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Flexaretcetera

@flexaretcetera

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Unreliable narrator
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Dislikes: cats and spiders. Cats should be turned into hats for spiders to live in.
Likes: everyone but you

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I am sure it was level when I took it 🤔

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📷 Pentax Spotmatic SPII
🔎 Takumar 50mm f/1.4
🎞️ Eastman 5222 #doublex

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A little bit of an Australian day: the Arvo Pärt

😬 by @flexaretcetera

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7 hours ago

I have no further information on Mr Meyer

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📷 Leica IIIc
🎞️ Aviphot 80

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#shootfilm #filmphotography #graffiti #urbandecay #banal

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But I still don’t know what I’m here for by @flexaretcetera

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a day ago

du côté de swan

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One n, no house, not a Proustian reference at all actually 😬 taken in Lake Ginninderra, Belconnen, Canberra by @flexaretcetera

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2 days ago

#holgaweek saw the wanton destruction of my only Holga. We can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man … umm 🤔 … the world’s Nth Holgulon.

I need to recalibrate focus using something better than tracing paper and do something about the awful veiling flare (flock [of seagulls] the insides most likely) but that can wait until Holga Week next year. There really is no other reason to put film into one of these horrible plastic pieces of crap.

Little Miss Flexaretcetera was unusually happy to be photographed with the holgulon though. Seems she has inherited her grumpy old father’s love of the absurd.

📷 Holga 120Pan
🔎 Schneider Angulon 90mm f/6.8
🎞️ Lucky SHD 100 - finally a suitably crappy use for this film by @flexaretcetera

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3 days ago

A short meander with my Contax II. Every time I use my Contax II it is with the assumption that it will be the last. They are tough and reliable, for an over engineered and very old mechanical item, but the only camera repairer in Australia who even claims to work on Contax - can’t. Ask me how I know 🤬

It gets fewer and fewer outings because of this, which is sad. I have tried to sell it a few times in the last few years but circumstances, unreliable purchasers, or pandemics always get in the way.

This time it had a short roll of Aviphot 80 and only the collapsible Sonnar 50/2 as we took a brief stroll to and around the National Gallery. The Sonnar design is famous for its contrast (for its time) and all of the Sonnars I have, even the nasty Soviet ones, render beautifully. I have converted my f/1.5 to M mount (with focus) so it can get more use.

This is not a crappy camera review, it is, if anything, a work of mechanical art review. If you like rangefinder cameras and have never used a pre-wwii Contax then you really should try to get hold of one, just for a little bit. They are different from the post-wwii ones and have a primitive charm all of their own. This one could be yours, make me an offer.

📷 Zeiss Ikon Contax II
🔎 Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/2
🎞️ Svema FN64 aka Agfa Aviphot 80
🧪 Ilford Ilfotec HC 1+31 8:00
🟡 Zeiss Jena G2 mid yellow taken in Parliamentary Triangle, Canberra by @flexaretcetera

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4 days ago

Waterproof camera: crappy camera review part the next.

This is the same camera as the first crappy camera I reviewed (CC1) but inside a plastic “waterproof” housing making everything just that little bit harder to use and the results significantly worse.

It did not help that I made the mistake of using 400 iso film (Kentmere 400, a good film capable of excellent results) as recommended by the packaging, despite my previous experience showing 100 is plenty fast enough in the Yass Valley/Upper Lachlan even on cloudy days. It’s possible the actual camera inside the bubble is ok - or I just got lucky with CC1.

One interesting quirk, and usability failure, is that the frame counter counts in threes but moves in twos. That is, frame 3 to frame 6, for example, has one intermediate stop. Mental arithmetic is my strong suit so I wasn’t particularly concerned once I noticed. Amused, not phased. Everything else is exactly the same as the other one.

These are about $15 from the evil empire and I don’t think k-mart have the ones without the housing any longer so they might be the cheapest new camera available in Australia. Don’t buy one.

As for the photos: I am not enamored of them. I need to find a new set of test subjects anyway as I am tired of these.

Quite a lot of fall-off and/or vignette apparent from the “28mm lens”

Best focus at about 1m, which is better than my eyes 👀

Everything is blurry at infinity. Just like my eyes. I am sure it would be better without the bubble.

A few weeks ago I mentioned falling into a cattle grid full of “rural runoff” and thought I may have an “oh shit I’m going over” picture. Well @debbsdale, it seems I do, but it is less dynamic than I would have liked. I am not going to do a reshoot.

This is the beast. Damage from the cattle grid induced fall can be seen. I am sure it would be better without the bubble.

