56 replies to this topic

[iNYONi]

Looking forward to seeing the results Nicole.

[Merco_61]

You can use it with an external meter or the zinc-air 675. Operation of all the SR series of Minoltas is battery-independent. A third option is to get a SR44 battery and calibrate the ISO offset caused by the greater voltage. This is constant and should be about two full steps. The 675 hearing aid batteries have a short life in high humidity, but if it is dry they have quite some time before they lose charge. Don't even try using LR44, they change voltage as they age, so you can never trust the meter.

[nbanjogal]

Thanks, Peter!

 

It looks like the 675s are easy to find and pretty inexpensive, so maybe I'll get some today…but not the film. That's in another city…guess I could order it though...

 

And I live in a very dry climate, so maybe I won't go through the batteries too quickly.

Bidding on a few Rokkor lenses on eBay right now…heh.

[Ron]

Congratulations, Nicole. I still have my old SRT 202 which is just a slightly later version of the one you have. It's a tank of a camera. Very well made. Very solid. I loved shooting with mine. As Peter said, you can shoot sans battery but it's always nice to have an in camera meter. I wear hearing aids that use 675 batteries and I've found little difference between the most and least expensive brands. I usually buy Walgreens brand when they go on sale... sometimes BoGo. The main thing to remember is to turn the meter off when you're finished shooting. I was forever forgetting to do that. 

 

When you're looking for lenses, don't overlook the Celtic line. They were Minolta's cheap lens but some of them are optically very, very good. I have a 28mm f/2.8 Celtic that is just as good optically as the 24mm f/2.8 VFC Rokkor I also used. And the Rokkor was MUCH more expensive. Either one should go for mere pennies today though. I can also recommend the 50mm f/1.4 and the 100mm f/2.5 lenses. Both of them are great lenses. 

 

Have fun! 

 

--Ron

 

[nbanjogal]

Thanks, Ron! I'll keep my eye out for those Celtic lenses. I've been a bit surprised by how much some people are asking for the old Rokkor lenses on eBay--some of them are going for pretty cheap, but others are quite a bit higher than I thought they'd be, so it's good to know about the Celtic option.

 

I really hope the 675 battery works because I'd really like to use the meter (provided it still works--I think someone else mentioned that the silk line attached to the needle is sometimes broken). 

[Merco_61]

The silk lines are the only weakness the SRT-s have. They are, however easy to replace yourself by removing the top and front covers. I replaced the lines with Spiderwire on the last two I had and sold them with my last Rokkor lenses in 1995. I recalibrated the meter to use SR44 batteries at the same time. The friend who bought them still use them occasionally...

[Ron]

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at what lenses are going for these days but, well... I didn't think there was that much market. Maybe with all the adapters and people hanging just about anything on anything, there may be a sort of revival of sorts with old lenses. Minolta lenses are generally very good both optically and mechanically. 

 

I never had to deal with the silk thread problem. If anything, I would be careful about checking both the cloth shutter and the sealing gaskets. I had gaskets go bad on a X700 multi function back. And I've heard, but never confirmed, that some people have suffered pinholes in the cloth shutters of their SRTs. 

 

I hope the 675's work too. The meter was actually pretty nice although it was biased a bit due to the camera's built in CLC (contrast light compensator) which was sort of like a Nikon center weighted meter only with more weight given to the bottom half of the frame when the camera was held horizontally. As you might imagine, holding the camera vertically would sometimes screw that system up although not as badly as one might imagine. I'm not sure if your SRT 101 had CLC or not. My SRT 202 was marked with a small CLC badge on the front near the pentaprism. 

 

--Ron

[nikdood17]

So how'd it all come out, already?

I had a dozen Minolta film cameras and lenses (used film Minoltas are so cheap....) Plus many other film cameras -- a dozen Nikons with some killer lenses, a Rollei and a Yashicamat, a dozen Canon Canonet rangefinder cameras, A 4x5 and a 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 Crown Graphic, both of which I am putting together from parts, an Exacta, three Bilora Bella 4x6 and 6x6 cm cameras and other I cannot remember offhand.

I don't collect film cameras, I rescue them.

Long live film.

