Finally I've had a chance to play around with my Contaflex Super (the old type Super with the dial on the front of the camera) with film in the body. Fascinating to learn how this little camera works. I've never shot with an older camera like this, and am having fun. To me, although it's not a programmed camera, it's almost as if they give you "shutter priority mode" by the way the shutter ring, and aperature ring sort of synch up and follow eachother. You set the aperature first, dial a small wheel to adjust the aperature and the aperature ring on the front of the camera then rotates, leaving the shutter speed stationery. Once you get the meter to read as you'd like it, you can change the shutter speed with a ring on the front, and the aperature will change accordingly.
I've noticed that the selenium meter works just fine in daylight, outdoors. However, take it inside the house and it becomes less accurate. It seems to need a good light source to activate the selenium cells properly. Not a problem for me, since I plan to only use this for outdoors.
Loading the film for me was embarassing. I admit, I'm not used to taking off the entire back of a camera to load film. (but I bettter get used to it because I also want to get a Kiev or Contax II). I fumbled like a photography newbie with their first camera. The film take up spool comes out (it is intended to). After I got the film in, I wondered why I did fumble around. It isn't difficult to load at all. It is just different.
The truly embarassing moment (and yes I am going to admit it) is this: After loading the film and advancing the film twice, I noticed that the arrow on the rewind knob wasn't moving. The instructions said it should. I assumed the film hadn't advanced and opened the back. Oop. It had advanced. Wasted a couple frames by fogging them. I won't do that again.
Shot up half a roll this morning on some flowers in the garden. Will shoot up the other half tonight when the sun swings around to the others that I like. I'm shooting one over, one right one, and one under exposed on all shots to test out the on-board metering. I'm not using a separate hand-held because I'm too lazy and am hoping the on-board is sufficient. (Shooting Sensia 100)
Will see about getting scans done of the resulting images when I get them back, so I can post them for the group. My fingers are crossed!
-Lynn