What's your fast film combo? Electro 35

[matu]

Hi,
I'm wondering what the rest of you do when you need to shoot a fast film.
My Yasica Electro 35 GSN has 1000ASA maximum range.
Any film at 800 would be ok, but what else can be done...
I've been thiking in using Fuji Neopan 1600, since I've read that it's EI is about 1000.
Now for color shots there is no much scope.
:bang:

Pablo

[Doug]

There's Tri-X at 1000 developed in Diafine! :)

For color, Fuji 1600 rated at 1000, perfect. I like to give color neg films 2/3-stop more exposure than the box says. I most often use Fuji NPZ800, rating it at EI 500...

[furcafe]

Per my response to this thread:

http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4964

I like Neopan 1600 shot @ 1600 (no downrating needed in my experience & yes, it works fine in all kinds of lighting w/the possible exception of a bright sunny day @ noon) for 35mm & Delta 3200 @ 3200 for 120.

[tedwhite]

Doug:

Do you get any grain increase with TriX @ ISO 1000 in Diafine?


Ted

[Doug]

Ted I haven't scanned or printed it for decades, but I have shot and devved some in the past year. My recollection/impression is that there is indeed more grain than when, say, shot at 400 and souped in D76 1:1, but reasonable and not obtrusive. Awfully hard to get beyond subjective impressions... but it produced attractive negs.

One of the recent rolls was shot in an Olympus Pen FT in hopes of getting a nice sharp grain texture! Had to use an orange filter to tame it in bright sun, given the Pen's 1/500 top shutter speed. Actually I used EI 1250, but 1000 is only 1/3 stop more exposure.

[back alley]

try delta 3200 at 1000 dev in ddx.

i think you might just like it.

joe

[Kin Lau]

Well, you could use an external meter, switch it to "flash" mode which is 1/30, and you still have the abiltiy to select the aperture.

With a fixed shutter speed of 1/30, max aperture of f1.7, 1600 film like Neopan or 3200 like Delta 3200 should be sufficient. If I have to shoot 1600iso with colour, then I use my DReb.

[Pherdinand]

I had the same issue with the gsn. Even looked for a method to increase the iso range the lowest settings being never used anyway). Could not do it in the end.
Neopan1600 at 1000...works great. I had it developed in agfa refinal, which indicates the speed of Neopan1600 as iso400(!!!) however it worked at 1000 very well. Except, as said above, bright sunshine scenes (in that case the 1/500 top sh speed of the GSN is also limiting).

Lately there's a new wave of pushing tri-x started by a RFF member...seems to work very well for some folks:)
(i'm trying it right now with 120-format tri-x at iso1600, since my delta3200 supplier is out of ilford material).

[matu]

Hi Joe, what developer is this?

Pablo

try delta 3200 at 1000 dev in ddx.

i think you might just like it.

joe

[matu]

Doug, I think this one is a smart choice, Diafine will adjust to the Asa Rating.
Now I'm wondering if there is another developer like Diafine (compensating developer?), here in Chile I've found Xtol, D76, HC-110, Ilford chemics and Tetenal, but no traces about Diafine or Rodinal.

Pablo

There's Tri-X at 1000 developed in Diafine! :)

For color, Fuji 1600 rated at 1000, perfect. I like to give color neg films 2/3-stop more exposure than the box says. I most often use Fuji NPZ800, rating it at EI 500...

[matu]

Well there is some kind of fever for using fast film, as Pherdinad say it may be due to the recent thread about pushing Tri-X.
Now Yashica claimed that the Electro 35 didn't need flash at all, I've found that it may be true, but for colour shots this just don't work well unless you use a tripod or blue filter etc...
Anyhow I don't know how but it manages very well at low light situations.

Pablo

[Pherdinand]

I know how. It has a very good meter, it has a fast lens, it has a big body that lies comfortably and steadily in my hands, it has a leaf shutter producing no vibration. The only thing i dislike a bit is the wobbly lens assembly - i have not seen or heard about a GSN yet, that would not have a lens assembly wobbling in the mount...

