One camera - one month: May 2014

I made two mistakes with my April topic. The first mistake was selecting spring as the subject. You would think that being April there would be a lot of opportunities that cried out "Spring!" but when it came down to it I rather struggled to find 24 spring-like subjects.

The second mistake was deciding to use my Emi K as my camera of the month. I was aware when I started that the return spring in the film advance lever was broken, but the mechanism itself seemed to work OK. As I used the camera it became apparent that the lever was not engaging with the internal mechanism properly and sometimes it took several sweeps to advance one frame.

Using this camera reminded me very much of using my Zeiss Ikon Contina Ic. They have a very similar size, shape and weight - I suspect Emi had the Contina in mind when designing the Emi K. Controls are minimal and are placed on the lens/shutter barrel. The viewfinder is nice and large and centrally placed. However, there are no bright lines for accurate composition.

The only problem I have had using this camera stems from the fact that the return spring in the film advance lever is broken (as mentioned above). I initially thought that this would mean that I would have to return the lever by hand after winding on the film and otherwise all would be well. in fact, the film advance lever interacts with two sub-systems in teh camera - the double exposure prevention mechanism and the missed frame prevention mechanism. Sometimes I would turn the film advance lever and nothing would happen, sometimes I could not turn it at all without pressing teh shutter release a second time - this did not fire the shutter, it just freed the mechanism. I was never confident that the film was advancing properly. Although the rewind knob turned as I advanced the film - a sign that the film is moving - it did not turn smoothly. Looking at the prints, it is apparent that teh film was not entirely moving as it should - there is slight overlap of frames - but the problem is not severe, just annoying.

Exposure of the film is fine, indicating that the shutter speeds are, at the least, close to the supposed values. I only actually used the faster speeds so I cannot vouch for the slower speeds - it is usually the slower speeds that play up first with old cameras.