The Zenit-E

Is a 35mm film camera from the USSR.

The Zenit-E (advertisement) is an analogue mirror reflex camera which was manufactured from 1965-1981 in the Soviet Union. To be pricise it was manufactured by KMZ in the town of Krasnogorsk near Moscow since 1952 and also by BelOMO in Belarus since the 1970s. Unfortunately technical it could not keep up with the then produced German and Japanese cameras.
The camera was made almost entirely of metal and offers the following features.

Film format: 35mm
Shutter speeds: B, 1/30 (X), 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500
Self-timer: Yes
Light meter: Yes
Bayonet: M42
Prissmensucher: Yes
Shutter priority: no
Picture counter: Yes (on the winding lever, must be reset manually)
Flash: PC connection
The indication of the film sensitivity: in GOST and DIN (conversion table at the end of the page)
curtain: Horizontal, fabric

The Zenit-E advertisement was delivered with a leather case adapted to the shape of the camera.
To avoid fungus in the lenses, I recommend that you do not store the camera with the lens attached to the camera.
Since leather cases support the emergence of fungus.

Known problems of Zenit-E

Some known problems, besides problems with the fabric curtain, are especially problems in mechanics.
First and foremost possible damage to the shutter speed adjuster. Adjusting the shutter speed only takes effect after loading the shutter! Furthermore, the camera is known for splashing oil around in the housing sometimes. In the worst case, that can contaminate your film.

The Lens

Helios -44-2; 2/58

Thanks to the M42 mount advertisement a variety of lenses are available For the Zenit-E.
Probably the best known is the Helios 58mm f 1: 2.
Exact designation on the frame of the front lens “Helios -44-2; 2/58“ advertisement

This lens is best known for its popular “Swirly Bokeh” at open aperture.
The sharpness of the lens is quite good, but it decreases towards the edges.
With the help of an adapter, it can be used without problems at digital SLRs, of course, here is to be expected some losses in quality.

GET A ZENIT-E HERE <-
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GET A HELIOS 44-2 HERE <-

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GOST-ASA-DIN

A small conversion table

With help of the table below, you can easily convert your GOST values into ASA (ISO) or DIN.

The Minox 35 /GL

A great 35mm film camera in pocket format.

The Minox 35 series was a 35mm film camera produced by the company MINOX, from the year 1974 to the year 1995.

During this Period, the Minox 35 was the smallest 35mm film camera that could load 35mm standard film (24frames or 36 frames).
Depending on the Model, the Minox 35 comes with different options and Model types.
here we will have a deeper look at the Minox 35GL which was produced in 1979.

Let´s go right in and have a look at this awesome camera.

Get the Minox 35 here! (Advertising)

Tech. specs

• 35mm film camera
• ISO/ASA range 25-800
• Internal light meter
• 35mm f2.8 lens
• Exposure time doubler
• Battery tester
• Hot shoe flash mount
• Cable release connector
• A tripod mount

The Lens.

As Mentioned, the Lens of the MINOX 35GL is a 35mm f2.8 Minotar lens.
It has a leaf shutter which is battery triggered. Even that the camera and the lens have really small form factors,
a lot of light is going through the lens. Means you can shoot an 400 ISO film until the early evening hours without any problems.

The lens has no Auto focus at all. You have to guess the distance and then dial it in at the front of the lens.
At the rear part of the lens, you can dial in your Aperture. The Camera will then decide for the correct exposure time.

The lens may look cheap and crappy but it creates images with stunning sharpness.
See for your self down in the gallery.

The 2X button

The “2X button” at the top of the Minox 35 is made to double your exposure time in complicated light situations.
Eg. You want to take a picture in a church, due to the fact that you shoot against the light, coming through the big church windows, the
camera will most likely set the exposure for the lights, so they will not be blown out.
The Problem with that is, that now the rest of the church would be to dark due to the short exposure time.
The Solution: Turning the small button at the top upwards, so it shows 2x.  The camera will now double the measured exposure time ( eg. from 1/250 to 1/125 s) and you will have more details in darker areas.

Setting the right ISO

Setting the Right ISO is key, to gain correct exposures. Since the camera decides most things for itself.
At the bottom of the camera you can find a dial, that let´s you choose the right ISO settings.
I don’t think i need to further explain how that works. :-)

The Battery tester

The battery tester is right above the “2X button”.

To use it makes the camera ready for shoot. Now push the battery test button. The Needle of the light meter should stay between 1/30s and 1/125s.
If it goes below that values, you should replace the battery of the Minox 35GL.

