 This is a roly35s I recently picked this camera up for a hundred bucks online without knowing if it would work Now that might sound kind of crazy to do but I did some research and I looked at the photos And I saw that the lens was still in the casing in the ad and the person said it seemed to be broken now I kind of doubted that it's a fully mechanical camera and Mechanical cameras tend to work and I order a lot of cameras online without knowing if they'll work or not The mechanical ones almost always do. I had one Pentax Spontmatic that didn't work But I know the problem. It's just a little bit. I haven't really figured out how to fix it yet But I know what the problem is anyway So I didn't know if I blew it or not if I've wasted a hundred bucks But I had a good feeling it would work out Day it came worked perfectly and so I got a three to four hundred dollar camera for just a hundred bucks I was incredibly excited to shoot this camera So I quickly loaded it up with film and today I want to share that role of film with you guys Now I have some mixed feelings about that role However, those feelings aren't so much about the camera. It's more about that role I shot some challenges I faced and some adjustments I would make going forward So without further ado, let's take a look Okay, I'm gonna try to make this really quick because I've got a lot of work I want to do but I really want to keep pushing myself to try to make a video every day starting today So let's get into it. This is the first shot. I took with the roley as you can see I actually missed my focus, but I think the kids kept moving around They didn't understand that they have to stay still and so they were moving in and out of my Zone that I was focused into so the way a zone focusing camera works is that you can't actually Focus like with a rangefinder or an SLR basically you're Gaging the distance and you're setting it to the lens So if you think they're five feet away, you set it to five feet, etc now The problem is if you're shooting at a shallow aperture like let's say f 2.8 or something is That it's really gonna be easy to miss your focus if you're shooting at f 16 or higher FAA etc. You actually have more leeway because you have a greater range of depth so It was the last day of school. So I brought my kids some vintage cameras, which they went absolutely nuts over They were a little disappointed when I told them they couldn't actually get the film for it but I Thought it would be a cool thing to collect for them and they did shoot film this Session and they absolutely loved it. They went nuts over it. So it's really exciting. It's really exciting seeing them go Crazy over a 70 year old camera The girl in the middle is holding my 70 mark 2 and she was going crazy over that too But they especially really liked the retro cameras So I was really disappointed to be honest with this initial role And that's because my images ended up overly dense so with film you're actually recording information on that negative and The more information you record or the more you expose the denser that negative actually is and Remember it's a negative. So if it's dense not a lot of light gets through Therefore areas are gonna be very light because it's getting more less exposure if and negative is very thin A lot of light gets right through Personally, I prefer a dense negative and I think most people prefer a dense negative to a thin negative Ideally you're gonna be spot-on with your exposure, but if you overexpose a little bit kind of gives you a Safety net I guess you could say So normally because I always process and diaphine. I kind of know what Speeds diaphine will push different films to so for example, even though Triax is an ISO 400 film Diaphine overexposes it by about two stops and actually it's almost three. So usually it's at 1600 that's what the manufacturer actually recommends you shoot it at but what happens is if you want a denser negative 1250 is a good way to go. So that's what I did But I think I made the mistake of also compensating by overexposing manually as well not just rating it differently and I ended up with those dense negatives that Were a little too dense and the thing about dense negatives is that I have found personally that it prints well in the dark room But it becomes more of a challenge when scanning it So I was just really frustrated, but I Scan these in a hurry and didn't have that much time to look at them And the more time I spent looking at them the more I realized I actually really liked the images this camera produced Here's a shot a few shots in Venice As you guys can see with the dense negative it it's a little bit less contrasty Whereas Triax can be extremely contrasty. It's known as a contrasty film. I Wanted to kind of push the limits of the camera, but also my own skill So I challenged myself to freeze action and get sports shots with the camera That's really not built for sports photography. I think this image. I actually overexposed even more So you can kind of you can kind of tell the difference between this shot and this one and These blown out areas right here. I think that's because it's