Fed vs Zorki

I wrote previously that I had both a Fed 2 and a Zorki. But which one is best? Do I keep one and sell the other, and which one? Does anyone really need two rangefinder cameras?

So first, the basics. The Fed dates from around 1959 and the Zorki from 1969. The Fed has a long rangefinder base of around 68mm and the Zorki a shorter one of around 38mm. So the Fed ought to focus more accurately, yes?

The rangefinder window is on the left

The rangefinder window is in the middle. The thing on the left is the PC socket.

Between the two cameras I have three lenses. The Zorki came with its usual Jupiter 8 lens. This has a serial number starting 08, so could be much newer than the camera body. This lens is a 50mm f2 with a Sonnar design. The Fed came with an Industar 26m that is probably coated, as it has a red P on the front, although I found it fairly low contrast in use. This has a serial number starting 017 and is probably the same age as the camera body. I’ve also got a more modern Industar 61ld. This has lanthanum in the glass and is coated. This should be the sharpest and most contrasty of the bunch. Both of the Industars are based on a Tessar design. The main difference in use is that the ’61 has click-stop apertures while the other two do not. The clickless apertures may be favoured by film-makers, but they are a pain to photographers as it is too easy to nudge them and change the setting. So the best lens for general use should be the ’61, although the Jupiter is an extra stop wider.

Neither camera has frame lines in the viewfinder. Both are supposed to show the field of a 50mm lens and there were external viewfinders available for other lenses. The magnification of the Zorki viewfinder seems to be larger than the Fed. So the view through the Zorki looks the same as the actual scene (or as seen through the other eye) while the Fed appears smaller. I suppose it only really makes a difference if you want to keep both eyes open.

Fed shutter speeds

The Fed has a smaller range of shutter speeds and a lower top speed of 1/500. On my Zorki however, the slower speeds were printed in red ink and have faded away. Not that I am going to be using speeds slower than 1/30 anyway, or that I’d trust the old shutter clockwork to still time them accurately. So the main difference is the top speed of 1/1000.

Zorki shutter speeds

The rangefinder patch of the Zorki is rectangular but not well defined, while the Fed one is circular and a distinct yellow colour.

The shutter releases are different, but that may be their age or how well they were assembled. The Zorki needs a firm push while the Fed is smooth and light. Both shutters are quiet. Perhaps not Leica quiet, but they didn’t cost Leica money. And the Fed seems to have managed 60+ years with probably little care or cossetting.

Carrying them around is similar, except the Zorki has no strap lugs so needs the bottom part of its case to provide them.

So which one do I prefer? The Fed. It’s a bit smoother in action and the rangefinder patch is a bit brighter. Rewinding the film is a bit of a pain, but one doesn’t do it that often. Besides, if I wanted a camera that’s faster and easier to use it would be an SLR. But I want to keep all three lenses, so I may be looking to see what a Zorki body would sell for. <brief pause> About £20, which is just a few quid more than it cost. I will probably hang onto them both. One thing I could check is that all three lenses register correctly on both bodies for the rangefinder. These cameras are more fiddly than SLRs and do sometimes need to be adjusted. Maybe when I’ve got some spare time. In the meantime I’m treating them like a free Leica and I will try to wear them out. But the Fed is my favourite.

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Culling the herd

The time has come (the walrus said) to reduce the quantity of photographic equipment I own. I have realised that I really don’t need several versions of the same thing. If there is a best or better in the set, then why do I need the others? Besides, I don’t have the time to shoot them all. And (trying to keep a straight face) the whole point is the pictures, not the cameras that take them. I can justify having one spare camera to replace an old relic that could fail, but not four. I have recognised and now need to get over my addiction.

What made the decision for me was moving house. If you stay in one place it’s easy to store things. It’s when you have to pack them up and move them that you realise how much stuff you have accumulated. Books are worse. I confess that we had close to 800 in the house. Drastically reduced now, but still enough that I could make a good Zoom background if I wanted to. Or a play fort.

So this is the opposite of GAS. Let’s call it SOLID – selling off lots of idle dogs.