The battery

Originally the Minox 35 is powered by a PX27 battery.

Due to the fact that these contained Mercury, the production of these batteries was stopped.
But the solution is very simple. Minox brought out an adapter in which u can load four button cells and create your own
PX27 replacement. So no need to avoid the camera just because of the battery thing.

Get the adapter here! Advertisement

Instruction manuals

Here you find the original instruction manuals for the Minox 35 series to download for free!

Download manuals!

Sample images

And here we go with some sample images taken with the Minox 35GL.

The used film was a Ilford HP5+ (Advertising) at box speed.

Converting color negatives to positives. Without Plugins.

Two simple ways to convert your negatives without waisting time and money.

Most people convert their negatives during the scan process using programms like Silverfast or Vue scan.

But what if you don´t have a film scanner? or what if you are simply not satisfied with the
Results of the premade film Profiles?
This article will answer all your questions.

Does this work with DSLR scans.

Yes!

The methods i am going to show you will work absolutely well with your DSLR scans.
I would say even better then expensive Plugins.

Please note! Method number two is shown in the Video only!

Do i have to remember all the steps?

No and yes!

No because i provide you with a free action for download, which will take a way a big part of the work of converting your negatives to
positives.

Yes, because I think it is alway better to really understand what you do, so you can manipulate and alter the methods to your needs.

Method one

Let´s start right in with method one.

Methode one is a method that takes a little bit longer for converting your negatives into positives. But at the same time, often gives you
a better starting point for complicated images. For example: If you have an image without clear white point or without a neutral gray subject in it, this method gives you the better results, from where on you can work on your images.

Removing the orange mask from the negative.

• Duplicate your Background layer (just for the case).
• Take your eyedropper tool and sample the color of the orange mask. Make sure it´s sample average is between 5×5 and 11×11.
• Create a new empty layer.
• Fill the empty layer with the just sampled foreground color (color of the orange mask)
• Set the blend mode of the layer to “divide”

You just perfectly removed the orange mask from your negative.

• now hit cmd (ctrl) + alt (option) + shift + E to create a new merged layer.

Original

selecting the orange mask

creating an empty layer

filling layer with foreground color

changing blendmode to “divide”

create new merged layer

Making it positive and set the black point.

Now that we removed the orange mask of the color negative and created a merged layer, it is time to invert the just created image to a positive.

• select your merged layer and hit cmd(ctrl) + i, to invert the image.

the next thing we are going to do is setting the black point.

• create a new levels adjustment layer
• choose the black eyedropper tool and sample the dark boarder of the image as your black point.

invert merged layer

create a new curves layer and sample the black boarder of the image as black point.

Let the magic happen.

At this point we are using a tool hidden in the curves adjustment layer, that will help us to further enhance our image.
This is the same tool, that most of the plugins you buy will use for their work.
The so called “Auto Color Options”.

• Crop away the black borders of the image
• create a new curves layer
• hit the alt (option) key on your keyboard and press “Auto” on the curves adjustment panel.
  Now the Auto Options will appear.
• choose “enhance per chanel contrast” or “find dark and light colors”. If image has a storng color cast also choose “snap neutral midtones”

crop the black borders of the image away.

create levels and use “auto color corection options”.

hit “alt” on your keyboard and press “Auto” on the levels layer.

choose “enhance per chanel contrast” or “find dark and light colors”. If image has a storng color cast also choose “snap neutral midtones”

Final enhancements

After applaying the Auto color correction options, you can apply further enhancements to your image.
in our case we will use some Color Balance layers and alter the Midtones and shadows.

Result of auto color cast options

Further enhance your image by altering color balance to your taste.

Further enhance your image by altering color balance to your taste.

Final result

Download your free negative to positve photoshop action.

Get the action here :-)

Kodak Gold 200 Test & Reviw

A cheap 35mm film, with nice characteristics.

The Kodak Gold 200 is a 200 ASA/ISO film, manufactured by Kodak.

The film was originally introduced in 1997 and was reintroduced or renewed in 2007.
Kodak Gold 200 was designed to be used in Daylight or with electronic flash.
It is available with 24 or 36 exposures, in single, double and triple packs.

Get some Kodak Gold here! Advertising

Tech. specs

• 35mm film
• ISO/ASA 200
• 24 or 36 exposures
• c-41 process film
• warm colors
• daylight balanced

Daylight balanced, what does it mean?

Kodak Gold 200 shot in a mix of tungsten and flourescent light.

