Film Cameras

Using a film camera with a Questar telescope is an opportunity for one to experience what it was like to take high-magnification photographs before the emergence of digital cameras. Many veterans who made the switch from film to digital photography long ago vowed never to return to film. Although they may scoff at the suggestion of trying film photography with a Questar telescope, the experience is very much worth it.

A Praktica camera body attached to a Questar. Questar Corporation

After corralling all the necessary gear—camera body, coupler, adapter(s), the appropriate ground glass, a waist-level viewfinder, and shutter release cable—I have to confess that the first thing I notice when I attach an old film SLR to my Questar is how cumbersome the entire assembly becomes. It’s heavy! Especially since I don’t have the benefit of owning a Questar counterweight, sometimes I wonder if the imbalance strains the right ascension drive motor when it’s running. When adjusting declination, I have to disengage the lock knob, hold the camera while making adjustments so it doesn’t flip the scope up uncontrollably, and reengage the lock, all the while continuously reminding myself of the counterintuitive motions of the knob: a clockwise turn loosens and counterclockwise turn tightens.

Lawrence Braymer justifiably counseled others about the importance of achieving focus. Doing so is quite hard even with a magnified view of the image on the ground glass. Focus has to be right on the money in order for the photograph to show the incredible resolution that the Questar telescope is capable of, yet finding that point of focus can be elusive with a film camera.

I also find it helps to keep my glasses on when I use the magnifier on a waist-level finder. In contrast with visual observing—I have a slight degree of shortsightedness and minimal astigmatism in my dominant eye, and I observe without eyeglasses on—using the viewfinder’s magnifier presents a view that I see most sharply through my glasses.

A Hexacon camera with camera coupler and extension tubes as it appeared in the October 1958 Questar booklet. Questar Corporation

Over the course of its history, Questar has selected a number of cameras that represented some of the best options available to photographers who wished to use a camera with a Questar telescope. The Hexacon/Pentacon was a variant of the groundbreaking Contax S, the first SLR to feature a pentaprism viewfinder. The Beseler Topcon Super D was the import version of the Topcon RE Super, the first camera to reach the market with through-the-lens (TTL) light metering. The Olympus OM-1 set a new standard for size and usability that forced other manufacturers to follow suit. Each of these models represent milestones in the history of camera technology, and Questar was quick to adopt them as offerings to its customers.

During the company’s early years, Lawrence Braymer marketed two other notable cameras, the Praktina and the Nikon F. Both had modifications that allowed the photographer to flip the reflex mirror up well before making an exposure. Doing so eliminated one source of vibration that might otherwise have resulted in a blurred image.

Praktina FX

My first experience using a film SLR with a telescope was in August 2020, not long after I bought a beautiful all-original 1962 Questar that included a rather rare Questar-modified Praktina FX camera.

Although it’s not the most satisfying camera I’ve ever used, I appreciate the Praktina for its historical significance more than anything else. As vintage camera enthusiast Mike Eckman writes, the Praktina, which its East German manufacturer KW introduced in 1953, was in many ways the first system SLR. With features that included interchangeable ground glass viewing screens, viewfinders, and film magazines, KW designed the Praktina for professional use. Alas, it never really caught on among its intended users, and the line faded into obscurity by the early 1960s.

The Praktina FX was also the first camera body that Questar had modified for use with its telescopes. The change that Questar added to the camera, a change that most likely was done for the company by a third-party vendor, was the ability to release and flip the reflex mirror up by means of gently pushing the shutter button halfway in. This feature contrasts with the operation of garden-variety Praktinas that release the mirror and shutter almost simultaneously at the same point of shutter button travel. Again, the key feature of the Questar modification was to give the photographer a way to limit mirror slap vibration as much as possible.

My Questar-modified Praktina FX camera with Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f/2 Biotar lens.

On my particular Questar-modified Praktina FX, one that included an example of the famed Carl Zeiss Jena 58mm f/2 Biotar lens, the mirror releases with a satisfyingly understated “shup” sound that is well dampened and hardly detectable by feel. The mirror shock pad is made with a felt-like material, and even after decades of aging it is still intact unlike foam pads which have a tendency to turn to dust over time. With the camera attached to the telescope, I apply pressure to the plunger on a shutter release cable until I hear the mirror flip up. I then let the telescope settle down for a second or two before continuing to apply pressure until the shutter fires.

Revisiting thoughts that I shared on Cloudy Nights a month after I shot my first rolls of film through my Praktina, I am reminded how difficult it was to focus the telescope and to decide upon a proper exposure time.

My Questar-modified Praktina FX camera with waist-level finder on my 1962 Questar.

It helped that my Praktina came with the waist-level finder that probably came with the camera when Questar sold it to its original owner. There is a nice flip-down magnifying glass that helps enormously with getting focus as sharp as possible. The camera also came with a ground glass viewscreen with a clear center and crosshairs:

My first subjects were terrestrial ones, and I shot them with good light during the daytime. Using plants in a neighbor’s garden as a test target, I captured both of the following two photographs on Kentmere Pan 400 film using a shutter speed of 1/500 sec.

