Fed5C

This is my Fed 5C, a Russian rangefinder.

I bought this camera for $50 on eBay a few years ago, when I was buying a lot of older film cameras. I found the rangefinder a little challenging to focus with, so I put it away as a collector's item.

The Russians started copying Leicas in 1933. Their copies are pretty decent, and use the Leica screw mount for their lenses.

I decided to get it out and give it a try. I used a roll of $1.99 Kodak C41 process B&W film I found at the grocery store. Somehow, black and white felt appropriate for this camera.

The rangefinder turned out to be easier to use than I thought it would be. It does require good light, and hopefully an area of high contrast that you can focus on easily. When able to find that, I actually found this easier to use than a manual focus SLR.

The light meter was adequate, but could be easily fooled by difficult situations like backlighting. I relied entirely on it's readings to test it's reliability, but found that in many situations, bracketing or figuring out a compensation on my own would have been a good idea. Some of the shots that were badly under- or over-exposed on this roll came out fine on the point and shoot digital I had with me.

I did observe some really bad lens flare or ghosting. I am looking for a replacement lens for this camera, because I enjoyed shooting with it. Using a rangefinder you have to work for each shot, which I rather liked. I came back with far fewer pictures on this camera than my digital, but I had thought about these pictures more carefully than I had the digital ones, because the film frames were limited and the camera took time and care to check the meter and set the exposure manually--nothing automatic here (and no batteries).