As already mentioned, the Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight balanced film.
That means it has to be used in Natural light during day time or with a daylight balanced flash (around 5500 Kelvin). Using the film indoors with tungsten lights (around 3200 Kelvin) will cause some heavy yellow tones in the image. which most of the time does not look nice.

You could shoot the film in tungsten light but you would have to use a blue filter (No. 80A) to counterbalance the yellow light.

What is daytime?

According to Kodaks data sheet, daytime is two hours after sunrise until two hours before sunset.

Colors & dynamic range.

The colours of the Kodak Gold 200 have a very nice and warm touch. It represents yellow, orange and blue colours very well. In my opinion, the film has nice colours in general.
The dynamic range is absolutely ok for a consumer grade film. In some very contrasty scenes, it tends to lose shadow details very quickly.

Scanning

The film has (if handled the right way) great scanning capabilities.
It does show soft to medium strong grain.

One of the biggest problems during scanning is colour casts. In my case and also in case of other users, the film showed a really strong magenta colour cast.
Using the Auto Color Cast Correction (CCR in silver fast), corrected the film tho death. Means it took out all characteristics of the film and really neutralized everything. That’s why I decided to correct the colours by hand.
I used the Film profile for Kodak gold, kept all the magenta colour casts in the image, opened it up in PS and used a colour balance layer to correct the colours.
My goal was to correct them to a point where the film has as less magenta as possible, but without destroying the feeling of the film. In some images, I kind of liked the colour cast cause it added to the look. but for consistency, i edited them all.
In the next pictures, you find some before and after images. On the left is always the original and on the right there is the correction.

My Photoshop Settings

Typical mistakes, made when using Kodak Gold.

Typical mistakes made with Kodak Gold 200 are:

• Shooting in Tungsten Light: The film will look by far to warm an not really pleasing anymore
• Using it in fluorescent light: Kodak Gold 200 will get heavy green casts.
• Shooting in too dark situations: the film will lose shadow details quickly and introduce more grain.

Some usefull links

Here i have some links for you:

Get Kodak Gold 200 advertisement

Kodak Gold 200 datasheet

Sample images

Here you find some example images, taken with Kodak Gold 200.
Scanned with SilverFast 8, colourcast corrected by hand.

A 50´s styled Shoot

Shooting Film in a style out of the 50´s.

(Waring this Page contains partial nudity and is maybe not suitable for younger viewers!)

I asked Julia if she is interested in doing an analog shoot with me, since I am building up my analog portfolio.

Our idea was to shoot something with an erotic touch, but still kind of old styled. Julia came up with the Idea of shooting the Images in a ” sexy 50´s” style.
Since the well-known Pinup style is totally overused I thought the idea was great. Since I never shot in “50´s ” style before, I had to do some research about the Style itself. For this, I searched the Internet for Ideas.

Now we just had to mesh this all up with a touch of erotic.

Some Things that were important.

• The light
• The Makeup
• The used Film
• The Location (in terms of space)
• Finding the right style, with and without the dress.

The Film

I decided to go with Kodak Tri-X 400 Advertising on my medium format camera. Since it is a nice and contrasty film with a pleasing amount of grain.
So it should perfectly support the contrasty style.

I also loaded some Portra 400 Advertising to the Hasselblad. But due to a lack of chemicals, I did not develop it yet. As soon as they are developed, I will load them into the gallery. Well if they are worth it. :-)

For my 35mm camera, i used Rollei RPX 400 (just to try out the film).

The Camera

I decided to use my Hasselblad 500C/M, even that I just own one lens for it, since it is one of my most reliable cameras. My RB67 maybe would have been the better choice in terms of the image format.

My backup camera was a 35mm Nikon, with some Rollei RPX400 Advertising loaded.

The Location

Arriving at the location, i had to find out, that for my particular lens (120mm) the given space was all but not enough.  The room did not really give a lot of space for lots of different angles. But since it was my first try shooting this style i simply decided to go for it and shoot.

The Light

We used available light only, what sometimes tended to be complicated since the light was very changing that day, meaning that starting at an f 5.6 at 1/500s ASA 400 I ended up using the same roll of film with F5.6 at 1/15s at the same location within 10 minutes. That was kind of a pain.
For the images in the kitchen, I had to push the Tri-X 400 Advertising to 1600.

I brought a reflector with me, but it was simply to big to be used in the small space. (you can see in the video).

For measuring the light i used a spot meter as well as a incident light meter.

The Results

For the fact that most things that could go wrong actually went wrong, i am quite happy with the results of our black and white photoshoot.
But see and decide for your self.