Lessons Learned

Gee, working with the Kiev is harder than working with a Mamiya RZ… probably because of the flaws I discovered during the last few days. The price was just too good. But let’s see what troubles me.

Corners

One of the first things to find out about was the cornering on the negative. Unfortunately it takes you at least one film to find out. And this one was my second one. On nearly every exposure there was this intense light on the lower left corner. On a closer examination I found out that it was dependent on the intensity of the environmental light. The brighter it was during the time of shooting, the brighter grew the corner (see picture).

Streaks

And it grew extremely worse when pointing against the sun. In that particular case there got so much light onto the negative that the whole exposure was just unusable for any further processing – bright streaks of light along with a very intense cornering effect made all the preparations for every photo in vain. At least I didn’t start with a commercial photo project.

I suspected and still suspect the film magazine leaking light when operating the dark-slide of the magazine. This would match the shape of the corner and the fact that only intense light causes those unwanted exposures within my negatives.

The next day I took the other magazine, being extremely careful when operating the dark-slide and covering its ridge in the magazine as soon as I took it out.

After developing today’s film I noticed no corners or streaks during my first quick inspection of the wet film. So far, so good.

But when I scanned some of today’s photos I’ve noticed another two unwanted phenomena:

Decay of light & radial blur

As if cornering and streaks weren’t enough, now I was faced with a strong decay of light towards the edges on every exposure. Now that was new. The only thing I noticed was that it grew a little sharper when working with an f-stop of 22 – big surprise…
Here I suspect the lens screen being a tad too protective and looming into the POV. On the other hand I’ve also used the lens screen when shooting the other film – with no decay of light.

The radial blur was also new – or at least I haven’t noticed it so far. Only the center of each exposure was crisp (provided that there also laid the focus). Towards the edges it grew blurrier and blurrier. Barely noticeable but impossible to ignore. For this possibility I’ve also developed some theses:

1. the lens: Maybe the lens itself isn’t as thoroughly fabricated as Zeiss-lenses. On the other hand I’ve read more than once that Kiev lenses are said to be good in quality.
2. the lens-mount: Maybe I didn’t lock the lens properly on the body or it untightened itself during photographing. Both cases are rather unlikey but need to be considered though. Maybe the sunscreen wasn’t locked on the filter thread and hence longer than it should be?
3. the film: Maybe the film curled a bit in the scanner so that only the middle is perfectly in focus during the scanning process. Which is also unlikely because in that case every frame would be dome-shaped on the film with is also very unlikely.

Solutions?

The only way of enforcing certainty is 1) to see how prints in the darkroom look like instead of pondering digital scans and 2) to load another film and to photograph a lot – another time. The next time without lens screen and/or filters, with the “good” magazine with passable cornering.

But I still think that the price was just too good to be true… Time will tell.

Gee, working with the Kiev is harder than working with a Mamiya RZ... probably because of the flaws I discovered during the last few days. The price was just too good. But let's see what troubles me. Corners One of the first things to find out about was the cornering on the negative. Unfortunately it takes ...

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