Zorki-4 Photos #1

On Tuesday, I posted about a Soviet made Zorki-4 rangefinder I bought off ebay.

After checking it out as to all the shutter speeds operating and whatnot, I put a roll of Kodak Ultra Color 400 film in it and promtly took a bunch of boring, but informative photographs to check the camera out in different lighting and at different shutter speed and f-stop settings.

The pics you see up there were all taken on Wednesday and Thursday of this past week. I actually like the looks of the photographs, and the only things I didn't particularly like were the way over the top colors on this film and my film scanner is giving me attitude (and scan lines) lately. As to the camera, I had fun using it, and it's very unobtrusive. I like the looks of old Leica cameras, but if I was going to throw down Leica camera/lens money, I'd rather buy new lenses for my Nikon. So the Zorki-4 was a cheap way to indulge my gear aquisition syndrome without hurting the bank account (or my marriage) very much.

Top Photo: Taken at an Atlantic Ocean park within lunch-time striking distance of where I work. It was overcast and really windy from the tropical storm that was 150 miles northeast of us at that time. I thought that the dead sea grape limbs matched the mood of the sky.

Middle Photo: What a difference a day makes. Taken the next day during lunch, at a much closer park on the Indian River Lagoon called Ballard Park. It's in Melbourne, Florida and only a five minute drive from work, as opposed to 15 minutes to the Atlantic park in the first photo, and therefore an ideal place to use my lunch period to wolf down a sandwich and spend the rest of the time alloted to wander and take some photos. Notice the brown pelican on one of the boat docks. The sun wasn't very far out of the top of the frame, I wanted to see if the lens would flare.

Bottom Photo: I pointed away from the sun to try to get the incredible blue sky. Plus I like that ginormous, high-dollar, multi-level brown home back there on the creek.