Apart from becoming a dojo-master at repairing Pentax ME super cameras I am also enjoying snapping away and teaching myself some new tricks. I've been watching a few youtube tutorials but I always end up doing things my own way. This may be the long way round but I just process info better when it's at my own speed. This has lead me to walk around with a camera and a note-book so I can document every photo I take and note what particular setting I chose for that particular photo. Once my roll of film has been converted onto CD I then take it home and find out which settings worked best. This technique has given me a good idea of how to use my vintage cameras and helped me produce some half-decent shots.

My Praktica LTL3 is equipped with a Carl Zeisse 1.8/50 lens and I've been told that this is quite a decent add-on. To say I picked-up the camera and lens for just £5 from my local charity shop makes this a very enjoyable purchase and allows the saving to alleviate the pain of paying through the nose for film and developing. I try to use iso 200 35mm film whenever possible and this seems to work well and help to create photos that are less grainy. With this camera I am still finding my feet and my photos are hit & miss. Nevertheless, I am committed to mastering this new-found hobby and have also found myself absorbed in learning how to take night-photos and manipulating the light with the use of the variable shutter speeds. This technique is certainly going to need a whole note-book, filled with lines of incomprehensible gibberish only understood by myself. Again, I am a determined little snapper and will one day get my head around this wonderful art-form. For now I am only left with one good example of what I am trying to achieve and I intend to spend many nights at my local intersection, trying to perfect this process.

My only successful night-shot, set at F-1.8 and with the shutter speed set at 1/8th of a second.

I am also trying to play around with different aperture settings to help change the depth of field. This too is a technique I need to practice and only one picture has bared fruit(pun completely intended) On this occasion I didn't remember to note down the settings I used, but I think I had the shutter speed set to around 125th of a second to allow more light while lowering the aperture to around f-4

I also use my Kodak Retinette Ib but more often now I use my Praktica LTL3. The Kodak is an everyday camera made in the late 1960's. I love the look of this camera and my girlfriend has named even named it "Little Baby" due to how often it follows us around. The Retinette seem to be able to take some really nice quality photos given its natural limitations and is fitted with an inbuilt light-meter which helps me tremendously. I now have 2 of these beauties and also 2 Retinette 1A's. The 1A doesn't come with as many features but still look very nice, in amongst my ever-growing collection.

Kodak Retinette 1B

So far this is my best photo with the Kodak

Hope you've all enjoyed the pics and info. I'll be seeing you all again soon.
Peace to you all.