Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.—George Bernard Shaw
I made my first post about my renewed interest in film photography late in 2021. A lot has happened since then, and I wanted to bring you up to date:
It all started, inauspiciously enough, with a post I wrote asking all of you about what 35mm film SLR should be the first one that I should buy. Because of my enduring passion for Contax cameras and because Yashica SLRs of that era used the same lens mount,you suggested a Yashica FX-3 Super 2000. So I bought one that I found on eBay from Japan. When I received the camera, it looked beautiful but was a total non-working disaster. I later sold it.
In hopes to catch some of the Contax Effect that I wrote about, I re-bought what (I thought) was my first Contax film SLR back in the day; a 167MT and it was the second camera that I bought on eBay from Japan. It tuned out that I was mistaken. My first Contax SLR was a 137MT which was made the same year—1986—as the 167MT. My actual first Contax camera was a used G1 with new 45mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss Planar lens that Mary found for me locally in one of the great camera stores that Denver used to have that is,now sadly gone.
The 167MT turned out to be great camera and came with the P5 battery pack(above) that was not available in the US (as far as I know) which lets you use AA batteries instead of AAA’s that are standard. It also does some cool stuff, including increasing fps. When I picked up a clean, used Yashica 50mm f/1.9 lens and the combo was perfect. Although I had them back in the day, Carl Zeiss lenses for the camera are not in my budget at this time.
Then, I started thinking about my experience with Canon cameras and considered getting an EOS-1V like the one I owned years ago. Since that camera uses the same EF lenses I already own it seemed like a winning idea. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted to go more analog, including manual focus. Then I recalled one of my dream cameras, the Canon F1, especially the Lake Placid Olympics edition. Trying to find a nice one at an affordable price—all my new/old film cameras up to this point had cost less than $130 each—was a challenge so I shifted to another classic from the film era, the Canon AE-1. Although I would still like to own an F1 at some point.
The purchase of the Canon AE-1 dropped me into the A-series rabbit hole. For less than $130, evidently my magic number, the camera was affordable and came with a winder and a data back and while a data back from that era is mostly useless these day, I’ve always wanted to own a camera with a data back. More importantly the camera was truly mint, not Japanese eBay “mint,” if you’ve seen my videos. I was so happy and became somewhat obsessed with collecting the while series, especially since I found that were six A-series cameras, including the semi-autofocus aka quick focus model, the AL-1.
Initially, I picked up a 50mm f/1.8 FD lens, then a 135mm f/2.8 FD and then a 50mm f/2.8 macro lens with 25mm Canon extension tube to give me 1:1 reproduction. And that latter lens came with an LA Olympics lens cap. I followed that up with an FD 135mm f/3.5 lens and started collecting small accessories including Canon brand filters. I had already picked up a Lake Placid Olympics lens cap (for 20 bucks) for the FD 50mm f/1.8. As I said, I can be obsessive.
All the while I was shooting all of these cameras, initially with expired film, but was having the time of my life with these cameras, at least for a while. Then I ran into the same dilemma as most contemporary film shooters soon experience—the cost, As we move into 2024, I am planning to gradually increase the amount of film that I’m shooting. I have built up a backlog of some interesting film stock that I have purchased over the past few months and have talked with my friend Cliff Lawson and (she doesn’t know it yet) my wife Mary about shooting film together on some informal PhotoWalks. I’ll let you know how it all works out.
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