MICHAŁ SOBCZAK

It is a 24 megapixels digital SR camera. Sadly to say that I do not use this maximum resolution, because files are just too big. I even skipped using NEF raw files they are just enourmously huge for me. You can choose between 6 MP, 16MP and 24MP. I take pictures at 6 MP and select 24 MP only shooting far objects with telephoto zoom lens in order to be able to crop it. This camera has lot of pro features.

It can take pictures quite fast, I think something like 4 frames per second. It is just my perception, specification might say something different. It has live view and ability to shoot motion picture at pretty decent resolution 1080p.

D7100 has top LCD with runtime parameters. It can be lighten by moving power know right far most. It means more battery life because there is almost no need to use big screen. Viewfinder is big which is good for me, I just like that way. There are few more interesting things worth mentioning like HDR (multiple exposures, automatic lighting correction (within single frame). There is somehow funny feature of additional crop put atop of already cropped sensor (comparing to 35mm equiv.). It might be useful if you are only interested in mid section of the picture and would like to have telephoto using normal lens.

I use it with 50mm AF Yongnuo f/1.8 lens which was 60 EUR brand new. It is quite good betweem f/2.5 and f/3.5, good at f/4, very good at f/5.6. Going further up with f-stop numbers you will likely see distortions all other bad things as usual. My D7100 is far better than D70s and D200 in terms of dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio. It is said that D70s is best at most at ISO 500, D200 at ISO 600 and this one is good even at ISO 1600.

Camera has CMOS sensor as D200. D70s has CCD sensor. I read somewhere that there is no difference in terms of picture quality between these two most common technologies. The difference is in materials, filters and software. And it is. I can say that pictures taken with this camera will be similar to that taken with D200. Differences between D70 and D200/D7100 are minor but noticable at high magnifications. Especially in terms of noise.

Top picture comes from D70s and NIKKOR 50/2. Bottom one from D7100 and YN50/1.8. There is a very big difference at book background. This color artifacts make pictures taken with D70s to look little posterized. Newer cameras like D200 or D7100 outputs image which is more clear and free of such noise. Of course this is important at low light conditions and not full sun outdoors shooting – at such conditions you can shoot with almost everything.

My D7100 has already taken over 300 000 pictures. I think the risk is high, but price was low (100 EUR). I think that I will take some 10 000 picture and pass it on to someone else. It is a very nice camera. I strongly recommend it.

As previously stated, I tried to adapt SMENA 8M 40mm, f/4.0 lens to some DSLR. After week with no camera at all today I got my almost brand new NIKON D70s with only 1k pictures taken. I took NIKON F mount ring from some broken SOLIGOR lens and glued it to SMENA lens.

Of course because of registration plane (flange) distance I cannot get proper focus but still can do some tests, which you can find below.

I find it pretty good looking. In order to get out of some 30cm area I would need to have entirely different camera system, such as mirrorless. As for now I do not own such.

Continuing with USSR made SMENA 8M. I decided to take apart lens unit. It consist of upper cover with levers and lower unit with shutter blades, shutter spring-based mechanism and optics.

There are three blades. They are mounted on pins located on the rotating plate. Plate itself is moved by the shutter spring mechanism underneath.

In order to disassemble unit separating optics and shutter you just need to unscrew it hard. Most probably it will mangle focus limit pin, but I do not care about it that much.

Inside you can find a lot of grease which is good. It helps focusing ring to operate smoothly. Later I found that there is even simpler way to access optics. But it is good to know how everything works still.

In order just to access optics you need to unscrew 3 little pin-like screws on the aluminum optics unit cover. Optics, which consist only 3 elements is this little barrel in the middle on the picture below. The thing on the left is an inner plastic ring to set aperture. It presses down and lock aperture setting on the inner gap in the optics barrel.

As simple as it can be. Unscrew 3 scres and you are good to go with the optics barrel. Free of taking care of shutter spring mechanism.

