Two Good Shooting Tools by
Nokton48, on Flickr
On the left my Makina IIIR with 100mm F2.9 Anticomar, Focal Plane Shutter attached, you focus with the small scale directly below the front optical viewer, it's on the backside. Never noticed it was there, heh heh. Geoff Berliner agreed with me that this is an important accessory, since you can shoot high speed 400 film at 1/1000 which is a distinct advantage, when you are trying to shoot wider open with a distinctive F2.9 speedo lens. BTW I have standardized shooting Ilford PanF+, it's the perfect speed for this 6x9cm photography. High speed film was like EI 100 back in those days. 1/1000 was a huge selling point. Using the focal plane shutter is really quite a hoot. You measure the distance using the reg camera rangefinder, then set that distance on the scale on the flip side of the bottom of the front finder bottom. 50 ISO film is the sweet spot with these cameras. The trigger for the focal plane shutter (which becomes the camera release) is the lever right next to the rear optical finder stack. So you hold the camera differently with the focal plane shutter.
On the right is my venerable and totally lovable Makina II stealth black camera also with 6x9cm back and Ilford PanF+. This one does everything I want and need very precisely. It like transports me back to the twenties it's a lot of fun to use and very intuitive in practice.
I am recently enjoying using both of these fine cameras. Folded up not too bad to carry around, even with the roll backs. Guess that was the real point of the design, to be stealthy in reportage. A blast to use, recommended