just so dense that not much light on the scanner was getting through See here, too. I have a blown out area One thing I like to do I'll go back one thing I like to do is embrace a camera's quirks So this camera has its own focusing even though I did challenge myself to use it For something. It's not great at I also like to embrace what it is good at or embrace its flaws or limitations So if I have a camera with zone focusing, I'm usually not trying to shoot at like f2.8 I'm usually using it at f16 or higher and just going for as much depth as I can get Here I think I was at f22 However, this guy was walking into my shot, which I actually wanted But it wasn't he was too close to actually capture him in depth Right there. You have my RICO 35 another camera. I'm testing right now I have not seen film come out of it yet, but I really love this camera I wanted a close shot of it, but this camera doesn't have a Very good minimal focusing distance. It's actually I believe three feet same with this RICO so you can't really get that close and that's a problem, but Usually you wouldn't use this camera for like macro photography. It's something you're gonna use for street photography. Most likely Here's my friend Sonia Here I think I would actually backed up exactly three feet as best I could measure and I was able to shoot at a very low aperture and still get her in focus, but here I Don't know what happened. I missed it all the or maybe she moved I forgot to reset my scale Here I was hoping that at f16 I think or maybe f22 I'd be able to get the skater and focus and the background But it looks like I ended up focusing more on the background. I may have said it to infinity You guys can kind of see how I lose detail here. Here's Brixton. So I think the third day I took this camera out to shoot I kind of just took a walk around my neighborhood and discovered this old church. This church was built in the 1800s by Jebediah Kim. It's a Korean church now a senior citizen Place I don't know what you call it activity center. Here's Brixton looking handsome with his bow tie No Normally you would not want if you're shooting at a high aperture like an f16 f22 You can get a lot in focus and so you can't separate this truck from your subject by using you know Background blur so I shouldn't have positioned him here I should have positioned him over here somewhere where he wouldn't blend into the background And I think I knew that when I was shooting it The problem was he was in the middle of the street and I just wanted to be quick about it So after I spent some time looking at these images, especially when it wasn't way over exposed Like this wasn't as overexposed. I don't think I actually really like the way it renders It renders different tones. It has this great gradation. You can see even my blacks here Have Information in them. So what we can do My keyboard would work Can actually look at the histogram over here and you can see that my black my blacks Excuse me and my brights my highlights are actually all in the range of the graph, which is a good thing And yeah, I could add more contrast Here's as shot So yeah, it actually was a little flat in this image I did add some contrast, but if you can add contrast It's not the end of the world if you end up with a flat ish image Let's just see how it looks at strong Yeah, not that and it's still in the appropriate range. I would say this would come down to personal taste preference Maybe somewhere between medium and strong contrast would work best here. I'm testing My accuracy again and seeing if I can get at exactly three feet and here. I'm just trying to finish the roll. I Was really excited about this one Here's my friend Arielle getting coffee Brixton every time I turn tries to call for help and get away from me because I love them too much Here's Brixton chilling Brixton in front of a van This one was a focusing fail, which is too bad. All right. That's it So overall actually really really really like this camera It is fun to use using scale-focusing is kind of fun. Anything different to me is fun. I have shot thousands and thousands and thousands of images professionally on a digital SLR and Any new novel experience. I have a great time with and the reason I collect old cameras is not for the material Aspect I don't care about owning things, but I really genuinely love using these cameras It's just so fun to try different things Try different challenges and I really really admire the craftsmanship of these all mechanical cameras, especially Let's take one last look All right, so I really hope to share more images with you guys in the future I have an episode of some photography show coming out with this camera and use Look for that if you guys are enjoying this content Please like and subscribe you can check out more of my images at at retro grading on Instagram Or you can visit my website makemillman.com If you guys are looking to take dark room photography classes We offer classes for adults at barnstall art center in Los Angeles So if you're in Los Angeles, especially get in touch, I'd love to hear from you guys. All right guys Stay tuned for the next one