My first medium format camera

I had been thinking for some time that I wanted to get back into analog photography. I had my dads old Minolta 7s up on a shelf as decoration and was first thinking of using that, but I wanted to do something new. I read about medium format and all the different cameras, films and formats available.

One thing came to mind. I liked the time when instagram first emerged and that the format of the images where all square. I liked that, so I desided that if I' started up with film again I’de go for a square format camera. But I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a camera. At least not before I knew if this was something I wanted to pursue. So I started to look for something cheap. I went on ebay and a lot of other places and at last I found a camera on a Norwegian site.

It was a TLR. And not a Rolleiflex, Yashita or Mamiya, but a Lubitel 2, PK1310. There’s no production date on it, but from what I’ve read and found out, it was likely produced in the 60’s or early 70’s in the Soviet Union. This little box cost me around 50 dollars included shipping and began my love for medium format. I bought a couple of rolls of Ilford HP5 plus and burnt through them in no time. That is, I took the first roll and then I went out and bought me what I needed to develop the film at home. I did this back in the mid 80’s, so it was kinda familiar. Had to look up a few things not having done this for so many years.

But I got the roll, the dark bag and my newly bought second hand Paterson tank. After a little I finnaly got the roll on to the spool and into the tank. I was ready for developing my first film in over 30 years. And would you believe it. It came out pretty good. I had overexposed the negatives a bit, but nothing that couldn’t be rescued. And I found out that there was a small lightleak at the top. I did a minor fix that took me an hour and inserted a new roll of film.

Another trip out with the camera to test my fix. Used the same film as the first time and did some adjustments when it came to the exposure. For metering I just used a simple phone app which served me well in the beginning. Actually I still use it from time to time. It’s an android app called … no surprise … LightMeter. This time the images came out perfect. I was amased what this little cheap, plastic TLR could do. The glass had no screatches, there was no fungus or dust. Just clean glass. The previous owners had taken care of this little thing really good. In fact, the only thing that didn’t work was the self timer and that doesn’t bother me at all.

I’m really happy that I desided to buy this camera. It got me into medium format photography for cheap. Well, that’s not completely true. The camera was cheap, but as it happened to be - it was not my last medium format camera…