it seems that i have been asleep at the wheel for the past 8 months but i assure you i haven’t !
its been a really strange new year ( to say the least ) and i have handfuls of stories to tell …
i bought another ancient rolleicord ( i never can afford rolleiflexes ). i had one for a while years ago
but sold it to a friend and regretted selling it almost as soon as i dropped it off. its funny, my first MF camera
was an old kodak reflex that was my uncles, i used it in high school and when my cousin needed it i sent it back …
then in college i scraped my $$ and went to an old camera shop a few miles away called “king arthur’s camera shop”
and bought a used yashica mat 124G and LOVED it. well i loved it until i ran out of money a few years later and sold it to
a good friend along with armloads of 120 film. yup i regretted it soon after she drove off! fast worard a few months ago
and the MF bug bit me again … i got another ancient triotar lensed rolleicord but IDK it didn’t have a flash sync so i sold it.
someone in NYC for the exact price i paid ( i tend to do that ) and found me another rolleicord through the
i LOVE not having to look DOWN all the time. left is right , right is left its not hard to figure out but i’d rather just look and not have to think..
i was bitten by the keiv bug…
well, not really the keiv bug but the ARAX bug.
keiv cameras have a rich history in the soviet union. based on western or eastern europen brands they did their own thing
and they were OK .. but here in the west i guess OK isn’t good enough !
then there is ARAX … these guys got the best of the keiv cameras and rebuilt them … fixed the light leaks, fixed the mechanisms
that might have been flawed …
i had my sights on an arax cm, basically refered to as a “hasselbladski” because it is a russian copy of a early hasselblad. i scoured ebay
and for sale listings and eventually realized thatwhile it is a great camera, well, with something that sophisticated,
there are usually things that go wrong, so instead … i settled on a arax 60 and to be honest i couldn’t be happier !
i was sooo close to ordering it right from the arax factory, but i found a seller here in the states who i knew and he was as excited
to sell it to me as i was to buy it ! he sold it to me with the original standard lens and some close up “tubes” … but i had heard about
the mythical qualities of the sonar lenses … so i ended up getting some nice deals on a pair of sonar portrait lenses … not sure
if i can say they are mythic, but they are nice and do the trick !
i’ve made some portriats with the camera and some general photographs and can’t be happier with the results.
not to say i won’t use my rolleicord from time to time but for now the arax 60 is doing the trick !