About the optics itself. It has some pretty short registration distance so it could be mounted on mirrorless cameras. In order to mount it on DSLR you should use that cameras with short flange distance or use some teleconverter. I will try both later on.

Tried to manually put it on my M42 Praktica and I need to put it literally inside camera unit, just next to the mirror. Be careful then with your camera as you may damage mirror putting anything next to it.

I got this one as an exchange item for some old LCD TV. It is 35mm film compact camera made in USSR. Having quite a big monopoly on the eastern market, Soviet Russia manufacturer brought over 30 million of these to the markets. SMENA 8M is a very lightweight camera. It is made mostly of cheap plastic, springs, levers and dials. No electronics at all. No light meter, no mirror, no motor to move the film.

It has fixed lens at 40mm, f/4.0. It is made of aluminum. Mine wobbles a little bit while rotating its focus ring. Whole thing is packed into lens unit, which is shutter, aperture and optics.

SMENA 8M has no film advance mechanism. You need to manually rotate right dial to move film which goes together with frame counter. I find it a little bit confusing as it rotates more than full circle each time.

Film load, unload is completely manual. You need to be careful while unwinding the film as everything has some quite high, loose tolerance. Avoid light leaks, do not push hard if something is stuck. Better disassemble it first and fix unwinding dial. Simply screw it more not to touch viewing glass. This is the second most popular fix in this cameras. First one is blocked shutter. Mine camera fortunately is fine in this area.

Everything is packed inside lens unit. Preparing to take photo is to push the lever located on the lens. Shutter button moves down a shaft which presses shutter lever. Shutter has 3 blades. It goes as 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250 and bulb which means that it stays open as long as you hold shutter button depressed.

You do not control aperture in direct way. Either you set film sensitivity in ROST/DIN measurement. Of course this also means that you set aperture, but to do this you rotate inner ring just around the optics. Black one. It is very diffucult to do this while framing and taking pictures. This could be defined as aperture priority. You just set it and forget. It is build that way to avoid changing it at all. You are asked only to take pictures with broad depth-of-field, which means that everything should be in focus. ROST 65 means ISO 100 which gives f/8.0. Pretty high, but good enough to have everything in focus and sharp. Intentionally.

You cannot check focus. Just set it to particular value of distance in meters and keep your fingers crossed. You have some icons specifying closeups, group photos and landscapes. You need to be at that very distance from the subject. Keep that in mind.

You can control shutter speed both wich icons and specific shutter speeds. Starts with sunny conditions at 1/250, ends with rain clouds at 1/15. It is just a suggestion. Remember if you try to over or underexpose from the target exposure you need to change the same amount of stops in some way at aperture dial. That is why you should do this only if you experiment and know what you actually do.

Conclusion

I got this with no idea what I will do with this later. It is complete, working but frankly speaking I think that I will take lens and mount it on some DSLR and forget about the camera unit itself. Will try to write later about this idea.

It seems to be very decent lens. Especially speaking of build quality which is glass and metal with very little rubber and plastic. It is prime lens at 300mm with constant f/5.6. It is quite light. Has 3 rings. First to adjust focus. Second to adjust aperture. Third one is to open or close aperture. Second and third work together somehow.

Below you can find 100% magnification (NIKON D200) of BTS antennas. Image is reasonably sharp with little haze, blur or soap. Shot at f/5.6 which is wide open. Target at 100m.

Below you can find same target, but with COSMOS AUTO TELEPLUS 2x. Aperture goes from f/5.6 to something around f/11. I can’t see much more in terms of details. Image was taken handheld so it might be little movement.

I won’t test it against any kind of CA or coma or anything like that, just because it’s long, cheap and slow. But it gives pretty pleasant pictures at good light and that is enough. In case one would like to shoot in low light vision should spend then 10 – 100 more than the cost of this lens.

