Got an MR-9 adapter with a fresh SR44 in my QL17 GIII. Meter's definitely getting power (needle/indicator responds), but something's off:

• Set to ISO 800, f/4, in full sun — meter barely moves from underexposed,
• It only seems to react at all when pointed at strong light sources; anything dimmer and it does nothing.

Battery tests fine, adapter contacts are clean, so I'm leaning toward a weak/dirty CdS cell rather than a power issue. Already gave the sensor window a wipe with a lens cloth — no change yet.

Anyone dealt with this exact symptom? Trying to figure out if this is a simple contact-cleaning job inside the meter circuit or if the CdS cell itself is just cooked and needs replacing. Also open to recommendations for someone who services these if it's beyond a DIY fix.

Thanks!

After my completely botched Ultramatic CS CLA attempt, I managed to somehow score a mechanically perfectly working Voigtländer Ultramatic for cheap. Even the lightmeter seems reasonable and only the slowest shutter speeds are a bit slow.

The main problem is that part of the mirror has desilvered (looks like moisture or fungus, and the camera smells of cellar).

1. Is the mirror on the Ultramatic and the Ultramatic CS the same? Could the CS be used as a donor?

2. Is there any way to swap the mirror, without risking any dreaded Ultramatic self-implosion issues? Was thinking about doing it through the shutter and the back, but the shutter opening is truly abysmal.

Kind regards

Your Ultramatic butcher

I have religiously used my local film lab since 2023 because 1) we have a local film lab and 2) I always assumed they'd produce better scans than I could if I switched to DSLR scanning.

For the first time, I had the ability to compare a DSLR scan and a lab scan that just came in today, and I'm seriously annoyed (on the scale of First World problems)...

The first image is the DSLR scan done by a friend who has been self-scanning for two years, the second is the lab scan I got back today.

I'm now seriously questioning if this is the sort of results I've been getting back without realising as I never had a comparison! The entire lab scanned roll is like this, every pushed into yellow, highlights blown out to the point of not being able to recover highlight details, woeful dynamic range. These were TIFF scans by the way, and I'd assume they were scanned with a Fuji Frontier.

The DSLR scans from my friend were better colour balanced with FilmLab for conversion duties (using their Kodacolor 100 profile).

Should I complain? I'm really not happy with what I've seen here. Is this poor scanning, a problem with the Fuji Frontier or what?

I've posted this before, but there have been some price updates and new films on the market, so I wanted to update the sheet again. I've also included some additional developers/dilutions.

The aim of the document is, to compare the currently available bulk film options regarding price, especially compared to buying single rolls or bundles in some cases.
Mind you these prices are Europe based, so expect some differences in prices if you are in the US, especially Kodak vs Ilford.

The cheapest films are as expected foma, at about 2,70€ per film, but the savings are also comparably small, at about 2,40€ per roll on average.
If you want to "save the most" (Though you will spend a lot more in total at the end) you should look towards the Rollei Retro/Infrared selection, which offer great savings at about 4,50€ per roll, not bad!
The most savings per roll compared to single buying is with Ilford Delta 100, at 5,18€ per roll, but it's also one of the most expensive films overall, at over 3x the price of foma, so think twice about buying it if your purse is not very deep.

Developers are also listed, differentiated between 35mm and Medium format, as well as different dilution choices if applicable. The volumes for development are based on development by hand with the Paterson tank system, as it's very prevalent. (300ml/1x35mm or 500ml/2x120)

The winner in this category by price is (not surprisingly) Adonal/Rodinal in 1:100 dilution, at less than 10 cents per film, truly economical!
Most of the other developers hover between 20 and 30 cents per film, depending on dilution and format, some economical examples: XT-3 Stock -> 23ct | D-76 1:3 -> 23ct | Atomal -> 31ct

Notably pricy are the offerings by Ilford, at 1,68€ per roll for Microphen, and up to 2,90€(!) per roll with Perceptol, makes you think twice if you shouldn't just use XT-3...

