With an iris pin but no switch you possibly have the least comfortable version to use. I suspect you'll need to go back into the back of the lens and block the movement of the pin. That will allow you to use the diaphragm ring to change apertures.

Remember that you'll need to change one or two settings in the menu of your 100D to allow use of the ring on the lens, set the mode on the body to M, and hit the green button to set an appropriate shutter speed.

Alternatively, keep the lens for portraits at f.2.

If the iris works off-camera then you should be fine; your Zenit body can just stay on the shelf. I have a Helios 44M, and just as Dangermouse suggests, you can use the A/M switch to stop down or just use the ring in M mode.

Wonderfully sharp lens if you have a good one - sharp enough to leave open at f.2 the whole time so that you could shoot on Av rather than M on your K100D.

K10D, ISO 800, /30, Helios 44M at f.2
[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a119/Sandeha/swansea/IMGP3747_copy.jpg[/IMG]

I know a few folks who don't have the attention span for learning anything, but for those who do digicams are a boon. Once you have the gear, every shot is free and its your own loss if you don't burn out the shutter motor experimenting with every technique in every shooting situation.

Then there's colour. On film you're dependent on the manufacturer's specs for each emulsion. If you like how it renders (Kodachrome?) fine. If you don't (Velvia?) you're stuffed until you run it through post-process. Personally I only shoot colour film when there's a particular look I want - in all other respects digital film sensors provide a far more usable colour palette. The dyes in colour film are also exceedingly vulnerable and do not age well unless kept in proper archival conditions - I have colour negatives and slides from 30 years ago that are now washed out.

But black and white is still a whole other story, and will remain so for a good while I suspect. Noise does not remotely resemble grain, as I'm sure a side-by-side comparison with any ISO 3200 film would show quite well. And the tonality of a bw negative, of whatever size, is still, to my eye, streets ahead of what any conversion process can do. My best compositional work has invariably come from 6x6 bw negatives, and my best rapid fires from 35mm. I'm sure this could change over the coming years but as long as the cost of bw film remains accessible I'll probably stick with it.

Oh, and just as a conversation point, I can wow people by telling them I use a £600 lens on a £10 camera body.

How one shop advertises ...

http://tv.repubblica.it/tecno-e-scienze/fotografare-come-se-fosse-una-guerra-lo-...

Wait for the first ad to finish, then get your helmet.

Funny.

Thank you. Flickr we put up with !!

[IMG]http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a119/Sandeha/bologna/110501_neo4_28.jpg[/IMG]

Old newsreel footage of men in dresses with pointy hats.

Two shots further on there's a sample of the display.

Thanks - I certainly enjoyed shooting them.

The shot above belongs among the unpredictable occurances, of course. My finger was already halfway down when she popped out for a split second. But then, as the golfer once said, "The more I practice, the luckier I get".

Another dozen still to scan.

There are still more to add here from my recent trip ...

link




But seventy is probably enough to be going on with.

There are some 6x6 Rollei shots at the beginning and a couple of K-10D from 2007 and 2008. All 35mm are shot on a Pentax MZ-5n with either a 31mm or 77mm lens, with Fuji black and white films.

My few thoughts on this ...

http://sandehalynch.wordpress.com/2011/02/

Fair comment, but in the first case my thought was prompted by the fact that the brain adjusts what the eye sees; we're not always visually aware that a scene might be lit by tungsten, neon and daylight and may not always be prepared for filtered flash techniques. I think White Balance 'repairs' are easier in RAW than in JPEG - though perhaps this is no longer the case with the latest versions of, say, CS.

In the second case, I had in mind more of a creative post-processing situation, for example where someone deliberately creates a moonlit effect from a daylight shot. Can't say I have personal experience of this approach but I'd have expected it to be more easily controlled with RAW tools.