[Cjtamu]

Oh, man. I know this is an old thread, but the "spray and pray" comment has me cracking up! I can neither confirm nor deny rumors that there may have been a conversation in our household last night about blind squirrels finding nuts, and having some type of intention every time one sets up for a shot. I wonder if that thought process comes from starting with film and having to pay for all your shots, both good and bad?

 

Not to delve too deeply into other expensive hobbies, but with RC cars you can always tell someone who started with 1/8 scale buggies vs. those of us that started with more fragile, under powered 1/10 scale 2wd cars. Completely different driving styles. Wondering if pro photographers can see the same thing with photography. 

 

I know it's an old thread Nicole, but I'd love to know how it turned out. Kim has her grandfather's old Minolta Himatic 7 and coolest old skool camera bag I've ever seen. Hopefully she'll do some photos of it soon. We're going to put some film in it one day and see if still works. 

[nbanjogal]

Ha ha! Oh, wow, this is an old thread, but here's a blog post where I shared a few of the results:

 

I shot a roll of film - NikonForums.com

 

I think I have more on my website...

 

I still have both Minoltas running with a roll of film each, but I'm veerrrrrrryyyyy slow at finishing those rolls. I should just do it. Now. Heh.

 

When I first fired up the old Minolta SRT, the meter was still working, but somewhere along the way, that little silk thread broke. It was fun to read back through this thread and find Peter's mention of how he fixed that very issue. Now, would I actually do that kind of repair? Probably not. I wonder if I can find someone around here to fix it or if I'm going to have to buy a plane ticket to Sweden, ha ha! Or I can just continue to meter externally.

 

Anyway, thanks for resurrecting this old thread and reminding me that I have two rolls of film to finish.

[Cjtamu]

Some really nice photos in there, Nicole. We love retro stuff. I may have to try to resurrect my AE-1P. Peter's knowledge of photographic equipment is astounding, isn't it? Credit for thread resurrection goes to nikdood17, not I. I just popped in to see what he'd posted.

[nbanjogal]

Some really nice photos in there, Nicole. We love retro stuff. I may have to try to resurrect my AE-1P. Peter's knowledge of photographic equipment is astounding, isn't it? Credit for thread resurrection goes to nikdood17, not I. I just popped in to see what he'd posted.

 

Thanks. And yes, Peter is like a walking photographic encyclopedia. He literally knows everything. Sometimes I have to remind myself not to be lazy and make a little effort on my own by at least asking Google before I take up his time. 

 

As for resurrecting the AE-1P, Peter held a film challenge in the last year or so--maybe it's high time to do it again. Heaven knows I need some sort of kick in the butt to finish off the rolls I have in my cameras. 

[Jerry_]

Nicole, it is already two years ago that Peter started the 36 on 35 art project ...

Time passes fast

Topics:
36 on 35, an art project. - Mini-Challenges, Member Contests, and Games - NikonForums.com

Dropbox - Korrekturer_36_on_35_an_art_project.pdf - Simplify your life
A film project (linked to: 36 on 35, an art project) - Mini-Challenges, Member Contests, and Games - NikonForums.com

[nbanjogal]

I didn't realize it had been that long! Wow...time does pass fast.

[nikdood17]

Shooting with film cameras is not 1. a  hobby and 2. expensive. Ex-wives are expensive.

I save myself a fortune in photographer costs by taking photos myself and 'cause I like film, a lot of the things I take are on film. Digital color tends to look a lot like old Anscocolor. The "pop" just is not in it.

You may disargue. It's a free country. But riddle me this, Batman, why does Arizona Highways still have their fabulous vistas of Arizona shot on 4x5 film?

[Astro Baby]

I know its an old thread - jeez I really must try and keep up but theres so much to do, old cameras to fix, old lenses to clean, try and fit in some time to take some actual photos and therapy to cure GAS because the GAS just leads to more stuff to fix each time.

 

Anyway thought I would chip in albeit late - the SRT101 - what a dream of a camera.  It was old and going obsolete when I started in photography back in the 1970s.  Minolta always seemed a bit 'out of it' so my first pro cameras were Olympus OM-1s, later on I moved up to Nikon Fs because thats what you bought as a pro back then.  I owned a few Pentax cameras on and off for holidays etc and later bought into Canon but never really liked much of the Canon cameras.  Minolta got left out of the mix.