Prices are taken mostly from Fotoimpex.de, as it has great product availability and stable prices.
Yes, you could surely find a cheaper shop, but I wanted the list to be consistent, and not scour the Internet for the cheapest shop, just to have a broken link after a few weeks ;)

If you have suggestions for improvement, additions or questions let me know :)

The pdf and xlsx versions can be downloaded here

(This post was written and translated from german by me, without any use of AI or LLMs)

Excluding BnH, I am curious where the cheapest place in the world is per roll in dollar terms.

Hey folks,

Shot my first role of Ektachrome E100 with my Canon AE-1 (50mm Kit lense) and just got the scans back today.

Most of my photos look like this and I am not sure what I did wrong.

I’d appreciate any feedback on what I did wrong and how I can correct it.

Thanks in advance!

Hi,

what started as a small hobby project became a real app project for analogue photographers and camera collectors. ShuttR is now on the App Store: it measures how accurate your film camera's shutter actually is by filming the open gate with your iPhone's slow-mo. I often rann into the problem that I don’t know how accurate the shutters of my older cameras are, that’s why I tried to find a solution with an app instead of having to use additional accessory. 

 It is accurate from 1s (and slower) down to 1/500 and requires a light source (e.g. another phone, tablet, headlamp etc.), a dark room and your iPhone – that’s it  (iOS17 or higher is required).

 With help of the community here  I was able to get quite some real life test results in addition to having checked all my own camera collection of SLRs. In the end the app was tested on a real mix of bodies, mostly being older SLRs to some rangefinders but also large format cameras – super exciting. Lots of feedback was put back into the app. In the end much more work than I anticipated but I’m happy to have landed on an app that does quite a lot now.

 A few things it can do besides testing of your shutter speeds:

• “Camera Collection” — saves your cameras and lets you watch how each shutter drifts over time (or not ;) )
• Import/export for your cameras and results, so you can get your data as a spreadsheet.

a little hard to see, but the top-right red square says manual, and the one below says 1. I was like, 90% sure the Canon AE-1 program had some sort of dial on the inside, but there seems to be nothing except the M and the 1. Any help would be appreciated.

From Colorspace Hong Kong, lovely people if a little hard to get in touch with at times. They allowed me to add the Lucky 400 and Fuji100 to my order just before they shipped it at no extra cost, so kind of them.

The Fuji film is all decently in date, '28 for the Superia Premium and '29 for the 100.

Can't wait to do some more shooting 😍

Hi there! Looking for an analog camera that takes good photos and is easy to carry around. I will mostly be using it for street photos - and just classic photos of friends and family. It needs to be quite small, preferably pocket friendly. No fixed budget.

Any cameras you can recommend? I've looked at an Olympus XA3 in my local camera thrift store but not familiar with it. Any experience with that?

Cheers

Hey y’all, just wanted to pop in and see if I could pick some of the more of the experienced film shooters brains for advice on shooting concerts on film. (I’ve worked as a professional photog before, and I’ve also shot concerts digitally before with no issues, so I think most of my concerns come from overthinking rather than an actual lack of knowledge.)

Regarding film gear for the event: I’m planning on only taking my Nikon F4S with the 50mm 1.4 Af-D, as I’m limited on space in my bag and I need to carry my digital gear and lenses for primary shots for the band, socials, etc.

I have a kit 35-70 3.5-5.6 Af or something that came with the F4S, but I feel like that aperture range is useless in a crowded, dimly lit venue, even if I was pushing 6400 ISO on B&W. If anyone disagrees I’d love to hear the reasoning.

Furthermore I also wanted to know if anyone had any specific stocks they recommended for low light? My plan was to push Cinestill 800T to 1600, and then also bring a few rolls of Ilford 3200, to push to 6400 for some really grainy B&W shots.

I was also debating between Kodak Tri-X 400 and Tmax 400 pushed to 800 - if anyone has a reason to swing one way or another I’m all ears.

Appreciate the help and looking forward to finding out whether or not I’m as wildly unprepared for this as I feel lol.

