Yee, I checked it out, you’re right, the “button” is threaded. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll look into it :)

Interesting, f1.4 sounds awesome, mine’s f2, which is still nice. It’s a soviet lens (esentially a copied zeiss biotar lens), with apparently a really nice swirly bokeh, and an adapter to use it on my sony a6400 costs like 25 euros, which is tempting :>. Aperture on it is a little finnicky, it likes to get kinda stuck around 5.6 sometimes, and I have to wiggle it a bit to get moving, lol. theres also something flying around, as I can hear the sound of something inside when I turn the lens around, but otherwise it seems to work just fiine.

Speaking of viewfinders, check out mine… It doesn’t bother me really, gives character to the camera I guess, but whatever happened, its not the lens, and not the mirror, so the damage is somewhere deeper.

So this zenit ttl is just my dad’s old camera, he used it back in the 80s, and it’s been in the closet for decades. We hada conversation one day, he showed it to me, and I decided to take it for a spin, see if, and how it’s working. Did a test roll, turned out fine, wrote a blog post about it :) I didn’t had to fix anything. I just don’t know if the light metering works, as I don’t have the battery. The camera uses some old mercury batteries, and replacements are quite pricy. I don’t really care that much to pay for it.

Your camera looks great, and that release button fits so well. Mine has these gnarly little spikes on top, as it’s threaded for the cable, but it digs into your finger (unless something’s actually missing).

The notebook idea is neat. I was also thinking about maybe noting down the aperture and shutter speed for every photo, since there’s obviosly no exif data, but I’m kind of a minimalist with this stuff. If the process isn’t automated, it’s not a huge deal - I’d rather stay present, in the moment, than carry around and pull out a notebook everytime I take a photo.

For exposure, what I did was use an app to roughly measure the shutter speed range when exposing for the shadows in the current weather, just so I have some data to work with later in lightroom. Then I just set an aperture I want and adjust the shutter speed if needed. It’s actually pretty similar to how I shoot with my sony a6400, just without all the digital feedback and numbers on the screen. Which is nice, honestly :)

My camera has a built in light meter too, but I dont have a battery for it.

Yeah, I think home development is a step you take once you know you’re going to shoot film regularly, especially on a modest budget. If I had the money I’d probably do it just for the experience, but for now I chose the hobo route, haha. Cheapest color film > small local mom and pop photo lab (might honestly be the last one around here) > scanning and editing at home.

You have canon a1? That’s from around the same production period as my zenit.

I paid around 14 usd for a roll, but development was only 5 usd.

Thanks a lot for the message and kind words, I really appreciate it 🙏

Heh, if I went totally blind it would be the same for sure, but I did a bit of research beforehand, and dad told me some of the camera’s quirks

Hah, thank you so much for the nice comment ❤️

Thank you!

Hey, thank you very much!

Sure I did, haha. Thank you <3

Thank you! On a sunny, calm day like this, the sky looks beautiful from all different perspectives.