Some weeks ago I decided I had enough of digital photography. Well, maybe I should state it differently: yet again I failed to get a good picture out of my EOS. So I decided to get an old fashioned film-roll camera from the 70s to start learning photography once again. ;)

I was seriously tempted when I saw an ad of a complete Minolta X700 with motordrive and about everything you ever wanted back in the 80s! But I stuck to my plan and placed a bid on a few older vintage cameras. One of them reacted on the bid and we agreed upon everything. So, last Friday this arrived:
Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!
Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!

A Mamiya MSX-500 from the mid 70s! Most probably just as old as I am. And if that isn’t enough already: it is loaded with lenses and other useful stuff!

Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!
Mamiya MSX-500 with a lot of lenses and stuff!

It came along with a nice box and a lot of stuff:
PANAGOR 80 ~ 205mm F4.5
HANIMEX 400mm F6.3
HANIMAR 200mm F4.5
PALLAS 135mm F2.8
PALLAS 35mm F2.8
MAMIYA/SEKOR SX 50mm F2
APS auto plus teleconverter 2x
PALLAS auto teleconverter 2x
Several macro rings and four different purpose flashlights
Several filters (UV, yellow, orange, purple, glare, etc)
And as a bonus: a nice smell of tabacco :(

As you can see it wasn’t the cleanest set I could find, but for that price I was happily cleaning everything. :)

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up

So this is how it looked after cleanup. You can’t see much difference due to the image sizes, but believe me: there was a lot of crap on it! (including the smell)

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up

There is still one problem with the camera: under 1/15th of a second the shutter timing gets unreliable. I tried to get the lubrication a bit loose with a hairdryer and it worked perfectly… right until the camera cooled off again. So I guess I need to find a guide how to take it apart and lubricate the shutter.

Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up
Mamiya MSX-500 after clean up

I’m very happy with it so far and I can’t wait till I’ve solved that shutter problem and get started with taking cool pictures again! :)