As promised in the first part of this Canon A-1 attempt, I have finished the first roll of film – it’s again an Agfa Vista 200 – and it’s back from the lab, so it’s time to show some images.
A couple of images were made during a hike in the Lerautal – a valley with a small creek – the Lerau. The path followed first the hill up to the old castle ruin of Leuchtenberg (built in the 10th/11th century … and sorry, no pics here … maybe next time) and went then down into the valley of the Lerau. This valley is mainly covered by forest and the Lerau is meandering through it.
This time, I post-processed the colour images slightly with ColorFX by applying some kind of de-saturation magic – the Agfa Vista is normally showing more vivid colours. They can be found here. As I’m always seeing sceneries also in black and white, a b&w version can be found here.
Using the Canon A-1 more often, some of the quirks I mentioned in my earlier post do no longer bother. Still, the combo is quite heavy and still the multi-function wheel is something one needs to get used to. Technically, the Canon A-1 worked flawless with its 1.4/50mm S.S.C. lens and so one can more focus on the important part – seeing sceneries.
One thing, comparing to let’s say a Contax 139 Quartz, a Contax 159 MM or even the Olympus OM-4Ti is, that the film advance works … not so smooth. This is somehow disappointing with a premium model, but it may simply be caused by aging. So let’s not overrate it here. I simply find it astonishing how different the tactile feedback of this mechanism feels with different cameras, where it is always the same technical process behind.
My conclusion: It was interesting shooting my old dream camera, but … I’m sure that I will not use this camera frequently. It’s definitely no bad camera – under no circumstances, but it does not thrill me as much as I thought it will, decades ago.
In case you’d like to comment, it’s appreciated … and maybe, you want to visit my website or my flickr page too.
So long … and thanks for all the fish.
It’s always a shame when a camera you have wanted for a long time turns out to be disappointing to use.
Better now than decades ago, when it would have cost me a fortune … and it‘s good seeing that my then decision for the Minolta x-700 was not that wrong ;)