Pig Sty Avenue

That's the first roll through the new FED4.  I'm not impressed.  Nothing is what you'd call sharp.  Mind you, I can't complain, I got the Industar61 lens with the camera for £5.50 the pair.  So I will probably need another lens, maybe a Jupiter8.  I could kick myself now for selling both of those lenses, and all their bloody filters, a few months ago.  Binary thinking, that was.  However, one lives and learns. I've got an Industar26 on the FED2 - I'll maybe try that on the next roll I'm putting through the FED4, which is Agfa E6, which I got from Oli.  I'm going to use that to take a set of portraits indoors.  Maybe half and half with the two lenses would be a good idea.  It's part of a new approach I'm toying with: shoot a roll of film on a given subject, and dev it straightaway.  I've got loads of film.  And the processing works out at about 65p now.

This Matt Denton has some good craic about Fed 2s . Most of the links in it are dead, but not his tutorial on how to disassemble and regrease an Industar lens. And this site by Stephen Rothery is a mine of information. I'm going to be home for a holiday in a few weeks, and, inshallah, I'll have a Fed 2 and a Jupiter or Industar lens waiting for me - there's loads of them on eBay. Funny how things happened: the Chinon went tits up, and I lost my interest in Leicas all in the space of a day or so. The daft things you do when there are no pubs to go to, eh?

fed2bw , originally uploaded by etienne the upsetter . This was taken with a Fed 2, and an Industar 26m lens . Another reason for getting a Russian rangefinder rather than a Leica: wouldn't one naturally tend to be a bit precious with a camera and lens costing altogether £500 to £600? What I'm saying is, I want to get out and use the thing, not leave it at home as an ornament.