Four, Five, Crap - or Using Underperformer Cameras Pt. Two (Adox, Meisupii, Halina)

No. 4: Adox Golf IIA.

That release. It's a plain stupid design!

This camera has all that I need. A good set of apertures, some exposure times, with B mode. Scale focusing. Okay, the shutter is stupid. I've added a big pin so I don't cause camera shake. Because with that big release you'll get it.

When you press the shutter you can hear three little clicks in close succession. I love it. All the secrets of producing a photograph in one press.

Below are photographs I made with Lomography's redscale film. I exposed it at 50 ASA.

Look at those greens! I think that they are the strongest selling point of the redscale film for me.

The Adox lens is really good unless you poke it directly into the sun or bright reflective surfaces.

No. 5: Meisupii Half

It reminds me of a tin of sardines.

This one's all aluminium. There's no focusing, just depth of field-control when choosing the aperture at f/8-16. It is a half-frame camera, riding on the wave of the Olympus Pen types of cameras manufactured in the same era. But this one's real simple/basic/primitive.

Below are the only photos I got out of this camera, since the winding was busted from the start.

The classic furrowed brow - "is the darn shutter really moving?"

Not winding properly.

It's a boat!

No. 6: Halina 35X

A blunt copy of a far better camera.

It's a favourite of mine. You cock the shutter with a lever on the lens. Then it's all manual exposure and scale focusing.

It is all metal and heavy. The photographs it produces are flawed and dreamy and I love them!

I've made several posts about this camera here and here, and a lens mod here.

Thanks for reading my blog! Don't hesitate to comment or check out my Instagram at #ourbooksmalmo. Visit my Etsy shop getOurBooks where there are cameras and photography equipment aplenty to choose from.

Comments

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

Leaving a House - Departure from My Childhood Home with a Lumix GF2

My father left his house for a much smaller apartment this summer. My and my brother's families helped with some of the transition, and I documented parts of it with my Panasonic Lumix GF2. My father's house was where I grew up - from my 6th to my 19th year. He lived there for 43 years - 1979 to 2022. The light in this house was always amazing. Its situation on a western leaning hillside offers playful beams of light or reflections during every stage of the day. Little brother (me, 49), big brother (52), dad (80). Visit my Etsy shop for cameras and related stuff, the facebook group on modding lenses and cameras or my Instagram account ourbooksmalmo .

These great cameras show up everywhere in Europe. Flea markets, second-hand shops, car boot sales, you name it. AGFA cameras were sold for decades, in many models, much like the Kodaks. I've had the pleasure of using two of them. And I own three. The magic shutter buttons! The AGFA Compact. It's an auto exposure compact camera with manual focusing! The lens retracts when you shut the camera off. AGFA Silette LK which has full manual exposure control and a built-in light meter. The lens is super duper sharp with pleasant out-of-focus areas. It does not have a rangefinder. Nor does the... ... AGFA Optima 335 which has auto-exposure and manual focusing. The aperture numbers you see are for flash photography with 1/125th of a second fixed shutter. I will not write much about these my cameras now, but will in the future. The Compact isn't working properly, so I am in search of advice on how to repair it. It (auto-) winds the loaded film to its end, without giving me an opportu

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