Still looking for some reason to use mentioned earlier teleconverter. Found some interesting example when it might be useful. Below please find two pictures at 400% magnification showing little crack in the ceiling of some building some 200m far. Second picture show that some extra details could be seen at 600mm instead of 300mm.

I may recommend this lens but please remember to mount it only when having good or very good light.

Made in Japan. This teleconverter fits on NIKON F cameras. It is a MF thing, however it has automatic aperture control as stated in its name “AUTO”. It increases focal length by the factor of 2. It came with a very elegant zipping pocket. It has a metal prong that joins lens aperture setting to the converter and then to camera if fitted with apropriate mechanics.

I can mount my AI/S lenses but cannot mount my NIKKOR 50/2 due to excessive length of mounting bracket on the lens which goes to far into converter. Lens at 150mm with this converted will be 300mm. 210mm lens will go at 420mm. Amount of light is lessend by the factor of 2, same as focal length but to the opposite side. In case one have f/3.5 on the lens, now it will be f/7 at least. I think that there might be even less light available.

Regarding build quality. It is quite decent. Glass and metal. Regarding optical quality, it is above my expectations. I though that it gonna be somehow bad or really bad as it was inexpensive purchase. However it very good or good light it is usable. In low light better keep at home.

Above you can find two examples at 200% magnification. First one was taken with Nikon 150mm, now at 300mm, aperture f/3.5, now at f/7. Second one was taken with Vivitar 210mm, now at 420mm, aperture f/4.5, now at f/9. You can clearly see differences in picture clarity in terms of contrast and detail levels. I think that even having 120mm less, Nikon 70-150mm Series E f/3.5 performs better than Vivitar.

At higher magnification it looks like above. Same level of details. This show superiority of Nikon over Vivitar in that case. It simply has better resolution.

I was looking for NIKON camera that will allow me to use manual focus lenses with proper light metering. I found that D200 would suite this need. It a 10 megapixels camera with SONY ICX-483-AQA sensor. It seems that is the only camera using this one. It is more or less the same as on D80 only being capable of faster data read-out. It is a CCD type sensor.

It has a lot of pro features like top LCD with work parameters. It has a lot of switches so you are free of going into menu to change anything. You can skip LCD for almost everything you need to take pictures. It has no live view so you could use only LCD to change AUTO ISO or to preview pictures. No motion picture capturing either. It has one button which can be programmed. I have programmed mine to let focal length and minimum F number for MF lenses. It has DOF preview button.

Design

It is a very solid metal body which can survive fall from 2m to concrete surface. Mine got tested that way. It has crack next to battery compartment. Nothing else suffered. I must admit that this was very impressive. Rubber falls off as on any other NIKON cameras. You need to glue it a little bit to stick to the body. It is quite heavy. A lot heavier than D70S. It is lighter than earlier pro cameras like D1. Buttons, switches and scrolls seems to be very solid made.

You can mount any NIKON F AI lens. You can mount as well AI/S, AF, D and G lenses. You cannot mount pre AI lenses. On AF-P lenses, AF will not work. Fortunately you can have both light-metering and focus confirmation on AI and AI/S lenses, which is the most important thing.

It has stronger filter atop the sensor making patterns less sharp but with less color artifacts such as moire. I have compared it with D70S and it seems to be less sharp overall. I defined sharpness here as being able to resolve details at proper contrast. D70s performs better here even having only 6 megapixels sensor. In case of taking good or bad pictures it does not matter that much. One day I will elaborate more about my chase for 35mm film like look with a lessen black level, broad dynamic range accross the same, near contrast levels. It is easier to accomplish this not with D200, but with D70s. Shame for it that it does not have light-metering with AI lenses. I would not bother then with different cameras.

Samples

Conclusion

It is a very good camera, worth its money. You can judge it yourself by taking a look at sample pictures above. If it suits your needs there give it a try. Remember to keep spare battery in a pocket as camera drains it very fast.