The lenses it makes sense to keep though, more so than cameras. These are the important bit, after all. For all the talk about how wonderful some cameras are, they really only provide a shutter and a method for holding the sensor or film. One camera and three lenses is a lot more useful than the other way round. On the other hand there are some cameras with special functionality. Stuff that is waterproof or panoramic is unique, but M42 SLRs are all much the same. So specials can stay but the generic can go.

A subset of the saved.

I did a bit of an exercise, building a table of camera types against the things I wanted them to do. The reason was to make it obvious to me where I had too many of the same thing.

So what is going? Everything I have multiples of or don’t actively use. I will keep anything I have been given, as these are special because of the person who gave them to me. Not that I’m showered with gifts (send more pies!), but these are staying.

By the time I post this I will probably have sold them, so this is the list of the dear departed:

• Pentax MV body. Auto-only body that came with a useful lens. The lens stays, the camera goes.
• Zeiss Contessa. Generic 60s fixed lens rangefinder camera.
• Nikonos III.
• Pentax A3 body.
• Pentax MZ5-n body.
• Fed 50 compact.
• Fujica STX-1 with 55mm lens.
• Olympus 35 RC.
• Zeiss Contina.
• Leidox 127 format camera with a 35mm adaptation.
• Canon Canonette 2b.
• Agfa Super Silette.
• Lomo Cosmic Symbol.
• Kodak Retinette 1a.
• Diana.
• Olympus Pen EE-2.
• Canon Ixus 750 with underwater housing. Very capable but superseded.
• An Ozeck 80-205mm zoom.
• Canon Powershot A590. Excellent camera, but also superseded.
• A Pentax Takumar 70-200mm zoom.
• A Chinon 35-200mm zoom.

Will I miss them? I doubt it – I hardly used them. I can use the little money they bring in to go towards something better that I will use much more. Their departue has freed space and removed a source of anxiety.

I also have a bunch of dead camera bodies that I need to find a way to give someone as a source of parts (or as a boat anchor).

This may not be the end of it. I am now evaluating my cameras agaist new criteria such as ‘do they have a special funtion that I need?’ and ‘are they tools or toys?’. Besides, analogue photographers are complaining about the rising price of old cameras, but continue to hoard them in bulk and stalk them on eBay. Time to release into the wild the cameras I am not using.

The Good, the Bad and the Fugly.

Fly free, my pretties! And the other ones.

Zeiss Ikon Contessa LKE

A chunky monkey from the mid-60s, but quite well-featured.

This variant of the Contessa line was made from 1963 to 1965. From various clues I think mine was late in the series, so let’s say 1965. What you get is a substantial-feeling fixed lens rangefinder. It’s quite deep in the body and weighs-in at 630g. Ideally you would find one with a case, as the body has no strap lugs of its own. What it does have is a sharp Tessar lens, a decent range of shutter speeds, a rangefinder and a lightmeter. The lightmeter is a treat – there is a display on the top plate so that you can set the camera up while it’s still hanging on a strap. When you raise the camera to your eye, there is another meter needle in the viewfinder.

The cover on the left rotates to reveal the PC socket.

The rangefinder patch on this one is a bit faint, but helped by a spot of marker pen in the middle of the viewfinder window.

The shutter runs from 1/500 down to 1/15 and B, while the meter goes from 10 to 800 ISO. Not bad for ’65.

The rangefinder needed calibrating when I first got the camera, but it’s not hard. The top plate comes off with two screws (but not completely – there is a wire that runs to the flash PC socket but it has some slack in it). The adjustment screws are on the sloping rear wall of the viewfinder block. The bottom screw is obscured by the winding lever, which needs a third hand or a bit of tape to hold it back. Luckily it’s the top screw that adjusts the sideways movement of the split image. So a few minutes with a small screwdriver and a distant view through the window got everything lined-up again.

In use it’s easier than most cameras of this type. The aperture control ring has tabs to make it easy to locate and turn. The shutter ring has a decent bit of tooth to it, so it too is easy to find and set. You just have to remember to feel past it to get the the narrower lens.

The film rewind is a Zeiss quirk. It’s on the bottom of the camera. When you press the film release button the rewind arm pops-out far enough to get hold of it and fold it open to its operating position. Putting it on the bottom leaves space under the top plate of the camera for the light meter, so it’s a clever design.