I shot this first image with my all-original 1962 Questar with narrow field construction. Note the significant vignetting:

Things got a bit better when I switched my Praktina over to my other 1962 Questar, one that had a wide-field conversion done to it not long after it was initially built:

Significant vignetting is still there, but the better light throughput helps to reduce it.

While I experimented, one of the more exciting moments occurred when I noticed a hummingbird fly around. I managed to capture several exposures at various speeds when it perched itself. This is the best image I captured. It’s heavily doctored because it was the least underexposed of all the badly underexposed photos I took:

Rendered this small, this image’s heavy grain gives it somewhat of a compelling aesthetic. But technically speaking, it’s an awful photograph. Looking directly at the negative, you can barely see that I made an exposure at all.

I now know that I made a very poor choice of film for my application: Rollei RPX 25. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with that film stock. I’ve actually grown quite fond of Rollei’s RPX film line for general photography. But at that early stage of my journey, I didn’t know how bad of a choice I had made when I opted for a film with an incredibly slow ASA rating of 25 for use with a telescope operating photographically at f/16. Chalk that one up to experience.

When that hummingbird was around, I happened to have my cell phone on hand, and I snapped this photo with its camera aimed into my waist-level finder:

The irony is not lost on me that I got my best hummingbird photo that day by aiming a cell phone camera into the finder of my film camera while it was attached to my Questar. But at least it demonstrates what I saw in the camera’s viewfinder.

I also struggled to get decent photographs of the Moon. On the same roll of Kentmere Pan 400 film that I mention above, I shot this image using a shutter speed of 1/50 sec, which in hindsight was perhaps a bit too fast and left the image a bit underexposed. Moreover, my focus was not quite spot on:

The problem of focus has proven to be a perennial one.

Exposure time, on the other hand, is something that gets easier to deal with as one gains experience. There was never any through-the-lens light metering that was available for the Praktina. KW did offer an external selenium meter as an accessory for the Praktina, but it most likely would have ceased to work long ago, as the selenium light meters that were common at the time are prone to deterioration. Most no longer function.

The Praktina camera has a fascinating history. For more information, visit Alberto Taccheo’s excellent website on this unique camera. He did a writeup on the Questar-modified Praktina, and I’m especially honored that he featured my very own example.

Nikon F

After those few occasions when I tried my new (to me) Praktina FX in the summer of 2020, I continued to think about other routes by which I could pursue film photography both with my Questar telescope and in a more conventional way. I was especially drawn to what many characterize as perhaps the most significant SLR of all time: the Nikon F.

Introduced in 1959, as Roger Hicks writes in A History of the 35mm Still Camera (pp. 27-28), the Nikon F was the first truly modern SLR. For the first time in a single model, it brought together elements which had appeared separately in other earlier models. It featured:

Fully automatic lens aperture diaphragms that closed down to the set aperture immediately before exposure and that opened back up for brightest viewfinder view, a significant improvement over pre-set lens apertures, the Exakta’s external linkages, and the Praktina’s semi-automatic diaphragm.
An instant-return reflex mirror, which the Asahiflex IIb of 1954 offered but without other key modern SLR features.
A single shutter speed dial as opposed to, for instance, the Pentax’s twin-dial shutter-speed dial.
A modular “system” construction, which the Praktina offered but not to the same scale that Nikon would.
With the Photomic T in 1965, Photomic Tn in 1967, and Photomic FTn in 1968, Nikon added through-the-lens (TTL) light metering.

Although the production Nikon F also featured a mirror lock mechanism, it had an odd flaw. One had to waste an exposure to flip the mirror up and lock it in place. Once there, it stayed locked up, thus blocking the viewfinder until the mirror was returned to its downward position.

Mirror release instructions — Nikon explained the function of the extra mirror release button in this instruction sheet. Nikon Corporation

A modification that Questar introduced in 1963 fixed this by providing a separate mirror release button that moved the mirror up before exposure but that allowed it to return after exposure.

After a few years of perusing eBay, I finally found a Questar-modified Nikon F that became my own. The seller, bless his soul, apparently had no idea about the significance of that little additional button immediately below the depth of field preview button. Instead, the camera listed as a plain-vanilla Nikon F with an FTn Photomic light meter viewfinder. As a bonus, it also included a 50mm f/2 lens.

I had already acquired a 50mm f/1.4 lens which I had intended to use with an adapter on my Canon EOS M50 mirrorless digital camera. But the lens felt far more at home on my Nikon F.

Especially in comparison to the Praktina, which feels downright crude by comparison, the Nikon F is a really clever gadget. Everything about it exudes thoughtful design and long-lasting quality. The more I used it, the more I fell in love with it and with film photography in general.

