A couple of weeks ago I picked up a bargain pair from West Yorkshire Cameras .. namely a very, very clean Konica AutoReflex TC with a Hexanon 50mm attached which was also in excellent nick for the princely sum of £29 british pounds.
I have always heard that most lenses with the Hexanon name were supposed to be pretty good so I was looking forward to shooting with the pair.
I loaded the camera with a roll of Agfa Vista 400 and went out for a little walkabout.
The camera is essentially either shutter priority or full manual … if you set the lens to AE you then change the shutter speed and the viewfinder shows you the chosen aperture or if in manual it shows you the recommended aperture for the shutter speed selected.
The day was drizzly and very overcast so I didn’t realise that the aperture displayed in the viewfinder didn’t seem to move above f1.7 for the 1st 5 or 6 frames.
When I noticed I pointed the lens at the sky and set the shutter to 1/60 sec and still the needle pointed to f1.7.
I immediately thought the meter was buggered so shot the rest of the roll in manual using the light meter on my phone.
After developing the roll to my surprise the 1st 6 frames were all exposed correctly and not over exposed like I was expecting.
So I am not really sure what is actually wrong as if I use it in AE mode I think the aperture displayed is wrong but the exposures are correct but if I try manual and use the recommended camera apertures then I imagine the exposures will be wrong.
To be honest I am not that bothered as I can shoot it in manual and just use my handheld light meter as the quality of the images the camera/lens produces are 1st class.
Anyway here are a selection of images from the roll …
All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email
I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂
tim dobbs photography 