Write to the Editor at ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk and include your full postal address. Please don’t send letters in the post as there is no one in the office to receive them. Replies are from the Editor unless otherwise stated
LET TER OF THE WEEK
I bought your 13 February edition to see Carole Baker’s Reader Portfolio. I was also interested in another article on infrared. A mistake I made with black & white infrared film was to use a handheld meter to work out the filter factor using the visually opaque IR filter, but I was getting grossly over-exposed film. Then the reason dawned; it’s infrared film so it sees infrared; so the filter factor is zero. I tried it out on another roll of film and bingo! This image (above right) of Buckland in Surrey was taken using said black & white IR film.
I also shoot infrared digitally. I take the original colour image, add a black and white layer in Photoshop and use Colour Adjustment sliders to darken the blue, cyan and red to lighten roofs; and yellow green sliders to
I was delighted to see your article on the Russian-made Kiev 4 rangefinder camera. It brought back memories of a fine, well- made camera, though my model was the 4A which incorporated a light meter. My original camera was a Prinzflex 500, which was actually a Zenit SLR. Eventually this was part-exchanged for a new Kiev 4A.
I remember the very distinctive smell of the leather case and the peculiar method of cocking the shutter using a knob rather than a conventional lever.
I eventually had to dispose of it owing to a fault in the shutter, which kept jamming open leaving a white band on the negative caused by overexposure, which leads me into the other reason for writing in. If anyone is interested in getting a used Kiev, whichever model it is, you must cock the shutter first before setting the shutter speed. The reverse method causes damage to the
lighten foliage. While we have ‘false’ infrared, it is just as effective, and without the grain clumping, typical of infrared film. It also saves spending hundreds converting a camera.
