The communist marvel Smena 8M

It took me a long while to get through a roll of FP4+ with my Smena 8M, but I'm happy with the results. It's a very compact device that is easy to have with you. And it really is Made in USSR.



To me the Smena's optical quality is just as good as you will ever need. And the odd focal lenght of 43mm results in quite unique pictures.


It doesn't have any kind of a light-meter, and it keeps you on your toes adjusting the settings. I guess thanks mostly to modern films' good quality the exposures are mostly usable.


One thing I noticed is that the viewfinder shows a tighter view than what is captured, so you gotta take that one more extra step forward before taking the shot.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Matchbox pinhole camera and the meaning of life

Image
I made a new, smaller pinhole for my matchbox pinhole camera. It seems to have increased the sharpness, but it also introduced some more light leaks. Which is just as well and good. I've been reading the book by "How to do nothing" by Jenny Odell. I'm just midway through but I love it. It's one of those books that seems to be written just for you. About the meaning of life. I'm trying my damnest to stop looking for it. Because it very probably just "is". That's the paradox; you can't find it, only way to joy would be to realize that. But my brain has never been any good at accepting logical realizations, they want emotional and intuitive awakenings. There is something intuitive about pinhole photography. You can only partially decide what you photograph, and the rest is added by the cosmos. It forces you to come to terms with chance and randomness. I'm still struggling with my GAS. My mind is yelling at me to buy s
Read more

By popular demand

Image
I finally got my build of a Populist 60mm cardboard pinhole camera ready to shoot. The Populist is a design made by Nick Dvoracek, it comes in many different dimensions and the plans are freely uploadable on his website . I also made the pinhole myself for this camera, and with helpful advice from Nick I measured it on my flatbed scanner to be about 0.31 mm, which is just about optimal for this camera. The first picture is of a water fountain at a local Helsinki community garden, Syötävä Puisto (Edible Garden). I measured the exposures with an Android app on my phone, called Light Meter. It seems to work very well. I still struggle a bit with framing the pictures, the 60 mm focal length isn't quite the "super wide angle" that you usually associate with pinhole cameras. This one from Herttoniemi harbor could have been framed a bit further back as well. The next two shots were taken on midsummer night. It's been nice and warm here in Helsinki this year, as often mid-Jun
Read more

RealitySoSubtle 6x6

Image
I finally got the first roll of film developed from my RSS 6x6 pinholer. It's a nice camera but the extra wide view kind of caught me unprepared. This was a 30 minute exposure in the middle of the night (in Southern Finland). The wide angle caught the tripod leg firmly in view. A couple of the frames had that weird light-flare; I'm not sure if it's a light leak or a flare.
Read more