I just realised yesterday that I haven’t played with my macro extension tubes since I got a couple of new lenses for my DSLR. I was just messing around when I took this photo but I think it’s of my camera bag, which was on my desk. I love how the background looks like smoke.
Taken with a 50mm prime lens and macro extension tube on my Canon 450D.
Hana went to a car boot sale recently. I half-jokingly asked her to pick up anything photographic if it was cheap, hoping to sell it on eBay for a few quid (and maybe even use it).
Girl done good – she found a early 1960s Braun Paxette Electromatic II for not many pounds. The seller assured her it was fully working, so she bought it.
For those that aren’t familiar with the Paxette series of cameras (I had never even heard of them until this week!) the Paxette Electromatic II has a fixed shutter speed of 1/40s and a variable aperture between f/2.8 and f/22.
It has a crude light meter which shows a red marker in the viewfinder if the light is insufficient and a green marker if there’s enough illumination. I think it’s broken on mine, because it always shows red. I don’t mind though, because it almost feels like cheating to use any electronic or automatic features on a camera like this. I will use the sunny 16 rule to help me expose the photos properly.
Unfortunately it seems quite hard to find much information about it on the Internet. Almost all information refers to the Paxette Electromatic I which seems to be a very similar camera, except with fixed focus. You can tell the I and the II apart because the I has striped ridges around the barrel of its lens while the II has a slanted chrome ring, which also twists for focussing.
All day I was hopping with excitement until I got my hands on it. Unfortunately the shutter mechanism seemed to be jammed. Unlike many modern cameras, the shutter is composed of 5 or 6 metal leaves that open in the same way as the aperture leaves. I couldn’t find any service manuals online (without paying – bah) and my heart sank. Anyone who knows me will tell you I have as much dexterity and patience as I have oestrogen. But I thought “what’s the worst that can happen?” and went to fetch my precision screwdrivers.
I wasn’t able to get into the back of the camera because it was very well put together, to say the least. But it didn’t take too much work to get the various elements of the lens out, and I poked the shutter leaves with a tiny screwdriver and suddenly they pinged into place. Apparently they had simply seized up from lack of use. I reassembled the lens in reverse order.
I shot a roll of Ilford Delta 100 black & white film in it, and this evening I developed the film. The results are quite nice. Most of the outdoor shots are overexposed, so I guess everyone else’s definition of “Slight overcast” is different from mine. I’ll know for next time – shoot one stop slower.
A greater shortcoming of this particular set of photos is the focus. The camera has a viewfinder so you don’t get to see the results of your focussing. The focus ring has numbers printed on it – the distance to your subject in feet or metres. I just guessed (or paced) how far it was in each case. Apparently the focus ring is not at all accurate, so most of the portraits and other close-ups are quite badly out of focus. The landscapes and architecture (effectively at ∞) are in pretty good focus.
As I mentioned above, the shutter has a fixed speed of 1/40s. This is a pretty slow shutter speed, and through most of my film there is a fairly large amount of camera shake. Obviously I could use a tripod or monopod to steady the camera, but there is no self timer. It looks like there might be a small hole for a cable release, but it’s filled with half a century’s worth of fluff.
I’ve published all the best photos from this roll of film on my photo blog.
Loading film into this camera is an absolute pain. It doesn’t hook into the spool very strongly and kept pinging off as I tried to wind the film onto it. Eventually I managed, and closed the back of the camera. I shot about half a dozen frames and then the film apparently became unhooked again. No idea how – you’d think the film being wrapped around the spool several times would be enough. So I couldn’t wind it on, but I couldn’t wind it back either, because it had got snagged somehow and rewinding it tore the sprocket holes out of the film. I had to open the back, ruin all the photos I’d taken so far, cut the spoiled film off, snip the corner off to make a new leader, and reload the film. This time it stuck. Next time I will probably stick it to the spool with a square of sellotape.
Winding the film on doesn’t always advance it by the same amount. Some of my frames were touching, instead of leaving a few millimetres between frames. Not the end of the world – just makes it a bit annoying to scan because my filmstrip holder has a plastic frame round the edge of each picture.
In future I will be using a tripod with this camera, because the 1/40s shutter speed is just too slow for the focal length of the lens. I also noticed by looking at the inside of the shutter (without film) that you can take long exposures by holding the shutter release.
I will calibrate the focus (or at least figure out by how much it’s out). This should be quite straightforward, simply by opening the back of the camera and holding some tracing paper where the film would be. I can place a subject precisely 5m away from the camera (for example) and then see what the focus ring needs to be set to in order to achieve focus at that range. It might even be possible to adjust the alignment of the focus ring.
