Skip to main content

Freak French Fit


I'm planning to visit Paris in five and a half years, with my daughter who will be ten years old. That would be eleven years since the last time I was there. I'm like most anybody - nostalgic about the classic French photographers, like my favourite Robert Doisneau. And about the Eternal city itself.

Since I'm a bit of a francophile (some would say severe) I am preparing for the trip by teaching my daughter some french and presenting bits and pieces of French culture to her - and myself! Since I've also stepped up a level or two in photophilia recently I also make plans for the perfect camera kit to bring. I would need proper wide angled lenses for crowded streets, portrait/compositions lenses, and tele for far-off-ish scenery.



Canon P with 20 mm Nikon lens on adapter. I would use a 35 mm on it.


Fed 2 with 50 mm. This one would be fitted with the 20 mm and the external viewfinder of my own design.


Olympus 35 RC. It sports a 42 mm lens.


Canon Demi C half-frame camera. The lens is equivalent to a 75 mm lens. So this is the tele camera.


This is a borrowed picture. My Pen F would sport a 35 mm lens fitted on an M42 adapter. The lens equals a 53 mm on a non half-frame camera.

What do you think about my plans? Which camera(s) would you bring? Feel free to comment below.

The photos are from my previous visit. Sorry about the crappy scan. The pictures were made with an Olympus XA.

Another visit here would be real nice.

[sic]

And here: Marché des Enfants Rouges in the Marais.

Comments

  1. Depends of course on how many cams you're willing to lug around - or at least take with you and then leave in the hotel.

    I have hundreds or more cameras. I might be a collector who knows. Anyway of all the myriad rangefinders I think Canon P is the best. I would take one with a collapsible summicron 50 and the 35mm summaron f2.8 and the 21mm f4 voigtlander.

    For an slr definitely the Pen F with 38mm & the 20mm.

    Need digital so the tiny Sony NEX 3 with 1 af lens and M mounts and screw mount adapters.

    20 rolls of film, SD cards, battery charger etc

    Domke straps for the cams.

    Everything in a Pelican case.

    ReplyDelete
  2. One other thing. Pen F adapters are either impossible to find or $$$$$$ more than a lens !! or both. Pen F means Pen F lenses which are excellent and reasonably priced.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the kind comment. You're absolutely right about the Pen adapters. I've gotten one since I've an urge for interesting combinations - some would call it Frankencameras...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chaika Leica

Well, here's a Chaika 2M that I bought from Alex Helios via Instagram.  It's a great full manual viewfinder half-frame camera. The wheel on the top is for shutter time selection, from B to 1/30th to 1/250th of a second. The square button on the front right of the camera is the release/exposure. The lens mounted on the camera in the picture is not the original Industar-69. The Chaika is a rare model compact camera since the prime lens is detachable. What is more is that it has M39 screw mount. But - like with the Paxette M39 system - you can't get focus with a lens from another M39 system. Unless you adapt the lens or - in this case - the camera (mount)! The Chaika mount is easily detached from the body by loosening four screws. If I want to mount the Leica thread mount M39 (LTM) lenses on the Chaika - which is my goal with this mod - I have to add 1.3mm to the mount. That is what is needed to change the camera's flange focal distance (FFD) from Chaika system to L

A busy photographer

This photographer is now an owner of a house with all that entails. That is my focus since October and will be for some time.

Lomo-Modd-Orama

A Lomo Smena 8 camera with a faulty shutter. An Olympus Pen F camera. Part of a microscope adapter for the Pen. That's what I started out with. 45 minutes later I had a new lens! Mount The mount came off a microscope adapter. I got the adapter from my first (of two) attempts to buy an Olympus Pen F. There seem to be some unscrupolous ebay sellers around peddling useless Pens with microscope adapted prisms. Luckily - in hindsight - I got a microscope adapter with this first Pen. Which I now trashed when a Lomo Smena 8 without a future landed on my doorstep (figuratively speaking). Conversion / Havoc Smena I only knew the camera as a half-frame camera [Correction - it's a full frame camera!] called Smena 8 and hadn't thought to place it in Lomography-land until I read the name Lomo on the lens when it was already modded. Unwittingly I had tread the tiles of lomo-dom twice in as many weeks, also having put two rolls through a Praktica CX-1 which appears to be Gr