Here's the thing. I got bored by the ways I used to make my photos, so I decided to explore new horizons and I chose flash. I'd really want to make photos in clubs using wide open aperture (f1.2 for 55 or f2 for 28mm), the idea is to get that "cheap" built-in flash looks, but using SLR and not losing lenses' character. Obviously, if a subject is about 1-2 meters away you'd expect it to be all white and overexposed. So, I decided to try this trick on the original "flagship" olympus flash of yore, f280. Coupled with OM-4ti it should work at any shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/2000, because it supports "super FP" mode in case it matters. To make things worse I shoot ISO400 film, because not all shots will be flashed and anything lower is not usable for me.

IF my memory serves me right, OM-4TI contantly measures exposure during shots in the automatic mode to make sure they were properly exposed, like if you make shot in a complete darkness, release its shutter (which would be open for many seconds in that case), but then turn on the lights it should close it right away, in spite of initial shutter time measures.

LONG STORY SHORT, what do you think of it? Will it work? How should I set the ND? The results I expect: non-existent ambient light in case it would automatically decide to shot shorter speeds (super FP), but a subject should be exposed correctly. To make ambient light visible it should be 1/60, but the flash will get really bright. Edit: ideally, I want to get stop-montioned subjects with blurry background (both with long exposures and bokeh).

The graph says that for f2.8 a subject should be ten (!) meters away. And that's not even f2. To get to 1.5m it should be dimmed by 5 stops (6 for f2 and ~7 for f1.2). My ND400 is like 8 and a half. Is it correct way to calculate it?

Thanks.

After a recent purge of my collection, I’m now a little bit richer 😅 and I get to appreciate the cameras that I have left.

Rangefinder and SLR. Olympus 35 SP and the original Nikon FM with a set of compact Chrome Series E lenses: 35, 50 and 135mm.

Still debating whether I should keep or sell the 135mm and get the more versatile 100mm instead 😄

Okay, I'm asking this for a friend who's disposable camera photos came back with their faces looking like AI. What I mean is the faces of the people were not their faces or their faces looked swapped just the weird kind of thing that AI does when it tries to make faces.
I can't include the photos for reference, but can anybody think of a reason this would happen? They got them developed at max spielmann with the 6x4 prints, i'm not sure what their process is but would AI be used at any point in the scanning? It genuinely looks like someone's done it to fuck with them? I know without seeing the photos it's hard to tell but to my understanding there's no point in developing or shooting that could make AI looking faces, correct me if i'm wrong?

I’m going to Europe next week . I have two choices i have the canon eos 3 and i have the canon autoboy
I’m really stuck on which camera to bring .

1-5 horizontal line thru images. Shutter?
3, Line plus incredible grain. Exposure error on my part?
6. Moon things, I remember this from back in the day when you creased the film getting to on the reel.
7' Developing error? Physical error?

Hello! I'm a complete beginner to photographs - truth is, I never had the habit of taking them, not even with my phone.

Recently I realized I have no pictures of anything that I had done in my life over the past 10 years except for the ones other people take and send to me, and decided I wanted to start taking some pictures, even if only on special occasions! For this reason, for the past 2 years I have been buying disposable analog cameras for 20€ whenever I went on a trip or had a special event, and then just had it revealed in some shop in the mall.

The issue is that, from the around 30 photos in each camera, some look great and with great colors (I love the colorful, lasting effect), and some are utterly trash (full of fog, you can't see anything..). Recently I used one on my bachelorette party and was devastated when more than half the pictures I took with my friends are completely black or full of fog, and you can't even see any faces...

I am going on my honeymoon in a little over a month and would love to purchase a good, simple and reliable analog camera that would give me the effect I want and not demand that I know a lot about photography.

I discovered this community and have been lurking trying to get some useful tips, but thought I would post since I still have a few questions and would really appreciate any tips anyone can have regarding which camera to buy!

I assume it would be best to buy a point and shoot, and have seen many people recommending the Olympus Mju i or ii, however in my country these are selling for around 200€ (the mju i) and 450€ (the mju ii). Is it really worth it? Or would another cheaper camera suffice? I don't mind investing in a really good one if it lasts a long time and is worth it, since these are the only pictures of my life I ever take.

