Wow – four camera posts in a month and a half. This will really be the last one for a while. Maybe it’s not so bad because this gear has been in my possession for a long time.

More than a year and a half ago, when I mentioned that I wanted to start processing film, my father-in-law offered up a box of stuff he’d been storing in the garage – tank, reels, thermometer, even an enlarger – so I could try it out without a big cash outlay. At the bottom of the stash was a TLR, a Yashica Mat-124G. He’d gotten it in-trade or something and never used it, so had no idea whether it worked. It was pretty banged-up, but there was no obvious critical damage. We tried dry-firing it, but the shutter was unresponsive and the button was sticky and stubborn.

At the time, the only film camera I had was the AE-1, and I had been thinking about how to get into medium-format. Since he wasn’t going to be using it anytime soon, he suggested I take it and try to work out the problems. I could try to get it working, and give it back it it was of no use to me.

I cracked it open at home after a struggle (the body latch was also a challenge). There was no film in it, and the innards were tidy. I couldn’t figure out the shutter issue, though. I quickly became distracted with the developing side of things, and the Mat sat. I considered repairs, even getting an estimate when I took the Mamiya in for its work-over. The cost was fairly high, compared to the probable worth of the camera, so I held. The Mamiya gave me my medium-format fix, and I sort of had a taste of TLR-style shooting with the little blackbird, fly. I returned to the Yashica from time to time, but made no progress.

My recent adventures with Russian cameras got me fired up about film things again, and after playing around with the Lubitel, I wanted to work with a “real” TLR. Don’t get me wrong, the Lubi is a fun camera, but it’s based on simpler designs like the Voigtländer Brillants of the 1930s and lacks a lot of the advancements and polish of the newer gear – it’s not much more advanced than the plastic blackbird. To be fair, the Mat-124G is a Japanese knock-off of the much more expensive German Rollieflex, but it’s a good one.

I dug the Mat out and opened it up. I’d forgotten about the stuck latch, so I applied a little oil under the knob and after a few minutes of working it through its cycle, it was good-as-new. As for the shutter, I had a feeling I was missing something. I located a PDF of the manual (thanks to OrphanCameras.com – an Internet miracle) and quickly determined that I had misunderstood the way the shutter mechanism was designed, and how the shutter trigger was “charged” before a shot. Of course, it only behaves properly with film in the camera. With that knowledge, and a little more oil, I was ready for a test.

I loaded up some Arista.EDU Ultra 100 and spun off 12 frames at the local civic center park (gave the back yard a rest). I don’t have a replacement for the mercury battery in the Mat’s meter, so I used the Sekonic. I’m not a big fan of the film (re-branded Czech Fomapan), but it’s cheap. The results aren’t bad. Contrast is decent, and the focusing is much easier and more accurate than on the Lubitel. There’s a mid-frame fogginess in some of the shots, but I can’t find an obvious cause – might have been glare on the overcast day.

I’m looking forward to applying this rig to more serious subjects soon.

Yes, it happened again. I somehow ended up with another Russian camera – I swear it’s the last for a while. This time it’s the Lubitel 166 Universal TLR, manufactured by LOMO in 1986. It came complete with soft case, strap and Cyrillic manual, and is in good shape mechanically and cosmetically. I made sure to get one with the rectangular mask, though I’ll probably shoot 6×6 square most of the time.

I took it through the usual new-addition walk-through of the yard, my impatience pretty much guaranteeing weak results. The Lubitel is notoriously soft at wide apertures, it was late in the day (an overcast day at that), and the Arista EDU 400 goes crazy with the grain sometimes. Everything seemed to work smoothly, except for the focusing. I knew from research that the ground glass/magnifier combo was something of a joke, and confirmed that right away. I relied on the distance scale as with my “toy” cameras, and got close enough on most frames. A couple of them are below. I’m sure that sunny-day results will be better.