Happily ever after eh - I don't think so.
I had to wait for the FT-1, and what would be more natural than to buy something else, to cure the shaking?
Something else, turned out to be a Mamiya ZE Quartz. Why? It was available, and I liked the look of it. I have a tendency of doing certain things a bit different - some would say just to take the piss. The Mamiya had a 50mm, as do they all, but after having agreed upon a price, I looked around ebay for some more lenses to complete the set. a 50 is a "normal" and behaves like the human eye. So I wanted something wider, and a tele as well. Luck would have it, that the guy I bought it from, had every freaking camera known to man, on display in his living room. And he had ( unbeknowst to me ) lined up a cute-as-can-be 28mm F3.5 and 135 F3.5 - all I'd ever need. Bought it all. He even gave me roll of film - good man.
The Mamiya soon got company, a Petri GX-4 ( forget about finding much on the net about this, but use one of its many aliases: Cosina CT-7 instead. ), and a Chinon - something something. The Chinon, well - went straight into the bin, but I bought a stool of the guy as well, and it seems to hold together somewhat better than the camera - and the case he had is lovely.
Count it, four camera bodies and 12 lenses in about one week. The girlfriend started to worry. But alas, I've stopped now. I have the gear needed to figure out what type of camera I'd like, and I'm actually starting to put some film thru them.
The FT-1 had a faulty light-meter, and the seller "never had any problems with it", right. I guess it'll look nice in a display stand for a while. No doubt that it'll work peachy in manual mode.
It's the small things that count - and in many SLR's, thats the battery. Back in the day, many of them had a now-outlawed 1.35v mercury cell. "Just pop in a new alkaline" won't work, because the light meter would start off overexposing everything, and then be all over the place, as the voltage drops with time. You need special cells that are not readily available - or some that are, albeit not alkaline, and just compensate with the ASA setting. Learning curve - short and steep.
But I still love the feel of them, the need to take things down a bit and not just motordrive your way thru another 100 digital frames. I love thet fact that you for once, don't look like a perv every time you try and take a picture. And I love the faux leather bags they come with... The smell of grandpa and his cigars are just a bonus.
I bought another Konica ( Autoreflex TC ) to use instead of the faulty FT-1, and that tallys up to two Konicas, a Mamiya and a Petri. No Canon, no Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Minolta - none of the big guys. Yet... Most of them do that same job, and its all about what collection of glass you'd like. Thats one of the things I like about film, if you ignore the difference in focal lenght, depth of field and so on - the quality depends on the film - and only the film. Today we rave about megapixels, but with film - the quality of the picture is pretty much the same between bodies.
The Petri is 6 frames from finishing the first roll, and I can't wait to have it developed. They might all be hopelessly overexposed, who knows - but if not, they are all unique captures of light - at that exact moment. Can't be changed, adjusted, cropped or Hipstamati-fied afterwards. Not that people didn't make magic with exposure and burn/dodge in the dark rooms back then, but for me at least - the second I press the shutter - thats it, frame captured.
More ramblings when I've gotten the rolls developed, and I'll take some pictures of the new toys.