In use it’s a good lens in a usable package. You could load a film, take this out and use it with results and handling as good as any more modern film camera. Nowhere near as small as an Olympus XA, but still practical.

Stretching my exposure triangle

Not the same as stretching Benner’s Box, but my boundaries are now wider. I just bought a more capable camera. And by capable I mean it has a bigger exposure triangle.

What I’m used to is what I grew up with: the common range of shutter speeds, apertures and ISO. Looking at even the best of my kit the shutter speeds might run from 8s to 1/2000 and the apertures from f1.4 to (usually) f22. My ISO options run from say 6 for a very slow film to 3200 for my fastest film or sensor. So let’s say the sides of my available exposure triangle are 13 stops on shutter speed, 11 for sensitivity and 9 stops for aperture.

Then along came digital. So now, with a modern camera, I have more to play with. My shutter speeds now span 19 stops and my sensitivity 14 stops. The aperture range is the same, as the limit at the large number/ small hole end of the scale is the diffraction of light. Perhaps we could stretch to a range of 10 stops if I bought some of these new lenses coming in at f1. Even so, I have a lot more capability to use with this new camera. And even better, it’s in the places I need it. My film cameras get their 11 stops of sensitivity at the low end: they can shoot 6 or 3 ISO film. The digital camera gets its range at the top end with an ISO that goes up to 819,200. That’s far more useful, especially as the shutter will go up to 1/8000 so I can still shoot wide open in bright light, even if the ISO doesn’t go lower than 100.

Of course, being of an inquisitive nature, I had to work out what my old and new exposure triangles looked like. So the older cameras could range within a triangular volume with sides of 13, 11 and 9. The new one has sides of 19, 14 and 9. Similar to a colour space: it’s volume of the shape that gives you the space you can explore. So, using Heron’s formula and a bit of Pythagoras I make the old camera’s volume 644 and the new one’s 1197; nearly double. So we should actually talk about the exposure prism rather than triangle <\pedant>. But here’s a fun game for the family on a rainy day – plot the exposure space of your cameras. The practical side of this is that a film camera only gets a horizontal slice of the prism in use, as you set the ISO by the choice of film and there is not much opportunity to change the ISO on the fly. Sorry – geek diversion ends here – back to the plot.

The three axes at the origin should be at right angles. I bent them to fit better on the paper.

The shake reduction that comes with digital also gives me nearly seven stops of extra exposure space at the slow shutter speed end. No more than that because the world is a rotating sphere, but we knew that.

Why do I need this cleverness? Because I find myself pushing the limits of what my current kit will do. For example, a local band was playing in a pub garden during the early evening. The best camera I have for higher ISO work can do 800 and be pushed to 1600, but the quality suffers.  I was using a convenient post to steady the shot and still getting only 1/30 on shutter speed.

Yes, there is a story behind the band’s name…

I had a go at star photography with my ‘best’ camera and the results were awful. Not that I regularly do the lit-up tent and Milky Way thing, but it would be good if it did work when I was out in the hills and darkness.

Looks like Kendal is on fire

There is also the crop factor. My old camera has an APS-C sensor, so it effectively multiplies the focal length of my old 35mm lenses by 1.5. Very useful for sports and action, less so for wide angle. The old camera also has pretty poor noise at higher ISO, so things used to get a bit tight in dimmer light, with a long lens and a moving subject. The new camera is full frame, or the same size as an old 35mm film frame. So now all my wider lenses will work as they were meant to. The camera also has an option of using just the central part of the sensor to act as though it was APS-C, so I get the equivalent of a 1.5x teleconverter without losing one stop in exposure. (Or I could just crop the picture). What it does mean though is that I can still use my APS-C lenses. I do like a bit of backwards compatibility (and this is not a euphemism). And on that subject, I was delighted to find my 15 year old dedicated flash also works on the new camera.

So, having justified this extravagant purchase to myself, what am I going to use all this expensive cleverness for? After all, I could have bought a Famous Rangefinder for the same money.  Extending my options is the plan. My tilt and shift lenses go back to being mildly wide angle rather than telephoto. My wide angles do what their name suggests. I can start scanning all my medium format negatives (since my flatbed scanner died) at a reasonable level of quality. And I’m off to shoot more pictures of things that go fast in fading light.