Summers are play time for me photographically. I drop the requirement to meet my PAW deadlines (though I still gather material for them) and I experiment with cameras and film. It is kind of reminder that I still think photography is fun.

Bid and won on a FED-2. I was pleasantly surprised. I am used to FSU rangefinders, at least Zorkis, being junk, more or less (more than less). So I wasn’t expecting much.

But the FED-2 was different. It feels nicely built. The controls run smoothly, very smoothly. Controls like winding the film and firing the shutter; I don’t need a camera for much more than that (rewinding is useful, I guess).

The Industar-26m is a normal length Tessar lens. Nothing special, but I happen to like Tessar, Elmars and the like.

So I took some shots wide-open:

At first I had trouble mounting a Jupiter-12. The focusing arm was running into the rear element and not allowing the lens to center up over the threads. Advice from the Rangefinder Forum led me to bending the arm up a bit (not much), so that the lens could be centered. Worked nicely:

Then a normal shot outdoors:

I’ll be using the camera for the next few weeks. It’s a nice comfortable package to lug around.