This review might sound negative. But it’s anything but! If I want an accurate camera with perfect focus and exposure that’s right every time, I can using my DSLR. Which is boring. This camera is fun, and I will be using it again! 🙂
This week, Hana bought me a Braun Paxette Electromatic II, dating from 1960 or thereabouts. I’ve shot one roll of film in it so far.
Looking at these photos, you’ll see that the quality is bad – both from poor focus, camera shake due to the slow (fixed) shutter speed, and that most of them are exposed and corrected for in post-processing. Many of them also have scratches across them, presumably where something in the camera rubbed on the film as it scrolled past. I like it – it reminds me of a cinefilm movie with scratches and lines.
Anyway, the detail is all on my blog if you’re interested 🙂
Overall, I think this camera gives a very authentic vintage feel. Lots of these photos look like they were genuinely taken in the 50s or 60s.
For now, these are my favourite photos from the roll.
To start with, a couple of portraits: first of Hana by her car, and then me by my desk. The picture of Hana has been spoilt down the left hand because the film got jammed inside the camera and I had to open the back to unjam it.
The next two shots were taken in Castle Park on my way to work.
And these two were taken on Queen’s Road, by the Clifton Triangle.
Finally, these two were taken in Brandon Hill park.
Seems like O2 is down this evening. It must be a fairly widespread problem since loads of people have posted about it on Facebook and Twitter.
I searched for information online but there was nothing on O2’s website, which is pretty poor.
Some forums discussed the outage, although there were no facts – only speculation that building work at a data centre had damaged the power supply to the building.
Anyway, I don’t care. I don’t like being phoned, and I also have a Vodafone handset if I particularly feel like calling someone.
As for data service to my iPhone, this is being supplied by my WLAN deathnet. My ADSL is almost as fast as a 3G connection(!)
Perhaps the service I will miss most is SMS – although most of the people I care about will know that I’m also contactable by other text-based protocols. 😉
That said, I’m off to sleep now and will not be contactable by any means for several hours. Goodnight!
Back in September 2009, I was given a 35mm SLR camera – a Canon AE-1 Program. I loved it, it was fantastic to use, and I wrote a blog post about the possibility of upgrading to a DSLR.
In March 2010, temptation got the better of me and I bought a Canon EOS 450D. My main concerns beforehand was the loss of the large LCD viewfinder of my Fuji S9600, and in particular, not being able to flip it out for awkward shots, and not being able to see useful information about the camera settings in the eyepiece.
Well I needn’t have worried – the 450D is of course more advanced than my AE-1 and has a small LCD under the optical viewfinder for that information. I hadn’t realised until I tried it out in the shop.
The issue of having to put my eye up to the camera still hasn’t been addressed, but it hasn’t been a problem. I just find myself lying on my belly more, or simply pressing the button and guessing about the composition.
In the two months that I’ve owned the 450D, I’ve taken over 2,000 photos[1] and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I feel more in control of the photos, and I can’t recommend an SLR strongly enough to anyone who is serious about photography.
I now have three EF mount lenses for this camera. Unfortunately they don’t fit the AE-1 (which uses the FD mount) but this very evening I bought a Canon EOS 300, which is a consumer-level 35mm SLR with an EF mount. You can pick up 35mm camera bodies on eBay for a fiver so I thought it might be nice to make even better use of my lenses.
If you’re actually interested in any of my camera facts and figures, you might like to look at my page of cameras. If you’re more interested in the pictures themselves, then why not browse my photo blog.
[1] That’s about 1.4 each hour I’ve owned the camera
Hana and I went away for a few days to stay in Wells. (You may already have seen her looking gorgeous in the restaurant).
This is the view from our bedroom window in the Ancient Gate House Hotel, lit by the golden evening sunshine. I took about a million similar photos with various kinds of daylight (and night-time illumination) but this is my favourite.
There’s little else to do in Wells, so we spent most of a day in and around the cathedral. I felt super-special important because I bought a Photographic Permit, which entitled me to take all of the following photos 🙂
Firstly, the arches which were added ten years after the construction of the cathedral, on 3 sides of the main tower, because it was going to fall down.
A series of arched “windows”
The beautiful vaulted roof of the chapter house
Hana sitting in the chapter house
The famous staircase leading up to the chapter house
A view down the side aisle
The organ
An old building through an old window – the view of the cathedral from the cloisters
I snapped this portrait of Hana while we were away in Wells for a few days (more traditional tourist pics to follow!).
I thought it was a good picture in the first place, but I followed this glamour tutorial* to give the image some further touching up. It’s the first time I’ve tried this kind of editing and I was pleased at how easy it was and how effective the results were.
Of course, Hana will tell you it’s all natural beauty 😉
* Just be careful searching for gimp glamour
Yesterday I shot a panorama of the view from the garden around the Clifton Observatory. It’s quite a pleasant view, but it’s a shame that the suspension bridge and the observatory aren’t the same height.
Jonathan Gazeley 