My very First Photos with a M7

[pico]

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From the M7 instructions

Here the ISO is set for 200.

See the marker at 28.

30 is the lock button. Press it, then rotate inner dial.

 

Edited December 31, 2016 by pico

[Martin B]

From the M7 instructions

Here the ISO is set for 200.

See the marker at 28.

 

 

Yeah....this was the confusing pic and description I was talking about - as you said, the setting shows a manual ISO setting of 200 and NOT in the DX position. Opposite to the white index point can be read in two different ways (I admit I got it wrong first, too!). 

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[Martin B]

The table on page 17 of the manual is very important, too - the display is dependent on the position of the wheel for over/underexposure (defines if the ISO number is blinking or not for example). The meter takes into account if the index point is set in the + direction (underexposure!) or - direction (overexposure).

[Martin B]

This is indeed a bit tricky with the M7 and not well described in the manual at all. There are two ways how you can move the wheel - first by pressing the button on the left you can move the wheel into the desired -2/+2 over/underexposure stops which is irrelevant to use for the ASA setting. What you need is the second way to move the inner wheel - it is a bit cumbersome, but by pressing with your thumb on the inside of the wheel you can move the ASA/ISO position. If you want to set manually to ASA 400 for example, you have to turn the wheel with the 400 number into the position next to the white dot on the right of the wheel (3 o'clock position if the wheel is at zero under/overexposure). The camera display does not recognize this used manual ISO number, instead it will display a flashing "100" - another very confusing thing. I normally set the wheel into the DX position with automatic film ISO recognition (the DX position set to the white dot on the right of the wheel) and manually overexpose the film if needed.  

 

The manual on page 15 is very confusing in its description here since the picture shows the DX position next to the black button and the description reads "...DX or the desired ISO value is opposite to the white index point". It is not clear what "opposite" means here. The picture in the manual actually shows the manual ISO setting of 200 and not the setting to DX position as what you might intuitively think first. I am sure this causes a lot of confusion!

 

Made an error in my statement earlier - if the ISO is set manually and is not the same as the DX film ISO, the DX value flashes with small dot underneath. Read table on manual page 17 for further detail. 

[Martin B]

 

30 is the lock button. Press it, then rotate inner dial.

 

 

The lock button only affects the over/underexposure setting but not the ISO setting. You can change the ISO setting independently just by pressing the inner circle of the wheel and rotating it into the desired position next to the white dot. On a separate note, it would have been better if the ISO number wheel had the lock button and not the over/underexposure setting since the exposure setting might need to be changed more often and more quickly. I really like my M7, but the overall design of this wheel is really not the best IMO. 

[ironchefx]

This is indeed a bit tricky with the M7 and not well described in the manual at all. There are two ways how you can move the wheel - first by pressing the button on the left you can move the wheel into the desired -2/+2 over/underexposure stops which is irrelevant to use for the ASA setting. What you need is the second way to move the inner wheel - it is a bit cumbersome, but by pressing with your thumb on the inside of the wheel you can move the ASA/ISO position. If you want to set manually to ASA 400 for example, you have to turn the wheel with the 400 number into the position next to the white dot on the right of the wheel (3 o'clock position if the wheel is at zero under/overexposure). The camera display does not recognize this used manual ISO number, instead it will display a flashing "100" - another very confusing thing. I normally set the wheel into the DX position with automatic film ISO recognition (the DX position set to the white dot on the right of the wheel) and manually overexpose the film if needed.  

 

The manual on page 15 is very confusing in its description here since the picture shows the DX position next to the black button and the description reads "...DX or the desired ISO value is opposite to the white index point". It is not clear what "opposite" means here. The picture in the manual actually shows the manual ISO setting of 200 and not the setting to DX position as what you might intuitively think first. I am sure this causes a lot of confusion!

 

To be 100% clear:

- For ISO 400, 400 is next to the white dot at 3 oclock

- For DX, DX is next to white dot at 3 oclock

*considering EV is set to 0

 

This is exactly what I needed to hear! Thank you! Yes, the manual was very confusing..

[ironchefx]

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From the M7 instructions

Here the ISO is set for 200.

See the marker at 28.

30 is the lock button. Press it, then rotate inner dial.

 

 

 

Thank you for the clarification, and yes.. this was the picture that made my head spin. Pun not intended. 

[Martin B]

To be 100% clear:

- For ISO 400, 400 is next to the white dot at 3 oclock

- For DX, DX is next to white dot at 3 oclock

*considering EV is set to 0

 

This is exactly what I needed to hear! Thank you! Yes, the manual was very confusing..

 

+1. Yes, exactly! Wish they would have written it more like this in the manual.....

