Lazarus cameras

Let's face it, photography should be enjoyable, at least some of the time. I'm sure an argument can be made in favor of perpetual angst, but today I'm in the mood to talk about fun. Several months ago my beloved Rolleiflex SL66 started misbehaving so badly that I had no other choice than to send it across the country for repair. It was going to take a minimum of 3 months to complete the work. Ugh. What was I going to shoot in the meantime? I decided to purchase a couple of Lazarus cameras. Two medium format cameras that shoot 6x6 cm negatives just like the Rollei. The constraint was that the total investment in each was limited to $200. I figured that at those prices, the laying on of hands might be required, so I decided on snagging two cameras to double my odds of raising at least one Lazarus.

The first camera I purchased was a Kowa Six. I was familiar with the Kowa brand from that time long ago when I bought a spotting scope to try my hand at birding on a trip to Galveston. Meh. Birding, not Kowa, not Galveston. The Kowa Six came with a 85 mm f/2.8 lens for a total price of $175. The body was in pretty decent shape, and did not require extraordinary measures to bring back to life, but the lens was a total disaster. But, Youtube. So, I took it apart and cleaned off all the schmutz and reassembled it. Wow, pretty nice little set up! The image below doesn't pretend to show off the high quality optics, but instead takes a deeper dive on the concept of fun.

These days, it sometimes seems as if everything has a name associated with it, and I learned that the technique demonstrated in this photograph is called intentional camera movement and has an official acronym (you guessed it, ICM). Ha ha! I'm pretty satisfied with my first ICM shot.

The second camera I picked up was the Zenza Bronica EC-TL. I couldn't resist the pull of a camera with the first name of Zenza, what can I say? All in on this one, I spent $225. Hey, one piece had to be shipped from Japan. I still stayed in budget overall. To my amazement, I was able to coax this little beast back to life. As with the Kowa, the lens was a mess, but is so simply constructed that it was easy to clean up to a nearly new condition.

Also, as with the Kowa, the standard lens is 75 mm. This one was made by Nikon and it really is a stunner. I'm pretty sure the optical design is from the late '50s or early '60s. Dare I say that it might be a little better than the Zeiss that I have on the Rollei? At the very least, the nine aperture blades (compared to the Zeiss's five) improves the bokeh. The EC-TL is an electronic camera, so the restoration was not perfect in terms of the accuracy of the meter. Gonna keep on it. But the shutter works fine, and in the meantime I'm fine with estimating exposure on my own. I shot this on a roll of Delta 400, my film stock for the month.

Lazarus gear. Fun even when it doesn't work out. Those are stories for another day, perhaps.