There is a pink one of these on Amazon AU for just under ten and a half Australian dollars which probably makes it the cheapest new 35mm camera on the market. This should not be seen as an incentive to get one. You can have mine so long as you come and pick it up. I might even throw in a free M&M camera 😉 taken in Lerida, New South Wales, Australia by @flexaretcetera

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6 days ago

Revisited one of the crappy camera locations, and a fairly minimalist tree skeleton, for the September @12monthsonfilm #trichrome

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📷 Meopta Flexaret IVa
🎞️ Lucky Film SHD 100
🧪 Ilford Ilfotec HC 1+31

Red layer

Green layer

Blue layer

Meopta Flexaret IVa taken in Lerida, New South Wales, Australia by @flexaretcetera

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7 days ago

Crappy camera review part 🤔 something: M&Ms camera.

This is a camera I was almost embarrassed to use. I am more than happy to use a camera with a big rotating Hello Kitty on it, or even one with a red dot on it, but I find the oversized M&M a bit much 🤷‍♂️ Fortunately it is a camera which is awful to use and makes horrible pictures so I won’t have to use it regularly 🙌

I came by it in a junk sale and paid a little more than $5 AUD for it - but not much. It was NOS sealed in its hanging bubble. I should have left it there and put it up for sale judging by what other samples seem to fetch 🤑🤑. But I didn’t; I decided instead to put a few frames through in order to write this review.

I shouldn’t have bothered. It was horrible. The photos are horrible, the border is horrible, the sheet on plastic on which the border is printed covers the whole frame gathering dust and being generally horrible. Sure I should have used colour film, something slower than the recommended 400iso, and pointed it at my friends doing dumb things but, as pointed out in a previous crappy camera review, I have no friends so the last is moot.

If you stumble on one of these in its original packing as I did, do what I should have done and flip it at an obscene profit. Don’t try to use it, it is not worth the film. If you stumble on one already bereft of packaging, stumble on and don’t feel bad if you crush it underfoot on the way. No one will miss it.

#crappycamera #mandms #mandmscamera #shittycamera by @flexaretcetera

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9 days ago

Drain the swamp
Drain the swamp

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No, literally drain the swamp. What did you think I meant? The local flood mitigation pond is undergoing maintenance. Fortunately we do not have floods to mitigate at this time, unlike our dear friends in Bangkok and central Thailand.

A low water point in the September @12monthsonfilm roll from my Flexaret IVa

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📷 Meopta Flexaret IVa (shown with the unloseable @forster_uk pro-orange lens cap)
🎞️ Lucky SHD 100. Fortunately I am almost at the end of the brick I bought - I am well over this shite.
🧪 Ilford Ilfotec HC 1+31. I find I get better results from SHD 100 with Rodinal but I had HC made up for a couple of other films so that is what I used.

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Not sure what is going on with that smear down the right side. Probably a coating problem - Lucky SHD has those 🙄. Of course it could be a handling problem as I am notoriously cack-handed 😬

The IVa is not a great version of the Flexaret line but is better than a III or IIIa. Main issue is needing to do all the spells in the right order because the multi-exposure prevention interlock can easily become an exposure prevention one. The IV/IVa are also the last reasonably priced Flexaret. I miss the days of sub-$100 Flexarets 😢 taken in Lake Ginninderra by @flexaretcetera

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12 days ago

@gareth_ernst_artist drinking tea and drawing at @whiterabbitgallery

We all want to be Tilda Swinton

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📷 Mamiya Sketch
🎞️ Agfa Aviphot 80
🫖 some bland Chinese white needle stuff. ‘Tain’t Yorkshire lad. by @flexaretcetera

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13 days ago

Somewhere in the Yass Valley

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📷 Fuji GW690III
🎞️ Lucky SHD 100

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She’s 68 but she says she’s 54 by @flexaretcetera

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15 days ago

Goodbye Cockatoo Island. Back soon

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What do you mean we aren’t going anywhere?

📷 Leica M4
🔎 Summicron 50mm f/2
🎞️ Kentmere 400
🧪 Ilfotec HC
📍 Cockatoo Island wharf

It looks like we are off 🙌

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📷 Leica M4
🔎 Voigtländer Ultron VM 35mm f/2
🎞️ Kentmere 400
🧪 Ilfotec HC
📍 Cockatoo Island wharf

What do you mean I am still standing in the same place on the wharf? 🤔😐😬

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📷 Leica M4
🔎 Summaron 28mm f/5.6
🎞️ Kentmere 400
🧪 Ilfotec HC
📍 Cockatoo Island wharf taken in Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour by @flexaretcetera

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17 days ago