Gossen Light Meter Overview
Gossen Starlite 2 All-in-One Light Meter
Replacing the Gossen Starlite, the Starlite 2 is Gossen’s latest all-in-one top of the line light meter offering unrivaled capabilities and multiple functions. Three individual meters are specially incorporated into this one precision-measuring instrument: An exposure meter for ambient and flash; A CINE meter for filming; A light measuring instrument for illumination intensities and luminances. Among its many metrological highlights, the Starlite 2 includes a broad range of high performance features for flash measurement. It’s capable of measuring individual flashes, calculating multiple flash illumination and analyzing flash and continuous illumination — even with several flash units in combination. The Starlite 2 provides the user with precise results, even for highly complex tasks.
Gossen Color-Pro 3F Light Meter
The Gossen Color-Pro 3F is specifically designed for measuring the photographic color temperature of flash and ambient light, and to indicate the measured results in degrees Kelvin (K). However, there is much more to it, after comparing the color temperature measured with the pre-selected color temperature of the film, in degrees Kelvin, the COLOR-PRO 3F calculates out the filter values required to achieve photographs without color casts. The resulting filter values can be expressed as light balancing values in Mired or Kodak WrattenTM values. In addition to the above the COLOR-PRO 3F will also indicate in CC filter values the correction required, for example when working with fluorescent lighting.
Gossen Digipro F Light Meter
Slim, sturdy and ready to twist! The Gossen Digipro F is the latest member of Gossen’s family of high-quality exposure meters for digital and analog photography. This high-precision exposure meter for flash and ambient light features a swivel head that makes measuring and reading a breeze for both professional photographers and dedicated amateurs. The stylish, lightweight Digipro F is small enough to sit comfortably in a shirt pocket. It features a user-friendly interface, which can be easily operated with one hand.
Gossen Mavolux 5032C Light Meter
The Mavolux 5032C is a handy, easy to use, highly accurate light meter capable of measuring illumination in either footcandles or lux. Candelas/m2 and footlamberts can also be measured with the optical luminance attachment. The Mavolux 5032C is equipped with color correction, so that its spectral response is matched to that of the human eye. Integrated cosine correction is included in order to ensure that oblique incident light is also evaluated correctly.
Gossen Mavo-Monitor Digital Illumination Level Meter
The Gossen Mavo-Monitor is a precision digital instrument for measuring luminance with the measuring sensor placed directly on a luminous or backlighted surface, for instance monitors (CRT/LCD), TV screens, light boxes, light panels, traffic signs and ground glass. An easy to handle, user-friendly measuring instrument for professional applications in industry and service, for special checks and certified testings according to the existing safety regulations, above all at work stations, in medical and office systems.
Gossen Digisix Light Meter
The Lightmeter that fits in the palm of your hand. Digisix is a Digital/Analog exposure meter. It’s great looking, great value and a true travel companion that’s packed with more features than you’d ever expect. The Digisix is small enough to sit comfortably on your camera’s hot shoe (with optional shoe adapter), and sports a digital read-out and analog scale for ambient light levels that can be measured in reflective or incident mode. Digital read-out in EV is easily transferred to a setting ring where all the shutter speed/f-stop combinations can be read at a glance. But the Digisix doesn’t stop there. Not only is it an exposure meter, but it also offers a functioning clock with alarm, a timer for timing long exposures, plus a precision digital thermometer which measures temperatures and stores a high and low value.
Gossen Digiflash Light Meter
The Digiflash offers all the features of the Digisix meter above, plus the added benefit of taking flash readings with a range of f/2 – f/32 at 100 ISO. The Digiflash is microprocessor controlled and runs on a Lithium battery type CR 2032. The meter weighs approximately 1.5 oz including battery, and comes with a carry case, strap and battery.
Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS Tessar Review
Source: http://www.djcphoto.com/index.php/1956-rolleiflex-automat-mx-evs-tessar/
I’ve always had a soft spot for twin lens reflex (TLR) cameras, so called because they use separate lenses for viewing (the upper) and taking the image. As a child I remember being fascinated with my father’s Yashica TLR, with it’s intricate controls and mechanical precision, and I thought the view through the waist level finder was pure magic! He took hundreds of photos of our family with that camera, and the negatives it produced still look great today.
It was perhaps inevitable then, giving my early introduction to these cameras, that I would eventually want to get one for myself. It took longer than I might have thought, being distracted by various other camera types and systems along the way, but I am now the proud owner of a pair of Rolleiflex Automat TLRs.
1956 Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS Tessar
Made in Germany in 1956, with typical Teutonic efficiency, this particular model is fitted with a 75mm F/3.5 Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar taking lens. It takes 120 roll film, giving twelve 6x6cm square images per roll. The quality of both the build and the results is excellent. The Tessar lens is a little soft wide open, but stopped down to around F/8.0 it is fantastically sharp! The shot below was taken in the studio on Kodak Professional BW400CN film and demonstrates what this little lens is capable of.
1956 Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS Tessar
With the viewing hood collapsed, the Rolleiflex is very compact for a 6×6 medium format camera and, compared to the versions with the faster F/2.8 lenses, remarkably lightweight too. The lens is non-interchangeable which means there is no temptation to carry a bag full of lenses with you which you’d probably never be bothered to use anyway. A range of close up lens attachments are available if you need to focus closer than the standard one meter (Rolleinars), but that’s it as far as optics. It’s great to be able to sling the camera over your shoulder, shove a meter, a few filters and a couple of rolls of film in your pocket, and know that you still have a camera that can produce high quality medium format images with the minimum of fuss.
