaded.

lens:  Petri

focal length:  45 mm

apertures: f2.8 to f16

focus range: 0.8 m (2.6 ft)

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Petri MVE

speeds: 1 s to 1/500 s

flash: PC socket

film size: 35mm

The top plate of the Petri 7s is uncluttered. On the left is the rewind crank. This is the now standard fold-out crank which I personally find hard to use. The crank pulls up to allow for the insertion/removal of the film cassette.

Petri 7s - top plate [(C) John Margetts]

Just left of centre is the accessory shoe. By the time this camera was designed (1963) this was usually for a flash gun. It is a cold-shoe - accessory shoe contacts had to wait a further decade to become standard. To the right of the accessory shoe is the light meter window. This is fairly small - the actual window is 5 mm diameter - and incorporates a lens to make seeing the needle and mark possible.

Next along is the shutter release button. This is fairly large - no bad thing - and is threaded for a standard cable release. On the rear right-hand corner of the top plate is the frame counter. This is also a bit on the small size but still usable.

The front of the camera is dominated by the shutter housing. This is fairly large for a fixed-lens camera - the size is necessary because of the light meter sensor around the lens (as in the Yashica Minister III). 

Petri 7s shutter housing [(C) John Margetts]

The lens is a 45 mm f2.8 lens. It has no name on it apart from Petri. A green 'C' signifies that it is a coated lens - normal for the time - but does not tell us if it is multi-coated or single coated. As far as I can find out, it is a Tessar copy - four elements in three groups for the technical minded.

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The shutter housing has several controls on it. There are the expected control rings - focus, aperture and shutter speed - a flash synchronisation selector (X or M), a delay action lever, film speed selector and a PC connector for the flash. The shutter housing carries the name 'Petri MVE'. The shutter itself is a leaf shutter which means it is quiet in use - excellent for street work.

Above the shutter housing is an elongated window containing the rangefinder window and the viewfinder window. The viewfinder is a reverse Galilean finder (like looking through a telescope the wrong way) and the image is coloured a pale green. On the right-hand end of the front, just below the shutter release, is another window but one that does not seem to have any purpose - perhaps for a facility intended but not implemented. The viewfinder has bright lines with parallax markings. It also has a repeat of the light meter needle. This is much easier to see than the one on the top plate. It is not, however, easier to use as it is very hard to distinguish between the shutter speed and aperture rings by feel.

Petri 7s spurious window [(C) John Margetts]

The rear of the camera is plain. There is the eyepiece of the viewfinder and the film advance lever. The base of the camera is also plain. It contains a tripod boss in line with the centre of the lens (1/4" Whitworth is what I usually say, but it could well be modern enough to be 1/4" UNC. The ISO standard for tripod threads is UNC rather than Whitworth but there is not much difference between the two and Class 1A threads (to be tightened by hand) are sloppy enough to be interchangeable between Whitworth and UNC), and a recessed button to allow for rewinding the film.

Petri 7s rear view [(C) John Margetts]

Using the camera is quite easy. Setting the film speed for the light meter is a matter of rotating the black tab in front of the shutter speed ring - this is on the lower right of the shutter housing. The selected film speed appears in a small window in the shutter speed ring to the left of the fastest shutter speed. This is in both DIN and ASA and goes from 11 DIN/10 ASA to 24 DIN/200 ASA. (ASA is broadly but not technically the same as ISO) This seems a bit of a slow range by today's standards but when the camera was made, it would have covered all the films likely to be used.

To set the exposure, you can either set the required shutter speed and then rotate the aperture ring until the meter needle is centred, or set the required aperture and adjust the shutter speed ring, again until the needle is centred. The meter is a selenium meter which means it does not need batteries. These can deteriorate if left exposed to light for many years but this one is still fine (actually, I have never come across a selenium meter that was not fine - I think the deterioration thing is mostly theoretical rather than real-world).

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Blog (C) John Margetts 2014

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The focus ring has a large knob on the left-hand side which makes focussing with the left hand easy. There are two options for focus - scale focus or rangefinder. For scale focus, there is a big drawback in that there is no depth of field scale which makes my usual hyperfocal method impossible. The focus scale is in both feet and metres.

Using the rangefinder is not as easy as it could be. Petri have tried to make the rangefinder clear by colouring the viewfinder field a pale green and the rangefinder spot yellow. In my camera, the rangefinder spot is rather faint. In good light it does work, though, and it is quick to focus if you have suitable verticals in the frame.

The shutter release works easily without needing undue pressure but without being too much of a hair-trigger. The film advance moves about xx degrees and makes a very definite 'clunk' as it cocks the shutter.

The only other thing worth noting is that there are strap lugs at either end so I can carry the camera on a strap around my neck without needing to use the ever-ready case.

Test pictures.

I am testing this camera with Fomapan 200 Creative film - it is also a test of the film, to some extent as I have never used it before.  I have a 17 metre roll of film and can cut off the amount I need - I am using a 12 exposure length for this test.  This should save me quite a bit of money compared to buying colour film and paying to have it developed.  I should have developed the film in the next few days and will post the results here when I have done so.

27/10/14

As well as testing the camera and film, I am also testing my developing of the film - it is basically developed OK but I can tweak it somewhat in the future to improve contrast. There are some horizontal lines visible - these are scanning artefacts due to the emulsion being a bit on the thin side.

Flooded ex-gravel pit.

The Strait, Lincoln

Steep Hill, Lincoln

Angel Coffee House, Lincoln - hand held in natural light.

Wooden bridge to test the rangefinder - I focussed on the larger wooden upright.