Week 15 – The Meopta Milona
If you just read the name and thought “the what?” well I thought the
same! With the previous weeks awful weather continuing into the new week it was
Tuesday lunch before I got to the shop itching to shoot something! Russell was
busy with some students so I settled at the back fiddling with the expected to
be ornament pieces, I picked up the somewhat tired looking Milona and ran
through the shutter and twiddly bits and it seemed ok, I was intrigued by it.
Pretty basic stuff. A 120 6x6 MF with a regular Prontor 2 shutter maxing at
1/250th, aperture f4.5 – 22. A fairly standard distance finder dial
surrounds an 80mm Mirar, Moepta's own lens on a square panel face. It is a
folder which is released by a button on the top plate coming out horizontally
on a short bellows, sighting is done through a fold up square sports finder
with glass in it. Apart from the big round advance knob and a frame counter
window with a rather nifty spring loaded masking plate that is your lot! There
is very little written about this camera but searches found it to be Czech made
between 1945/50, later the shutter was pushed to 1/500th and a tilt
on the front plate to correct parallax error along with the ability to take 4.5
x 6 as an option. Meopta made a handful of TLR's, weird 35mm cameras but were
predominantly optic manufacturers. Anyway enough boring stuff …
Roll 1, Russell had to hand an expired Lomograph colour 100 which loaded
there and then, I needed to get out and play! A series of conversations had
sparked an idea so this was the perfect time. Most distance finders have a
“snapshot” setting and the Milona's was f10 – 15metres and 1/100th
on the shutter for the 100 asa film, yes, I know I should stop down but meh! I
gave myself an hour to shoot the 12 frames on the way home snapping away at
things that mean nothing really but at the time... This would be how a person who
had picked up an inexpensive unit from a fleamarket or similar with little or
no experience might shoot. I did for testing purposed try 1 or 2 shallow depth
of field etc but the exposure
calculations came out approximately the same. The results were OK, yes there
was some colour weirdness due to the films expired nature and oddly the colour
in bright highlights appeared bleached, the mural being a good example looking
fine in the shadows but given a fresh film they would have been in the ball
park, what surprised me was the lens seemed pretty sharp.
Roll 2 – My favourite FP4+ and fresh! This time I took it to where I
thought the above mentioned might take the next step, a £3 hand held Leningrad
light meter which I just aimed into darker parts of my frame, I roughly guessed
distance and experimented with settings and a couple of filters while out with
my 2 youngest. I was fairly casual about it just enjoying the time. I developed
it on standard times with some stock solution that needed using. The results
were great I think for what we did, I didn't do well with the red filter shot
and there were some parallax errors in there but I did squeeze some shallow DoF
and most exposed well with minimal loss in the highlights. What a lens though!
Pleasingly sharp with enough character to please the eye.
To sum up this was at first impressions a slightly tatty old folder from
a left field maker with a price tag down the bottom end but performed beyond my
expectations, light tight with no tape needed, sharp enough to please most and
easy to use for the beginner with enough in it to satisfy the keenest vintage
user. I got enough good pictures using a casual approach that I think if you
put the effort in it could give much more. I am glad I rummaged through that
shelf I used a camera I might never see or use again as there isn't many out
there it seems.
