Belair 2nd Anniversary Tipster

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Belair camera is certainly far from to be perfect. On the other side, it has a great potential to be very creative camera and to produce great pictures with unique atmosphere. I know, many of you are a bit disappointed with your belair results. As i have my belair camera almost two years i decided to write this tipster: I hope sharing of some improvements i used, it can help you to find the way to manage and to start to love more this amazing camera (sorry for the illustration photo to be digital)

1. Plastic Lenses
I started to take pictures with plastic lenses but i was not too much satisfied. Ok the 90mm lens is quite sharp when you use F16 aperture settings. The other results were not too pleasant for me, my photos were blurry but not in the same way as holga or diana photos.

Credits: kasta72

2. Belairgon Lens
As soon as it was possible i bought belairgon glass lens. I decided to buy a 114mm lens because i have other cameras with the 60mm or 75mm lenses and i wanted something different. I still dont know if it was the right decision, 90 mm lens is definitely more easy to use, and its more universal, 114 mm lens is great portrait lens, its not so easy to use it as everyday lens, but its a challenge and the photos have unique look, when you learn to manage it.

3. Fixed Glass Lens
Soon i discovered perhaps the worst construction fault of belair – same as many other people on the net reffered, i discovered that the metal mount of belairgon lens destroys quickly the plastic mount of camera. So i decided to throw my plastic lenses and to fix belairgon lens to my camera once for ever, using the glue. I dont have lens interchangeable camera anymore, but i am satisfied, i can put all my time with belair to discover the possibilities of 114mm lens.

Credits: kasta72

4. External Rangefinder
With the glass lens i discovered soon, i can make great pictures, especially because of the really shallow DOF. Precise focusing seemed to me important for that, thats why i bought a small lomo rangefinder on ebay as very useful accessory (many thanks to @adash for your kind advice!).

Credits: kasta72

5. Quick Portraits
For taking a quick portraits from 1m distance i can use an estimation – if i can touch the object in front of me, the distance is 70cm. So i just add little bit more of distance (30cm) and shoot quickly without precise focusing. For me is much more easy to estimate 30cm than 1m of distance.

Credits: kasta72

6. 6×12 Frame
For me the most interesting shooting frames are 6×12 and 6×6 frames. As i have others 6×6 cameras and also because of the long lens on my belair, i shoot mostly 6×12. Yes it costs films, but the photos have unique look with the large space. I can only take 6 photos from each film but if one of them really worths, its enough for me.

Credits: kasta72

7. Fat Rolls
Lightleaks because of the “fat rolls”. For some reason much more often when i used fuji films, not so often using kodak films. So i started to push the finger with pressure against the plastic back of camera just on the left of the frame counting window always when i was moving the roll. I can adjust the pressure when i am moving the film, if the moving costs a little bit of force, the system works well.

Credits: kasta72

8. Lost the First Photo
Did you realize the counting frame window is slightly asymetric? Its too much on the left? Thats why you can loose a part of first frame you shot, unless you move the film litle bit more, till the Nr1 just pass the frame counting window.

Credits: kasta72

9. 46 mm mount
Another great news – belairgon lens has 46mm mount, so i can use additional filters. For me especially yellow-green filter for b&w photos. I experimented also with the +3D close up lens, but its still too tricky for me to determine correct focus distance (even if i tranformed 6×9 frame to a matt screen to determine the distance). Another option can be infrared or polarizing filter…

Credits: kasta72

10. AE system
AE system of belair tends to overexpose the film. Got the best results when i used slow films (50-200 ISO) and set always 1-2 steps more on the camera ring. One step more for CN films, 2 steps more for cross-process. For 100 ISO b&w film i set 200, and p.e. for fujichrome t64 i set also ISO 200. In dark autumn days i use 400 ISO films settig the ring on ISO 800.

11. Leather Travel Case
My latest improvements – simple leather travel case that protects the camera against unfolding when i travel or when i carry it in my bag (sorry for the ilustration photo to be digital).

12. Uploading the Photos
Small tip for uploading the 6×12 photos. I found (experimentally) that if you upload the photo (jpeg) large than 1200px and at least twice large then high, the photo appears on the lomography web always in large panoramic format. So i always upload jpegs 1202×598px to be sure.

Credits: kasta72

13. Have a Fun!
I am from a post-communist country, i really lived the times when we could buy only the cameras like lomo, zenit, zorki or flexaret. Nothing worked perfectly (not only cameras) we had to still improve everything and it was great satisfaction tu put in order something manufactured not so well. Its was very funny for me to live once more the same experience with belair. I think after two years i love this camera much more than it would be perfect from the beginning.

written by kasta72 on 2014-11-22

4 Comments

  1. rik041
    rik041 ·

    thank you for writing youre expierens...

  2. kasta72
    kasta72 ·

    @rik041: Thank you for your comment!

  3. hervinsyah
    hervinsyah ·

    OMG the result are very good make me wanna have it ^_+

  4. kasta72
    kasta72 ·

    @hervinsyah: Thank you! Yes camera has some bugs, but if you learn how to handle with them, it s great