Shooting Pan F with the Ricoh Auto 66
The story of this Ricoh Auto 66 is a fun one.
The Ricoh Auto 66 is part of a small family of medium format twin lens reflex cameras that we thought was occupied only by the two Rolleimagic models. These TLR cameras have built-in light meters and some degree of automated exposure coupled to the meter. This was a pretty nifty innovation in the late 1950s and the 1960s when these cameras were made, but over the following decades their selenium cell light meters have often died and become a liability. So when this Ricoh Auto 66 came in for consignment we were initially surprised to see that Ricoh had essentially made their own version of the Rolleimagic (and before Rollei at that) and then skeptical that it would still be in working order. So what did we do when we saw the meter was still active? We loaded it with film of course and took it around St. Johns for the day!
The control layout of the Ricoh Auto 66 is a bit different. There is a dial for exposure that is marked only in EV units - without reference to shutter or aperture selection. This dial is set to match the readout in the light meter window on the top of the camera. It means that even if the light meter on this TLR dies, one can still dial in an exposure manually, albeit by using EV units instead of shutter/aperture combinations. There is an aperture dial as well, but that is only used for setting the aperture when the camera is in Bulb or Flash sync modes (with a fixed shutter speed).
Given the readings the light meter was giving us, we decided to just trust what it was saying and have at it. We used a roll of Ilford Pan F because A) It is an awesome film with great contrast and B) we wanted to slower ISO to hopefully use wider apertures and see how the bokeh of this lens looked.
While optimistic we were nonetheless surprised at just how well the results turned out! See for yourself.
This Ricoh Auto 66 will be hitting our shelves next week for a mere $220. So keep your eyes peeled for this peculiar little camera to be in our shop soon!
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