[matu]

Seems that I'm a lucky person, mine is solid as a rock, I got mine from Wlewisiii and it's just like new. I hope it dont get loose.
I agree with you that the Yashica meter is very good, especially when it does his magic with long speed shots.

[Roman]

Pablo,
you might try Tetenal Emofin, a two-bath push developer - I have not used Diafine, so I don't know whether they are similar; BTW, I personally don't like the results from Emofin, for pushing I like Calbe A49/Adox ATM49, but I doubt that you'll be able to get it in Chile...

Roman

[matu]

Thanks Roman, I can find that here, that would give me more freedom to push more films to ASA1000.

[pshinkaw]

For indoor sports I use Fuji 1600 color negative shot at 1600. In the better lit high school gyms that allows me to shoot at 1/125 at f5.6 Since I'm familiar with the locations, I use the camera on manual exposure so that hot spots like the advertisements on scorer's tables won't throw off the exposure.

However, for this type of shooting I use a 135mm telephoto and an SLR. I try to avoid using lenses longer than a 100mm on a rangefinder.

-Paul

[matu]

Paul, I've tried before Fuji Color Film and grain was very big, now this was a long time ago so I think I may give Fuji Color a second chance. Is very sad that nowadays there is less film types to shoot, living in a small Country is bad and good 'couse specialized store are easy to reach, but there aren't many of them. I have nothing against digital Photography, but is killing the film market.

Pablo

[Kin Lau]

For indoor sports I use Fuji 1600 color negative shot at 1600. In the better lit high school gyms that allows me to shoot at 1/125 at f5.6 Since I'm familiar with the locations, I use the camera on manual exposure so that hot spots like the advertisements on scorer's tables won't throw off the exposure.

However, for this type of shooting I use a 135mm telephoto and an SLR. I try to avoid using lenses longer than a 100mm on a rangefinder.

-Paul

The problem with the Electro 35, is that it's an aperture priority camera. You pick the fstop, and the camera picks the shutter speed. And there's only 3 settings for the shutter, B (bulb), A (auto) and Flash (1/30), and the ISO range for the meter is only up to iso1000, which leads to Pablo's problem. How to use film faster than 1000 iso.

Answer is, you have to set the shutter to 1/30 (flash) and use and external meter.

When I have to shot fast film, I usually use the Canon GIII QL17. It only meters to iso800, but at least I can manually select the shutter & aperture.

Actually I have 3 RF's that are limited in this way, the Yashica GS, Canonet 28 & Hi-Matic E. I can also override the Canonet 28 by select the aperture and using a fixed 1/30 shutter speed, but the Hi-Matic E has _no_ overrides. All the other RF's will allow me to select aperture & shutter speed, but only my Hi-Matic 7S will meter in manual mode.

[pshinkaw]

I try to use only shutter speed prefered cameras with manual override for sports photography. Used film cameras are so inexpensive these days that it is quite affordable to set aside a camera bag with a few bodies and lenses with some Fuji 1600 film. When the game calls I can just grab it and go. The Fuji 1600 looks no more grainier than Fuji 800, which in turn looks no worse than Kodacolor 400 did 20 yearas ago. I think we need to give a lot of credit to the longevity of yesterdays cameras to the improved quality of today's film.

I don't think you can easily upgrade a CCD like you can a film casette.

-Paul

[Dirk]

Hi, my name is Dirk and I am new to this forum. I've visited this site for several weeks and decided to join to be able to participate in some of the discussions. This seems to be a nice group of people, very informative and reasonable; I haven't seen any oh the grandstanding and flaming that can infect some groups.