[A miller]

I haven't slogged through all of the pages of this thread but the first thing you should do is chill out about razor sharpness.  With film, it is more a matter of relativity vis-a-vis clinical detail.  Second thing that I didn't se mentioned is the aperture of the lens.  With many lenses (even Leicas particularly the older ones) in order to get real corner to corner sharpness you need to stop down quite a bit.  A shot at 5.6 and even f8 may not get you impressive sharpness on a grainy film like HP5, particularly without a real fast shutter.  Just a few things to consider...

[thedirektor]

It took me almost 6 weeks before I finally got my first M7 film developed, moved from Switzerland back to the US, and had it done by a Lab in California.

 

I'm quite frankly disappointed, seems excessively grainy, and have no clue what I did wrong.  I used a 35mm Summicron, and an Ilford HP5 Plus 400 ISO Film. I also had the ISO wheel on dx (automatic detection?)

 

It is my very first experience with a M Camera, I have owned R3 and now R4 since 1976; My recent, 4 months, experience with my R4 and B&W went quite well I think.

 

So I'm looking for help, I really need it, it seems like; I would have expected at least a few of the 36 Photos to have been really sharp and to my liking :-(

 

Hinter Uster Bahnhof 3.jpg

 

 

Uster Rathaus 2.jpg

 

Thanks in advance

 

Preben

 

I've just had exactly the same thing happen to me ! First roll through a new M7. HP5. Now I remember HP5 from my film days 20 years back and it was not a grainy film. So I've read all the fora and put it down to dodgy processing. But I've my M7 and my new 35mm Cron. I'll post some images in a minute. Grain is horrible. Not a fan of grain. But I do accept that I am looking at a very large image on my laptop and that it is a JPEG scan. 

[pico]

It took me almost 6 weeks before I finally got my first M7 film developed, moved from Switzerland back to the US, and had it done by a Lab in California.

 

[...] please see his post

 

What I see is no failure on your part. In fact, the images are interesting. Both were interpreted either automatically or by a sympathetic individual.

 

You might enjoy processing the film for yourself (we can help) then sending them to various darkroom printers.

 

Grain is not a bad thing.

Edited February 6, 2018 by pico

[schattenundlicht]

I've just had exactly the same thing happen to me ! First roll through a new M7. HP5. Now I remember HP5 from my film days 20 years back and it was not a grainy film. So I've read all the fora and put it down to dodgy processing. But I've my M7 and my new 35mm Cron. I'll post some images in a minute. Grain is horrible. Not a fan of grain. But I do accept that I am looking at a very large image on my laptop and that it is a JPEG scan.

 

In the 1970ies I would be very happy about the low light ability that iso 400 films gave, and I would gladly accept some grain as a trade-off. But then, I would not look at my pictures on a 40“ screen (or 40“ print for that matter).

 

Another thing to bear in mind is the possibility of „pseudo-grain“ when scanner resolution and film grain size interact to augment graininess in a scan. In my experience, HP5 is not that easy to scan. Sometimes, paradoxically, a lower resolution can give better results.

 

And, again, as others have pointed out, our visual expectations have been changed by a decade of high quality, high resolution digital sensors. Still, the texture and tonality of film is something that is not easily reproduced by postprocessing „film filters“ in digital (sorry, I do not wish to start that debate again...).

 

Give TMax a try for a change. It is less grainy and scans much better. If, then, you find the look „too clinical“ or „too digital“, you will be ready to embrace HP5 again ;-)

 

Kind regards

Mathias

Edited February 14, 2018 by schattenundlicht

[Mark II]

Another thing to bear in mind is the possibility of „pseudo-grain“ when scanner resolution and film grain size interact to augment graininess in a scan. In my experience, HP5 is not that easy to scan. Sometimes, paradoxically, a lower resolution can give better results.

 

I would second this. I used to use a plustek scanner which was very convenient but which made HP5 and most other B&W films look impossibly grainy. Newer tabular grain films such as Delta seem to scan more easily, although I find them less forging of exposure errors - although I still switched from HP5 to Delta 400 as my “default” stock because of the strong grain on scanned negatives.

 

Another thing which helped was replacing the plustek with a camera+macro lens scanning setup. I use an Olympus u4/3 camera. This can give significantly better resolution and results than a dedicated scanner. In particular, you can scan using hires mode to get 80mp raw images with files that are still smaller than lower resolution 16bit tiffs from a scanner. 80mp is waaaaay more practical resolution than you strictly need for a 35mm negative scan, but the resulting softer images seem to be much easier to post-process (particularly for sharpening or local contrast/clarity changes).

 

And yes, even cell-phone digital images upset expectations as to what image quality people hope to see today...