It’s often the little things that draws someone to a camera. On my Nikon F, the film advance lever operates with a tactile assuredness that feels smooth and satisfying to work. There is nothing ambiguous about the exposure frame counter: whereas the counter on the Praktina seems to lose track of what the current frame is, the one on the Nikon F works accurately all the way through its range of motion, and it resets itself upon opening the back. The shutter speed dial clicks into place without being overly difficult to turn, the fully automatic lens diaphragm and mirror return systems make the camera a breeze to use, and on and on and on. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Nikon F’s reputation is well deserved.

For use with a Questar telescope, though, I have to confess that the process of getting it set up is a bit klutzy:

Remove the lens from camera if there is one already attached.
Remove the Photomic FTn meter and swap out the A-type ground glass view screen with split-view rangefinder that’s best for general use with a C-type screen with a clear center and crosshairs.
Reattach the Photomic FTn meter and reset its indexing for stop-down aperture metering OR attach a waist-level finder with a magnifying glass if I feel confident about setting exposure time without the aid of a light meter.
Make sure the declination lock knob is set so that scope doesn’t suddenly and uncontrollably point itself up with the weight of the camera.
Screw in the camera coupler to axial port, screw in the F-to-M42 adapter ring to coupler, and attach the camera body to adapter.
Attach the right-angle viewer if using the Photomic FTn meter.
Attach the shutter release cable.

My Questar-modified Nikon F on my 1962 Questar.

Carrying what now feels like an unwieldly contraption in my hands, the sheer mass of the entire assembly—the Questar, the camera, and all the attached accessories—is formidable. Plastic camera bodies may feel cheap, but they are certainly lighter.

I really appreciate the mirror flip-up button that is at the heart of Questar’s Nikon F modification. I believe that it is superior to the standard mirror release found on the Nikon F2 and subsequent models. After making an exposure with the Questar-modified Nikon F, the mirror immediately returns to the down position, thus freeing me to return my eye to the viewfinder to adjust my composition and/or refocus. Although they don’t waste an exposure like what the non-Questar-modified Nikon F forced you to do, later Nikons featured a mirror lockup mechanism that keeps the mirror up even after making an exposure. To be sure, one is free to use the same control to unlock the mirror, but doing so seems like an extra and inconvenient step compared to what I have on my Questar-modified Nikon F.

Although using the Photomic FTn viewfinder offers light metering, it does so at the cost of losing the waist-level finder’s magnifier that’s so useful for focusing. One has to pick between one or the other.

When using the Photomic FTn viewfinder, the other critical step that’s necessary is to push in the aperture indexing prong, which normally sets the meter to the maximum aperture of whatever Nikkor lens is attached to the camera. Doing so resets the meter for stop-down metering when the camera is attached to a non-Nikkor lens or a telescope like the Questar.

As far as my results are concerned, I’ll let the following sample of images do the talking for me.

I shot this image from around 20 or 25 feet away in my backyard one morning on a sunny summer day in 2022. I used Arista.EDU 200 film with a shutter speed of 1/60 sec.:

This rather unexciting shot of a nearby utility pole demonstrates the amount of vignetting I get in images. I shot this on the same roll of Arista.EDU 200 film with a shutter speed of 1/125 sec.:

Perhaps this is a product of having more experience, but I’m much happier with my ability to get sharp focus on my subjects with my Nikon F than what I was able to achieve with my Praktina.

My Nikon F and Questar telescope ready for some lunar imaging.

A few months later on a beautiful early autumn evening, I used my Nikon F loaded with plain consumer-grade Fujifilm Fujicolor 200 film to image the Moon. Rather than depend upon my Photomic FTn light meter, I opted to use my waist-level finder, which like the one for the Praktina also includes a nice magnifying glass as a focusing aid. I depended upon my own wits to judge what the best exposure speed would be. I reasoned that my past digital photography of a half-illuminated Moon could serve as a guide for choosing a shutter speed. To be sure to get a decent exposure, however, I shot several images at shutter speeds of 1/8, 1/15, and 1/30 sec.

My Nikon F and Questar telescope pointed at the Moon.

Even without the Photomic FTn’s weight, I was reminded again how heavy the camera was hanging off the back of my Questar. Aiming the scope involved a careful process of supporting the camera under my hand while I released the declination brake and made adjustments until the Moon was centered in the ground glass viewscreen.

After I fine-tuned my aim and focused the scope as best I could, I shot this image with a shutter speed of 1/30 sec.:

Likely the result of poor seeing and/or the low altitude of the Moon that night, my focus was not quite on the mark that evening. I did manage to capture some nice tonal range, though, all the more remarkable considering that I used a consumer-grade film stock.

All in all, I have to confess that I don’t see myself using a film camera with my Questar on a regular basis. But having a specialized film camera body does give me an opportunity to do a very different kind of photography than the usual digital variety. Sometimes I like mixing it up by using a different medium.

More importantly, my Questar-modified Nikon F led me to fall in love with using film for general photography again. I was hesitant at first with making an investment in something that felt antiquated. But after getting a little experience, I love the aesthetic that I’m able to achieve with film.

Similar to the way in which my interest in Questar telescopes and accessories led me to acquire a Nikon F, I also credit my Questar for pushing me to upgrade my digital photography gear.

Next: Digital Cameras