1956 Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS Tessar
The Automats are still available for reasonable amounts of money if you shop carefully, although prices have been on the rise quite alarmingly lately. I paid less than $150 each for both of mine, although on one of them the slow speeds needed some attention as the leaf shutter tends to gum up with old lubricant over time. This is very common with these cameras, but is an easy and relatively inexpensive fix for any competent repairman.
1956 Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS Tessar
In my opinion, the Automat range of Rolleiflex cameras are one of the best medium format bargains if you’re looking for a camera to use, rather than collect. Although they are all over fifty years old now, in good condition they can still produce stunning results on par with almost anything else out there.
Rolleiflex 3.5F Review
This article was originally published in ‘PHOTONpro’ – ‘Kitchen’s Cupboard’ and is reproduced here by kind permission of the Author.
Over the years I have owned four 6 x 6cm Rolleiflexes… and for reasons which at the time seemed sensible. I sold them. Each time, suffering withdrawal symptoms, I bought a replacement, the last being the subject of this article. If I had to settle for but one camera of the many I have owned, it would be a metered 2.8F Rolleiflex.
So what is it about a Rollei that affects me this way? There are several reasons. I like the square 6 x 6cm format, allied to looking down into the viewfinder screen showing, effectively, a bright clear ‘transparency’ of the subject. Eye up against the focusing magnifier, I become absorbed in what I see, almost completely isolated from my surroundings. The psychology of all this is hard to explain to those who use only 35mm SLRs, but in practice, where it matters, it works superbly well.
Quality is apparent as soon as you pick up a Rolleiflex. Even well-used models possess this intangible quality. The results, provided focusing and exposure are correct, are superlative. It is possible to use a Rollei at shutter speeds impossible with a medium format SLR. Why? Minor vibration. Yes, even the best vibrate be it ever so little, as the mirror hits its stops. In practiced hands a Rollei is safe at 1/30th, and usually safe at a 1/15th, which is more than can be said of any roll film SLR.
The Zeiss Planar and Schneider Xenotar were the best lenses available. It has been claimed that the Planar was the better lens, but in my experience this is not demonstrable by taking photographs. The one lens one rarely hears about is the f 2.8 80mm Tessar fitted to the Rolleiflex 2.8A of 1951: Clan Rollei glosses over duff lenses as readily as Clan Leica! This highly unsatisfactory lens, one definitely best left to collectors, was soon replaced by a f 2.8 Zeiss JenaBiometar, the model being designated Rolleiflex 2.8B. 2.8A introduced the new bayonet III filter mount. The Rolleiflex2.8Cof 1953 with Schneider Xenotar restored confidence in the 2.8 series, the 2.8 Zeiss Planar completing the job in 1954.
My ‘model 5’ Xenotar-lensed 3.5F is of 1979 vintage. The focusing hood lifts up at the rear edge, and can be collapsed by squeezing the sides. It can also be removed in order to fit an eye level prism. The focusing screen has a 1cm grid and provides a bright contrasty view of the subject. A split image rangefinder assists precise focusing. A moving mask under the screen provides parallax correction. The front flap holds flat to provide direct vision viewing, with focusing (of an inverted image) via a mirror attached to the flap.
The Synchro-Cornpur shutter provides speeds from 1 second to 1/500th, and enables electronic flash to be used at all speeds, bulbs with the customary 18-20mS delay, plus delayed action. A sliding switch permits multiple exposures. Moving the shutter beyond the 1 second mark brings into view figures in green, doubling from 2 seconds to 60 seconds. These are not shutter speeds. Instead they are all the `B’ setting of the shutter, and act as metered times for exposures longer than 1 second.
The Rollei’s exposure meter is set into the focusing knob, which also bears a unique and most effective DOF indicator: a white band expands and contracts in accordance with the aperture set.
The exposure meter needle and ‘follow’ pointer appear in an arc on top, clearly visible in use. Coupled to both shutter and aperture knobs, it is calibrated for film speeds from 12 ASA to 1600 ASA. Along with their DIN equivalents these appear in the filter factor setting knob, by means of which filter factors up to three stops, can be set in half stop increments. For incident light work a diffuser can be clipped over the meter’s cell.
Film loading is automatic, assisted by a removable back. Thread the leader under the film sensing feeler roller, attach it to the take up spool, close the hack, operate the lever wind forward until it stops. Reverse the lever to cock the shutter and you’re in business. Photographers who also use 120 SLRs can forget the loading sequence and ignore the feeler roller. The result is a wasted film and a feeling of utter foolishness.
The early SLR Hasselblad with its TTL viewing, interchangeable lenses and film magazines, offered versatility the Rolleiflex could not. When Victor replaced his quirky focal plane shutter with time-proven Compur Rapids, then Syncho Compurs to provide flexibility to users of flash, the TLR Rollei’s fate was inevitable.
Despite changes to company name, reorganisation, and the acquisition of Schneider, ownership finally passed from German to Korean hands. The new Samsung-led Rollei puts 35mm first with new £1,500 compacts, and all 6 x 6cm Rolleiflexes are collector’s items for the future.
TLRgraphy 