I bought a vintage Zeiss Ikon and it is pure mechanical in design. It has a light meter built into it, but it is a selenium light meter and it is not connected to the camera’s exposure system at all. This is great in that it doesn’t need batteries at all to work but it also doesn’t do ANYTHING automatically at all either.
I bought this camera while on my trip in the UK and when I got back home I sent it to Zack’s Camera for a CLA as the shutter was dragging pretty bad. Once back from Zack’s, (who did a phenomenal job BTW) I loaded it up with some HP5 and grabbed my old Sekonic light meter and hit the streets of Chattanooga to play with my “new” toy.
It didn’t take long to realize that we as photographers in the 21st century are so spoiled with our cameras that have auto…everything. I am currently 54 years old and even when I was younger we already had cameras with automatic focus and exposure and even auto film advance. This machine is the grandfather to those cameras.
The day I went out to shoot had partly cloudy skies so as I would walk the streets I would take light meter readings and adjust the camera accordingly for the light on hand. This almost turned into a chore as the clouds would move in front of the sun and lower the light by 2 stops then the cloud would move out of the way and the meter would jump back up those two stops. Also, I learned dark shade is 3 stops lower than direct sun, so keep that in the back of your mind while looking for street scenes too.
So now I see why some people like having those tiny little hot shoe mounted light meters. The handheld one was nice but it sure was inconvenient to carry around. Having a free hand to adjust and hold the camera would have been nice at times. Plus the light meter is just in the way all the time. I don’t have a lanyard on it so I either had it in my pocket or my hand, neither of which are really desirable.
Once I started to get the exposure settings figured out, I start thinking, I am ready to hit the trail and get some sweet street photos. Nothing could be further from the truth. I now have to learn how to focus the camera. Yes, you heard that right, I… a photographer, had to learn how to focus a camera. That was strange to me as I have been accustomed to simply looking through the viewfinder and focusing and then pressing the shutter. Not so on the Contina! You have to engage in the fine art of range estimation with this camera. Yeah, you literally either get out a tape measure and put your camera on a tripod OR just guess as best you can. Seriously, those are the choices here. The viewfinder is literally used only for composing the image. The taking lens is a completely separate system.
You quickly learn about f stops and how to change depth of field so you have a hope of getting something in focus. Notice on the lens the distance scale and the depth of field scales? You better, because you are going to be using those alot if you plan to shoot with the aperture opened up at all.
On my first roll of film I used Ilford HP5 400 speed and quickly realized this was actually a mistake. This camera is so old that the highest ISO on the built in meter is 320 and the fastest shutter speed is 1/300 second. Yeah, in a world where I personally have cameras right now that will shoot at 1/32000 second, I just bought a camera that maxes out at 1/300… Luckily, the aperture goes down to f22 so in full sun it is correctly exposing (I think) at 1/300 second. This did help with the other problem though…focus. Since at f22 everything from 1 meter to infinity is in focus I just had to make sure that I had not bumped the focus ring and moved it.
Once I used it for about an hour I would start to choose estimated focus distances to try to land better focus. We will see once I get the film developed and scanned…
Another thing you will notice in this photo is that all three major functions of the camera are on the lens, the focus is the first and smallest ring, then the shutter speed is the middle ring and the rear most and largest ring is the aperture ring. All the controls on the top are used to control film exposure and movement. The shutter release button, the film advance, frame counter, and rewind knob are in this area. There is a cold shoe and a light meter in the center area on top. That’s it. I love the simplicity, but wow, photos made in that period were worked for.
Going forward I will now have a brand new appreciation for my modern cameras with all their conveniences. I have learned that our forefathers had it much harder and that we should be more appreciative of the photos from that period. I will continue to use this warhorse of a machine but plan to get some lower ISO film first and we will see what we get over time.
So until next time, get your camera out!