arhphotographic

I’m going to take you back to the mid 1970’s, when the Chinon CE II Memotron, what a great name, was released. Inspired no doubt by the fact it has a button, in the picture above it is to the right of the lens, which locks or remembers the exposure. Yes, this is an aperture priority screw mount camera were you chose the aperture and the camera will work out the correct exposure. Of course you can go solo by choosing both aperture and shutter speed if you want.

It is feature rich too. Self timer, exposure compensation dial, viewfinder blind (for when you want to do long exposures), double exposure button, battery test light( seen in the image below)

When you want to take a photo you turn on the cameras meter by first winding on the film and then half pressing the shutter release. Looking through the viewfinder the shutter speed for your chosen aperture is displayed on the left. Unfortunately the battery test light also comes on when you activate the cameras meter which can be a little distracting.

All of these photos were taken with my favourite Pentagon 50mm f1.8 lens.

Obligatory selfie

I left the camera on auto and I cannot fault the cameras meter, not bad for a camera over 40 years old!

The background to this tulip is like butter .Yummmmy

Despite it being quite dark in the room where this shot of my ‘lamp’ iMac was taken the exposure is excellent .

I’ve been look for an opportunity to try out the lens below, a Sunagor 500mm f8 screw thread lens which I acquired with a whole load of photographic stuff. It’s heavy, long, and focusing can be a little tricky, which pretty much sums up most of the reviews of the lens I’ve seen online. The viewfinder of the Memotron is bright, which doesn’t help with the length and weight of the lens but does make focusing just that bit easier.

Despite what I’ve just said, the lens did a reasonable job on the photo below. It may not be the best lens in the world, but if you’re willing to put up with it’s limitations it does make 500mm lens format accessible.

Mounting the camera on a tripod was a must for this shot.

The ergonomics of the Memotron are good in my opinion allowing me to hold comfortably what is nearly 1Kg of camera in my hands, that’s with a 50mm not 500mm lens on. There are such a wealth of good screw mount lenses available for this camera that I would challenge anyone not to have a good time.

Soo…yet another camera that has KEEP written on it 🙂