The Moskva 5 is a big Soviet made camera, which follows forms and performance of the most renowned folding Zeiss Super Ikonta. Snap 6×9 cm frames and 6×6 through a special removable mask. For the technical specifications of the camera back to the previous test readers: here and here. This time, taking advantage of a typical winter day, I wanted to use it in its native format, for large negatives (if any) to print.
Since I was very pleased by the Canon P (and Here) rangefinder, with Leica M39 mount, as soon as I had a good opportunity , I got the following model: the Canon 7. The latter, brings some improvements such as rotating frames in the viewfinder to frame with different focal lengths (35, 50, 85/100 and 135mm) and a semi-coupled selenium light meter.
Ok… I’m back! I finally got to shot again, and above all, to develop. So, this time I tested some things all at once: A beautiful Canon P rangefinder , with 39×1 screw mount, togheter with two standard Soviet lenses: the Jupiter 8 50mm f/2 and the Industar 61 52mm f/2.8. What’s more, however, I developed the film with the old Agfa Rondinax system, using Ars – Imago Fd developer.
Perhaps, as they say … I put too many irons in the fire but the results were satisfactory.
Yellow Filter Used
Okay, I will confess: I did it again! I went again against the rules and developed once more the Adox CMS 20 film with a conventional developer (Ars Imago-Fd) instead of the dedicated one. The reasons which lead to this are widely mentioned in this post, which describes the results of my first test with this combination. As reported in the conclusions, I had promised myself to make a new test exposing for a lower speed than the nominal 20 Iso, in order to have more open shadows and to evaluate the yield of the intermediate grey tones and highlights using these new parameters. Thanks to the cooperation of Ars-Imago, I had the chance to try some other film rolls.
Unlike the previous post, where the protagonist was the small folding Zeiss Nettar 515, this time the scene is entirely dedicated to a flagship camera: the Russian Moskva 5. An impressive one, both in weight and size. Compared to Nettar though, the features are of a different level. It was a camera dedicated to professionals and advanced amateurs. Given the period (1955-1960), contained almost everything that the technology could be made available to photographers.
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