Vilia camera by Belomo, the classic simplicity
Three years ago I took a photo of my old 35mm film camera VILIA as one of 356 other photos in my Project 365 challenge. Few months ago I finally started to shoot with it again and that made me so happy. As I wrote then, there should be an old exposed roll of film inside, but it was empty. Don’t know what happened or maybe I just forgot it’s not there. Anyway after several years I loaded it with a brand new Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 film and already tested it in action. Everything works perfect, I have to use manual settings, there is only manual focus available and no exposure metering of any kind, what a fun.
In the mean time I scanned some of my old negatives to compare with the new ones. Despite the age of the film I’m really surprised with the great quality of the images. After printing them on a home printer they look a lot better than those I developed back in the days. My first camera was the famous Certo KN 35 which I probably dismantled as a curious child. The first camera I had in my hands was probably an old Polish medium format called DRUH, and the first one I took photo with was the Exakta Varex IIa. I still remember that magic moment for a few years old kid.
I applied a subtle processing only to not destroy the original look and feel of the film. Now it’s not easy to wait for result of the new roll, but still few frames are left to burn.
All photos was taken in early 80s. There was no internet, so learning the art of photography wasn’t so easy as today. I had one or two books only and no one to talk to about it. Well.. Vilia was very forgiving camera, sometimes it made double exposures and sometimes it broke the film. At the moment it seems the film is advancing properly and only the frame counter doesn’t work, so I hope not to tear the negative in the end. I’m not sure if it will block the winding mechanism when the roll will finish.. gonna see.
The build quality of Vilia camera is pretty good as for such cheap equipment. I’m not going to describe all of the technical data, because it’s widely available. Nice plastic body and few metal parts, glass lens f/4 to f/16, shutter speed up to 1/250s, simple viewfinder and that’s it. I mostly use the Sunny 16 rule and variants for setting the exposure. Rarely if I’m not sure I use the Android application or manual light meter Leningrad 4. One may also try to determine the exposure using a digital camera, but it makes things slow and doesn’t help to learn the process much. It may be better to just set the digital camera to manual mode, disable the LCD and auto focus and shoot about 36 frames that way, without looking at each of images taken until the end of the exercise. You gonna be so SURPRISED! But film is the magical medium…
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