The Limbo Connection's photos with the keyword: SLR

I bought this for practically nothing and only because I wanted the lens on it. Both camera and lens were stiff and the camera's shutter was not dependable. But it nevertheless had some value as a subject for a picture. The Zenith-E was succeded by the EM which was my first decent camera and is fondly remembered. The manufacturers gave the EM an automatic diaphragm to relieve users of the necessity to stop-down and that was a big deal at the time. What I did rather object to was the big effort needed to release the shutter that had been caused as a result.

Photographed with a Nikon D2Xs and Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 AI lens at f/8. I bought this camera for £28 but the price also included a set of three M42 extension tubes, a Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Orestegor 200mm f/4 lens, and an early example of the Helios-44 58mm f/2 lens. The Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Orestegor 200mm f/4 is a remarkable lens. It was manufactured by Meyer Optik, Gorlitz, between 1963 and 1970 and has 15 aperture blades. It is a preset manual M42 lens, with continuous aperture - the aperture ring has no detents in it, and so it is stepless with a seemingly infinite number of aperture positions. And the Helios-44, which is a a Soviet copy of the Carl Zeiss Biotar 58mm ƒ/2 lens, is full of character with its notable bokeh. In fact, only the camera was a disappointment, because the shutter is unreliable.

Lots of reassuring metal in a simple sturdy camera built to last. But along comes Cowboy Danny Digital and the gunfight is short and one-sided. So let's concentrate on the lens which came with the camera. M42 thread. Crude, and was later jettisoned in favour of bayonet fitting when electronics were introduced so that exact register could be guaranteed (not a possibility with screw thread). Construction metal and glass but surprisingly light in weight. 55mm focal length - they liked an extra 5mm in those days. Six iris diaphragm blades. Auto and manual capability (auto being the ability to focus with the aperture wide open and on pressing the shutter it closed down by itself to your selected aperture). This is a later version with a rubber focussing ring, introduced around 1972. Earlier types had the hill-and-dale focussing ring which looks much cooler in my opinion. F/1.8 maximum aperture. Not especially fast but certainly not useless indoors so long as you had loaded at least 400 ISO film (called ASA in those days - ISO came later). Very nice handling from this combination. But I no longer use film and therefore I sold it to some lucky eBayer several years ago.