Shooting with a 70 Year-old 'Tank' camera

The guys from camera Rescue gave me a challenge :
Shooting film with a 70-year-old medium format camera.
The Plaubel Makina III is a rare vintage folding medium format rangefinder camera.

Second camera operator : Mariel Bluteau

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Shooting film with a 70-year-old medium format camera.

The Plaubel Makina III is a rare vintage folding medium format rangefinder camera.
it was made in Germany just after the war and it looks like a tank.

It's a beautiful camera but as you will see in this video its not so easy to use.

You can find a used Makina for between 500 to 1000 euros on the Kamerastore website.

Collectors Love plaubel cameras due to their high quality, excellent performance, and history.

Plaubel Makinas were commonly used by press photographers
Lens : Anticomar 2.9/100, closest focus 1.5 m, F 2.9 - 22

The Makina III uses a coupled rangefinder so you focus by a mix of guessing the right distance and checking in the tiny rangefinder.

this slider corrects parallax when shooting closeups

fine focus is controlled by this wheel on the camera’s left side

120 roll film back for 6cm x 9cm images

This lever is the cocking lever for the Compur shutter.

the frame counter is cool looking but its easy to forget to turn it between two captures ... and you will see that i forgot to do it a lot ;...

This camera is a bit intimidating for a modern photographer it looks so solid and fragile at the same time.

I shot two rolls of 120 film in the Plaubel.
I did all the light mettering on an app on my phone.

For my first shot I pressed the shutter the wrong way, and it took one exposure
then i took the photo i wanted to make, but the result was a double exposure.
so First try was a fail.

on the second photo, well i did the same mistake again ... but at least my focusing was good.

Now that i understood my mistake I did a third try but this time ... i miscalculated the exposure time on my phone.
MMM ...

Finally I manage to shoot one good pic, no dobule exposure, sharp and clean

IN the Lab they told me that those weird dots were not because of the camera but because of the lomography film that has a very week paperback.

After some time i managed to shoot some clean images. far from perfect but for a 70 year old camera i was pretty impressed by the results.

As i am a begginer in film photography I was pretty happy with what i got from this camera.

I hope Camera rescue will send me more weird vintage camera to practice so i can do a better job next time.

[chacecampbell]

Even the mistakes were gorgeous, awesome camera!

[ISRAADVISUALS]

2090 : "taking photos with 70 year old 2020 DSLR and i have to say it is really hard to use"

[AM-rbps]

honestly this shots are gorgeous, even and especially the castle with the funny lomofilm effects.

[IanWilkinson]

We don't realise how fortunate we are nowadays — it's so easy to take perfectly exposed and focused photographs with modern digital cameras. The skill now is more about composition, timing and subject choice than in manipulating a device that doesn't want to co-operate. However, there are certain modern menu systems to survive ...

[kollegekool]

I use my Plaubel Makina 67 and W67 nearly every day! I love them, interesting to see their "grandfather"

[robertknight]

I love seeing images from really old cameras like this. I have a 35mm Kodak Pony camera from the 50s that I actually like a lot. Zone focusing and very easy to accidentally do or multiple exposure. I did end up with a few happy mistakes. It's my go to camera for the lower ISO films.

[SleepyAtTemuco]

Wow, Mathieu, it is a terrific camera! I wish I had one.
I have a few old cameras that I actually used to shoot some pictures about 35 to 40 years ago. In those days, 35mm film cameras were widely used, but the negative was sometimes to tiny too get big enlargements without getting a too much "grainy" picture. You can think of "grain" as the equivalent of a pixel: too much enlargement leads to a pixeled picture. Although, sometimes one could use grain in a kind of artistic expression. Having a 60x90mm negative was always a plus. In terms a young photographer today can understand, 35mm film had a useful area of 24x36mm, which compared to 60x90mm was like saying SD vs HD. Also there were many types of films, varying from coarse to ultra-fine grain. The last can somehow compare to 4K, namely when using big format films, like the 8x10 film sheets used by the most sophisticatred studio cameras. It took one sheet for one picture. Highly expensive.
With these manual cameras, to be able to get the perfectly exposed photo was a skill you could develop after some time of carefully registered field work. I had copybooks (several sheets of paper held together by means of metallic clips, nothing electronic, hahahaha!) were I took notes on every shot: f-number, shutter speed, film type and sensitivity, and hand-held light meter readings. Then, after shooting, one had to get to the laboratory, to develop the film into a negative. But that's another story.
To be a photographer 40 or 50 years ago was certainly a lot of work, but it was really fun. I reaaly miss those days!

[nasoj]

That is super cool. I have seen some of their more recent cameras, but never that one. Even the shots that didn't turn out were fun.

[SilntObsvr]

I regularly use cameras that old and older -- my "one camera, " the one I'd keep if I could only keep one, is a Kodak Reflex II built in 1952 or so, but I also frequently use a Voigtlander Rollfilmkamera made in 1927. Surprise! It produces really good images, with scale focus, wire frame viewfinder, and red window frame counting, at *ninety-three* years of age! My 4x5 Speed Graphic is also pre-War, made around 1938, and my Graphic View (also 4x5) is from about 1950. The *newest* camera I use regularly was made before 1980.

Of course, I learned to operate an adjustable (all manual) camera in 1969. I develop my own film, as well (learned that in '69 too). Next on my list of photography learning is printing color. This year.

[webinatic]

The beauty in those images is astonishing.

[alexcarrillo]

I have the 1933 Plaubel Makina Model Two in which have shot with it, as the lens is only has one coating, but still sharp, and the colors are amazing... Will be taking it to Japan in 2022.

[johncantrell]

I had a mamiya press camera once, and it was very much like that. So many steps in taking a shot, it was the most interactive camera I ever owned. But when you did it right, the 120 film produced some terrific photos, and even better slides.

[martov]

woah, very Inspector Gadget style camera !

[lgude]

I never saw one of these before and I go back to that era - getting my first camera at age 5 in 1946 by sending in cereal box tops. It took 127 film and was pretty awful! I've seen and owned a lot of folding cameras but the most exotic was a Kodak I paid $2.00 for in the fifties that took 5 inch roll film and produced 4 by 5 images. No, it was not a view camera, but a big folding camera, of really nice wooden construction with red leather bellows. I made a black paper film holder and managed to get film into the camera in the darkroom and discovered my negatives were drastically underexposed. Further research revealed that the lens (a Kodak Rapid Rectilinear - a precursor to the great Tessar) was marked in "US stops" which are different from standard f stops. I found a conversion table and worked out the actual shutter speed by comparing it to known accurate shutters and managed - as you did with your "Tank" camera to get acceptable images from it.

[RhysHastings]

It's great to see this camera getting some love. I've had one for years and have only used it a handful of times because of how demanding it is to use. I've had many of the same issues but when the results are good, they are great. I love the character of the images as well. Thanks for sharing!

[ChristopherKovacswanm]

I've been around vintage cameras for years... I have not seen this one. Looks like an awesome camera. Thanks for sharing!

[esmolalko]

How nice to see this camera at work. I have one miself that used to be my father´s. I remember making a wedding to a client who was in love with this camera, and by the way I used a Graflex flash unit back in 1976. I still own it and it´s still working. You forgot to mention how easy it was to take a picture with the blind of the film holder in place and finally not take any picture. Graet camera!

[Grasyl]

3:35 Some very old 120 and 620 film cameras are designet for very very think back paper.

[Indrakusuma_a]

No matter how hard and impractical it is to use, no one can deny how beautiful it is. What a camera!

[francoisdastardly]

Sometimes big imperfections make a unique and perfect photography !!!