With film loaded into my latest Kiev, I set out to try and capture at least one photo, made with an antiquated concept called “film”.
The day before I had wasted my time taking shots with a stuck film. I had also wasted time dragging a digital camera around to use as an exposure meter. A bit of research and I had downloaded Pocket Light Meter onto my iPhone.
Point your iPhone towards your subject. Set the ISO and either the aperture or the shutter speed, and the app will give you the missing value.
Press Hold to keep the screen while you set the values in your camera. Press Save to save an image which not only shows the exposure values and the image; it also give the coordinates.
Even if you don’t use it as a meter; it would be a useful app to note the location of a photo. As far as metering goes, it gave exactly the same results as my Panasonic camera; so it does its job well. Not bad for a free app.
Took a film, dropped it off to be processed; and the results are pretty much what you might expect from a consumer grade film which has not been properly stored being processed by someone who is probably not an expert at film developing. But useable; especially if you muck around with them a bit.
Some of the shots indicated that there is light leaking into the camera. This only happened with landscape orientation shots; so I developed some theories as to where the light may be leaking into the body and set out with another film today to test solutions. Inconclusive results because the light leak failed to appear in ten or more test shots. Also played around with exposure variations and decided the camera needs a little more exposure for a balanced image.
1970 Kiev 4 with 1960 Jupiter 9 lens. Shitty Kodak ISO 200 film.
Meanwhile, I had decided that my Kiev 4A had destroyed a film on the previous day because the rewind spool was too tight. So it was out with the screwdriver of doom this afternoon and I soon had the relevant part in pieces, thanks to some scans of the original Kiev repair manual.
Certainly came to pieces easily enough, and I discovered a broken washer which is no doubt the source of the problem. When my job lot of five busted bodies arrives, I will be able to obtain a replacement washer and fix the problem; provided I haven’t lost any bits or forgotten how it all goes back together.
Wandering around with a film camera is a different experience; but after three consecutive days of making runs to the printers; I think I need a day of digital tomorrow for a change. Unless another package arrives….
Comments 🔗
2012-06-21| Spanky saysThat app looks brilliant. I just got work to buy my new iPhone so I need to get it to play with. Good luck with the camera repairs.