While shooting with the Casio RF-2 film camera I got fond of taking analog pictures. I like the whole process and the retro style images. Most I like the moment when I take the film off from the developing tank. It is just so exciting to check whether there are images or it is yet another failure. I started to ask around my family who has some old analog cameras.

Soon I got a Zenit-E from my father in law. It is an old Russian SLR. Looks cool, not so heavy. It came with a 50mm f/2 prime lens.  It has some grease in its viewfinder but otherwise it is in pretty nice condition. I could not wait to try it. Unfortunately I did not have any B&W films, but I got an idea. I had some old disposable cameras. I bought them when I needed some cheap flash for my water drop experiments. I decided to take the film from one of them and reuse it in the Zenit. The only challenge was to take the film back to its cassette. In these disposable cameras the film is pulled off by default and pulled back into the cassette after each exposure when the film is advanced. So it is not necessary to roll it back when all the exposures are taken. It means I had to “exposure” the whole film before I could open the camera to take it off. I used three layers of black tapes to cover the small lens. I shot the whole film without actually exposing it to light. Then I took the film off and put it to the Zenit. I guess I do not have to mention the film was ISO 400 color negative.

I shot the whole film in one afternoon. Then I mixed up some caffenol and developed the film along with a kodak T-Max 100 from the Casio. Bingo! Both films developed well. I have to wait until June to scan them because guess what? I asked my father about his old cameras. Besides he promised to give me his old Praktica MTL-3 with a set of lenses he also promised to give me his film scanner! I visit them in June. Only two weeks left Oh and did I mention that my grandma’ had a Kodak medium format camera? My father already got it from my grandfather. He is 90 years old now and I guess that camera is from the 40′s or even older. That will also be exciting to test.

The Zenit and the Praktica both have M42 lens mounts. So if everything is true, soon I will have a large amount of M42 lenses. I started to play with the thought whether I could use those lenses on my DSLRs. I ordered a cheap adapter ring from eBay. I tried it with my old Canon D60 first. I took the 50mm lens from the Zenit, screwed it to the adapter and mounted it to the camera. I put the camera to manual, set the focus manually, measured the light with stopped down lens and shot. And I got a nice ERROR 01 message from the camera. After googling a bit I found this means communication error between the camera end lens. Of course, but it is not an error I thought. It is just a feature of the adapter ring. Someone mentioned in a forum he solved a similar problem on a Canon DSLR by insulating the adapter ring from the connectors. While I was sure the ring does not touch the connectors in the camera I gave it a try. I applied some tape to the ring, but it did not help. I was a bit disappointed. Then I googled more and did not find a solution but nobody complained about camera damage. My D60 did not damage either so I tried the adapter with my Canon 50D. And it works! I did everything on the same way and my newer camera just works. It puzzles me a bit, so I keep on looking for the solution with the D60.

And finally, I would like to say thanks to Vojtech who read my post where I was wondering what lens mount my Casio RF-2 has. He kindly informed me that looks like a Pentax K mount.