I’ve always like Twin Lens Reflex Cameras, from an asthetic point of view anyway. Never really looked into what the photos are like, but after getting the opportunity to get one for peanuts, I decided to snap it up!
The camera is a brilliant bit of kit. The Lubitel 2, is one of the earlier models but still takes great photos. The idea with the TLR Cameras is that you hold them around your waist/stomach area and look through the viewfinder at the top. The top lense is the one the viewfinder linked to, and the bottom one is linked to the shutter. The two lenses are linked by simple cogs, so when you focus one, it focusses the other, therefore directly linking what you see through the viewfinder to what you eventually take, at the time, this was a revolutionary idea!
Incidentally, the Lubitel is a 120 medium film camera, which is excellent for all the spare films I have lying around!
I took a quick film to check for light leeks around Stirling. I had not really used a 100% manual camera before, so had to play around with the settings without the aid of a lightmeter, and the results came out ok. The exposures are a bit bright, but I am happy enough for a first attempt! WIll need to either sit and down and bother to learn about conditions and camera settings (yawn!), or buy a lightmeter (£££).
Here are some pics:
Comments
Hey, awesome shots here. If you don’t want to buy a light meter you should consider the sunny 16 rule.
in bright conditions set your shutter speed to the same speed as your film and then your aperture to f.16 – it always works!
Obviously in brighter or darker conditions you can guess the f.stop accordingly!
hope that helps!
yep, was just swatting up on that today. Will have to adjust the aperture right down…it’s never bloody sunny up here in scotland!!
Those are gorgeous pics, in my book. I’m waiting for my Lubitel 2, supposedly en route right now, but I’m nervous because there are so many posts about how worthless and horrible Lubitels are. How can they always say that when there are so many badass pictures out there produced by them?
Did you ever have to adjust the lens/viewfinder sync or anything like that? I think those who can’t take a decent picture with a Lubitel probably just haven’t done its maintainenance… what do you think?
Guess I will just have to wait and see!
I’m envious of your random around town pics–sho’ ain’t near me! (Austin, TX)
Hi Erin,
Don’t listen to the people that say lubitels are rubbish. They are an excellent introduction to TLR’s, and for the price you can’t really go wrong with one! The only downside is that once you use a TLR, you really really want to get a good one like a Yashica or Rolleiflex, as they are great fun to use!
The Lense on the lubi is actually pretty good, nice and sharp in the middle, and only slightly blurry on the edges (but for the price they are, you can’t complain!), and you can get some really decent shots with it. The ones above are slightly overexposed but I was just guessing the settings on it!
I never had to do anything with mine, it just worked out the box, no need to synch the lenses, although I have heard it’s not too bad to sort out if it needs doing(although for £10/$20ish, it might be worth just buying another one!). The cameras are so cheap that I could see they could easily break or become out of synch, and you do see a lot of excellent photos in the lubitel flickr pool.
I think a lot of people buy one as they think just because it’s old and russian and made by lomo they will get ‘LC-A’ style results(especially now the blasted lomo society have started selling an updated model), when in actual fact it is a decent camera that can take decent photos, so perhaps some people are disappointed that they don’t get ‘wacky’ results like they get from other lomo cameras.
Me personally, I love it, it’s not perfect for every situation though, as it takes about 5 minutes to set up a picture, but it’s great for the money
forgot to say,
I want to see some of your texas photos! That’s the great thing about this interweb malarky, you get to talk to so many different people! The stuff that seems ordinary to you, is completely alien to me, and fantastic to look at. It’s the same with the photos above, they are just boring pictures from around stirling (scotland) to me, but to you, they are something different to what you see in Texas!
So let me see some photos of Texas!
It just goes to show that you don’t have to spend a fortune on a camera to get awesome photos like these.
I now regret going totally digital , and really regret getting rid of the 166 I had I will have to sweet talk the wife into letting me another one.
Keep up with the good work on the medium format side and also could you put up or send some links for dealers who may stock Lubitel in the UK
Cheers for any help you can give
Tony
You don’t need to spend a lot on a light meter, i bought a bewi piccolo clip on meter (about 3×3x3cm) for 2€ on ebay and it works wonders!