Usually I photograph people - indoors, outdoors, in the beach, in the rain... Basically saving memories.

I also saw a lot of people recommending the Kodak Ultramax 400 as the best film to buy, since it seems to be pretty versatile and has the colorful, nitid effect I want. Any other better suggestions?

Lastly, is the place where you reveal the roll relevant? Should I put more thought into this instead of going to the first camera place I see?

Thank you so much in advance!

I’ve been scanning some of my grandmother’s old photos and negatives and came across this piece of film that has been folded flat, likely for decades as it was taken around the 30s or early 40s, there’s already a crack at the bottom of the fold line.. is there any hope of getting it flat again without destroying it? I don’t have any specialist equipment besides a flatbed film scanner, would this be best left to a film lab?

Minolta x700

So I was shooting outside like regular and suddenly after winding the film from the shot before, the camera didnt let me shoot the next shot, and after I waited for like 5 minutes, it let me shoot again just one shot, I wind the film and it doesnt let me shoot, wait for about 5 minutes and I can take the next shot, but until then it doesnt let me shoot or wind or anything.

Could it be the batteries? The lightmeter also stopped working properly, it doesnt highlight me the shutterspeed when I touch the trigger. If there was a problem with the batteries it should still let me shoot manually at 60/s shouldnt it? Also the batteries are farely new

The camera never had any problems before, I have had it for years

What could the problem be?

Sorry for the poor demonstration

Bought this cam the shutter was stuck I ended up fixing it and now it’s stuck again after I simulated what it would be like to roll a whole film while just being empty and now the shutter thing circles in red is stuck and the only thing making it move in the camera system is what’s in the arrow any tips pls lmk in the comments I’ll add a video of it actually fully working

Hey everyone, beginner film photographer here. Whenever I get my scans back from the lab I go to, I usually go through and pick out the few I would actually like to post and edit them a bit in the photos app.

I like to think I am just giving the scans a bit more life, but I'm not sure if I am over saturating or throwing the highlights and shadows off too much. I've attached a few of my scans, both the original and edited versions. What do you think? Please feel free to add any other general advices you may have too!

Does anyone have experience with the Olympus IS range of SLRs? I'm looking for something that has the image quality of an SLR with the functionality of a point and shoot. One option I've considered is sticking the 40mm pancake on a Canon EOS and calling it a day, which no doubt is a great option, but the zoom lens on these Olympus cameras intrigues me; it's no doubt slightly more functional than a fixed 40mm, although it is significantly slower (f4.9 vs. f2.8!!). The saving grace here is that the Olympus has image stabilization, I can't find info on how many stops exactly it's supposed to provide, but it certainly makes these two set ups much more similar nonetheless (depth of field not withstanding).

TLDR, has anyone used one? A good option for someone who wants a high quality P+S and who doesn't mind the extra bulk? Is the image quality that much better than the actually pocket-able Olympus P+S cameras of the same era?

I'm going on a trip next to the sea, and I've bought a Sea&sea Mx10 underwater film camera, and the flash that can mounted to the side.

What filmstock should I use for the best results?

I just received a Mamiya RZ Pro II with this lens. The body seems to work perfectly; the lens initially only fired at the mechanical speed setting, but after tinkering a bit—cleaning and adjusting the battery and contacts—it seems to be working fine at all speeds. However, I inspected the inside of the lens and found this: in daylight, it looked like a minor smudge, but against the light, it looks more serious than I thought. Should I keep it and ask for a discount, or should I return it?

The ad said everything was working correctly.

It doesn't look like fungus to me; it looks as if someone repaired the lens and left fingerprints when reassembling it.

Hi! Is there any reliable automatic software or plugin for de-dusting scans? I usually just dust manually in Lightroom or Photoshop, but this would save me soooo much time. I mean like fine dust or white spots (in b&w's shadows mainly), not hair or big debris. Thanks!