Anyhow, just wanted to add my impressions on the Yashica fast film thread. I use the GSN with Fuji NPZ (nominally 800 ASA), rated @ 640. I have had great-looking results with that combination and lowly Sav-On 30 minute developing, printed on Kodak paper. The lens is a gem, very sharp and a tiny bit lower in contrast than, say, the Minolta 40mm/1.7 Rokkor on the Hi-Matic E. Somehow, pictures shot with the Yashica lens look really "natural"; more transparent than with many other lenses I've used. The bokeh is top-notch; just "creamy". You gotta watch flare, though. Maybe because it's single-coated, including a bright light source in the frame can cause more flare than in some other lenses, even with using a lens hood.

Good to be here!

[CleverName]

Ya know, for as long as I've been shooting my GSN I never knew that setting it to flash made the shutter speed 1/30th.
Since I often shoot my Canonet at 1/30th wide open with Delta 3200, I could do the same thing with my Yashica. Hmmmm...I might just try that tonight.

[tedwhite]

Just checked (you guys made me nervous) the lens on my Yashica Electro 35 GSN. Tight, tight, tight.

The comment about big and heavy is right. Makes it easier to hand hold at slow speeds. Lens is fast and amazing.

[peter_n]

Inspired by furcafe's pics in the thread he links to above, I too am trying Neopan 1600 and will report back on it.

Welcome to the forum Dirk! Good to have you here!! :)

[Doug]

Welcome to RFF, Dirk!

[Kin Lau]

I try to use only shutter speed prefered cameras with manual override for sports photography. Used film cameras are so inexpensive these days that it is quite affordable to set aside a camera bag with a few bodies and lenses with some Fuji 1600 film. When the game calls I can just grab it and go. The Fuji 1600 looks no more grainier than Fuji 800, which in turn looks no worse than Kodacolor 400 did 20 yearas ago. I think we need to give a lot of credit to the longevity of yesterdays cameras to the improved quality of today's film.

I don't think you can easily upgrade a CCD like you can a film casette.

-Paul

The Electro 35 is probably not a good choice for sports. You've got no clue what the shutter speed is except for "Too Slow" and "Too Fast".

The advantage of the DReb for sports is 2 fold, 1) good high iso perfomance 2) ability to shoot freely. But sports is definitely the domain of SLR's (I have 16 other SLR's besides my DReb), but I'll refrain from SLR talk on RFF :)

[Pherdinand]

The Electro 35 is probably not a good choice for sports. You've got no clue what the shutter speed is except for "Too Slow" and "Too Fast".


Kin, depends what kind of sports. I garee, sometimes a rf is too slow to focus and you can't get close enough etc etc, BUT.
The GSN - and a rf in general - has two advantages as well: You see what's happening out of the picture frame and during the exposure; you don't have shutter lag.
I can show/tell you an example. Two years ago my friends had their yearly beach volleyball tournament, and I was documenting it with an SLR and 135/2.8 lens. While the photos are very nice with a shutter speed freezing all the action, the ball usually went out of the frame before the photo was eventually taken, except one single frame with a half ball at the very edge. Should have anticipated.
A year later (in 2004), i went to the same place, same happening, same people more or less, same weather conditions, but took a GSN with me.
There's motion blur in some of the photos, not disturbing at all, and the ball was always where I wanted to be on the picture, not 1/10 seconds further.
See here (http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/2795/sort/1/cat/500/page/2) a GSN-made example: motion blur on the feet of the jumbing player, ball right where it should be.

However, due to my framing errors i've cut some feet off (had to get used to the fact that the framelines are the edge of the photo, not the viewfinder's edge).

[Kin Lau]

I actually have shots of a unicycle stunt team with my Leica IIIa w/ Elmar. One shot has the cyclist in mid air, see http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008qwi
for the shots. You'll have to excuse the lack of post-processing on the scans. On a bright day, f8 on iso100 film will get you around 1/250 or so, so you don't really even have to focus (the Leica shots were all at hyperfocal), so it's just frame and go, so the Electro 35 can be quite good in that situation. I checked my GS, and @ f8, everything should be good btwn 10-20ft, so it's about perfect for volleyball.

As for shutter lag, wait till you try birds. They move _so_fast_ that at 3fps, the bird can be facing 3 completely different directions in 1 sec.