Adaptable does not Equal Pairable

Pairing my first SLR with my Dad's old Mamiya/Sekor DTL 1000 kit lens -- a 55mm 1:1.7 -- seemed a great pairing. With the M42 adapter, it ought to work brilliantly on the K1000 and deliver high-quality images. However, that wasn't exactly the case across the board and while a few images turned out, most of the roll was not well exposed. The K1000 has through-the-lens metering, and the shots which turned out were generally shot at f1.7. So I suspect that when I tried stopping down, the meter compensated for the available light versus what aperture it THOUGHT I would use, and provided an incorrect reading. That said, the shots that turned out show why Ilford P4 is a superb film for cameras.


1/125th, f16. This was the one shot on the roll that turned out well not wide-open. That's mostly because I calculated the exposure myself and didn't trust the camera. I should have done that for all of them.


The P4 film had some problems with black. I took some shots of the 4th Street bridge to see if the P4 would render black as it does above, or in a more silver manner as it does with my dogs' fur. As shown in the first image, this film can be a very-high-contrast performer with good tonal range, and in the first shot it is. This indicates that this film works best with subject that present a large tonal scale.


1/1,000th, f1.8. The kissing couple was back so I decided to go for a better shot of them. Wide open, this lens is very soft at infinity. In this shot, that provides a fairly nice result.