 

Recently I acquired an SRT101 and a Canon FTb and my what lovely cameras they are to work with.  The FTB proves that Canon could make a camera I would like but the Minnie is a complete gem.  I now own four of them.  Its a beautiful to handle camera, fits my hands just right and beautifully simplistic to work with.  It would pay you to have yours fixed.  Garys offers to fix them stateside quite cheap I gather.  The beauty of the SRT101 is its such a simple design almost any camera tech can fix them.

 

But back to your mission to get pics on a role......

 

Around 1982 my own photography was becoming stale.  I took lots of film to the lab and seldom got pictures I was happy with.  I had a kit bag of my 'hobby' gear which from recall was two OM1 bodies, lenses, flashes and what seems like the entire Hoya filter catalogue of filters, adaptors, hoods etc. But I was finding my pics were bland, no 'pop' or 'wow' factor. Weekend after weekend I went out to beauty spots, museums, airshows etc and what came back was 'me too' and 'ho hum'.

One day I was walking past a local photography shop and they had a poster in the window for a series of courses and I thought 'well whats to lose - you never know' so I signed up for some one on one tuition with a hoary old press photographer whose work made mine look super lame.  He looked over my folio, looked in my camera bag and looked me over with suppressed contempt.  After sucking on his pipe for a few monents he took my camera bag off of me and said 'well theres your problem right there - I'll keep hold of this for a bit' with that he handed me an old school box brownie and a Roll of 120 film and told me not to come back until I had shot 12 solid pictures.  With a box brownie you are VERY limited.  60th of a second shutter, no aperture control (think they are fixed at about f5.6) and not even a proper view finder.  Black and white only.  So airshows are a no no or anything where the object might move faster than a glacier.

 

I thought it a bit silly at the time but he turned out too have called it right.  The equipment was the problem.  Its too easy to use the technical to get a shot that you probably shouldn't have taken in the first place.  I had come to rely too heavily on my lab and my filters.  Why bother trying to get it right if you can just add some sparkle by putting a star filter on, why bother framing if you can just ask the lab to give you a crop, why bother even getting lines straight when it can all be corrected and why bother worrying about aperture overmuch when you can always mask and soft focus in the darkroom or boost contrast, or grain up the pic.

 

With film that lesson stuck with me - getting the 'eye' in was always more important than having a Nikon F3 with all the bells and whistles (I never did own an F3 by the way). The shots improved and I needed filters less and less and eventually the lab probably went bust because I wasn't paying out for special services anymore

 

Eventually of course digital came along and lo and behold I am back to chimping - just fire it all off and use some fancy PC package to sort it out later.  After all theres plenty of time isn't there ?  Its only 10,000 pics to edit down and spend hours correcting mistakes from when the pic was shot. And thats why I have gone back to film, I am too weak to use digital because I am lazy.  In truth for me in my sunset years I prefer film because it takes me back so many years to the golden age - both for cameras and for me and I don't have to sit in front of a computer for any longer than I need to.

 

So with all that I totally understand why your teacher was keen to get you using film - for a modern photographer it must be a nightmare in many ways with digital.  It was bad enough doing product photography with film and a few hundred pics to look at - it must be a nightmare if the photographer has filled up a massive memory card.  Certainly as I was exiting the world as a photographer the post process time in front of my PC had gone up to fill almost every waking hour.

 

And so back  to Minolta and the SRT101 - this year for Christmas I am giving each of my sons a restored Minolta SRT101 each (one each of the four I currently own).  I wanted them to have something thats of me - both something thats representative of my life and also each of them has been partially restored by me with love and care.  The rest of the work and calibration will be by a camera tech - I am hoping they will still be shooting film off in another 40 years in my sons hands - I can but hope.

[Ron]

I used Minolta cameras for many years... starting with an SRT and eventually adding XD's an XK and lastly an X700. They were (and are) lovely cameras. The SRT for all it's simplicity, is a joy to use.There were many times when I would venture out with just my SRT and a single lens... usually my Rokkor X 50mm f/1.4 or the cheap but astonishingly wonderful Minolta Celtic 28mm f/2.8. There's something therapeutic about working with a single (non Auto) camera and a single focal length lens. Add a simple film with wide latitude such as Tri-X Pan and you can very nearly approach photographic nirvana.

 

--Ron