Retro Blipping

I had a nice surprise in work today. My work colleague Brett brought this bit of photographic geeky joy into work today!

This is a FED 5 Rangefinder Camera. They were produced in the old Soviet Union from 1934 until 1990. It is still in full working order, and was quite wonderful to have a play with!

Alas there was no film in the camera, so there will be no future blip (and I am not sure how I could do it anyway!).

The focus system on it is quite unusual. You have to bring the image into alignment, rather than from blurry to focused. You have two images ghosting over each other, you align the object you wish to have in sharp focus to make your depth of field. The top of the camera has a light meter, from which you work out you shutter speeds and aperture settings. A long way removed from today's dSLRS's!

Apparently you can find these kind of cameras all over the place, and you can can get some quite stunning visual effects from them, by focusing incorrectly. This might be something I may dabble with in times to come.

But I thought I would share my moment of geekiness with you.

To read more about the FED Rangefinders here is the Wikipedia link.