Well, it went quite well, the Spotmatic roughly agreed with the Super A which roughly agreed with the K5!

Was fun using the older cameras but I do think that they are a complement to digital rather than a replacement. In contrast to maybe 35 shots with the film cameras I took well over 100 with the K5. The Super A with the AF400FTZ is a bit of a handle and I found the ME 2 winder wasn't operating as I thought it should............ Will have to see how the old Speedlight II flash for the Spotmatic F works out as it is rather old.......

Just need to finish the rolls most likely on Monday as I go into the city to pick up the newly developed rolls and I can put these in. Oh and the first set of Duplo went down very well!! Our 2 year old played with it solidly for over 4 hours!! So one little victory!

Very interesting. Thanks for that! So the SPF should operate ok. Grand. I don't expect perfect metering and the shutter speeds are probably a little off anyway (one day I must get it serviced, but am wary of posting it as it does have sentimental value).

XP2? I tried it once and felt a little underwhelmed by it. Have already loaded the cameras last night! I like Ektar through the SMC Takumar 55mm 1.8. I have been off work and the medication has made me stupidly sleepy in my defence! I like Ektar and whilst I still have a pile of rolls of cheap Kodak C200 and AGFA pound shop specials I think it's worth sticking to quality B+W and films such as Ektar. And for 1500 forints (about £3.60 depending on exchange rate) for slide processing I can conceivably do a little of that as well.

Oh well, my main problem is manual focusing as I still seem to be too slow and these light sensitive glasses can be seriously annoying. And as soon as I'm back at work I will have almost zero time so am enjoying it while I can!! And it's raining so indoors today.

I've been using the 1.5V 625 cells. Generally fairly accurate but maybe slightly over exposing. Will use a digital or the Super A to double check.

Just been reading that with the modern batteries that the increased current will lead to over exposure if using the meter. Now to compensate for this should I as I have seen suggested adjust the ISO/ASA rating higher on the camera? I.E. I have 100 ISO film, set the camera ISO to 200 to get a more accurate reading?

I may be utterly wrong of course. And I should be able to Sunny 16 by now of course, but it's good for a guide.

I do try not to sniff to closely however......

I don't have a macro lens..... Maybe one day.......

A couple of years ago I was shooting a lot of film and have several decent bodies and M lenses but since moving out here and having a child just haven't been keeping with it! Now though if this lab proves good the economics are changed considerably, 880 Forints a film is cheap to us but still a decent amount for Hungary. I used this little Veho scanner for a massive pile of my Grandad's slides and my Dad's slides and negatives. Produced adequate results for the moment but a little processing in Lightroom no doubt would make them better. The thing about negatives is they can always be re-scanned...... At some point a better quality Plustek or good flatbed could well be the way forward (as well as everything else I think I need/want).

It's our daughter's second birthday tomorrow so have put a roll of Ilford Delta 100 in one of my Super As and fitted it with the ME2 winder and an AF400FTZ flash. I am also going to load a roll of Ektar into my Dad's old Spotmatic F, undecided whether to use the Speedlight Flash with it though....... Need to practice manually focusing again........ The K5 will be in use too so will definitely have some decent shots as I may or may not mess up the film! I am going to miss the Kodak C41 B+W, I used to love it.

Yes, these cameras are challenging to get the best out of them but it was great fun wandering around the center of Budapest with the Super A getting funny looks from the tourists! A nice change from digital as well.

Edit: Is it just me or does Kodak Ektar have a very interesting smell when you open it fresh?

From a recommendation from the US site I found a lab in Budapest for film development (they do a lot of other things as well) and turns out they charge around £2-2.50 per roll regardless of whether it's black and white or colour (slides are a bit more expensive). Had a peek at their darkroom and not a machine in sight, everything done by hand which I think is unusual really and nice to see. I find out if it's any good on Monday afternoon................

My only scanning (as their scanning is quite expensive per frame) is a Veho dedicated film scanner that produces 5 mp. Now the question is whether this set of kit is enough to be serious about being back in the film world as anything (unilkely for me!) really good can be printed or scanned professionally by a frame by frame basis? I would assume that putting the results from that scanner into lightroom with a little post-processing will help bring out the best?

It's as I only picked up the Super A the other day to take some pictures of my daughter playing that I think I've caught the film camera bug again....... So much fun to use even if I did take the first 5 frames without adjusting the ISO!!!

I put in 4 films for development and will be interesting as 3 of them have been in a drawer for at least a year............

Well worth doing and very easy. Another trick I've done is to use a Linux boot cd to recover files from a hard drive in a knackered computer, worked nicely and saved most of my dad's photos and files.

There's a thread on the other site about storage and back ups and it all sounds quite complex and expensive........... I just have an external HD that I copy files over onto as a back up. How far do you go to back up images? I don't really have a second location to store an external HD.....