The Bronica C was released in 1964 as budget version to the S model. The camera doesn’t have a removable back however features a switch for multiple exposures. The Bronica C has a focal shutter with speeds down to 1/500 of a second. The lenses for the Bronica C, S, S2 and S2a were made by Nikon as 50mm, 75mm, 135mm and 200mm fixed focal length versions. These lenses are incredibly sharp and of excellent built quality. An interesting difference to other 6×6 systems is the focusing: It’s not built in the lens but part of the camera body.The focus ring has a distance scale for all four lenses which can be a bit confusing. However, I will get used to it. The waist level finder is bright and fairly easy to focus. I got the camera on ebay for a decent “buy it now” price and the condition it is in is excellent.
I loaded a roll of Rollei RPX 100 and started shooting right away. The first thing I wanted to try were double exposures. Seeing the resuls, I realize it needs a bit of practice and much more thinking to get interesting double exposures.
Last year I got some rolls of Rollei RPX 100 and pretty much forgot about them. Recently I read Martin Zimelka’s review about the film and had second thoughts about the film. So I shot a roll and developed it in Rodinal. A dilution of 1+50 seemed reasonable to get a good balance. It turns out that the combination of Rollei RPX 100 and Rodinal is pretty much the sharpest ISO 100 results I’ve seen.
All summed up, the Bronica C is a cool 6×6 camera that handles pretty well and is able to get very good results. You will certainly not be able to hide with the loud shutter noise that wakes up the death. I will certainly do more stuff witht he Rollei RPX 100. I like what I got developing it in Rodinal and it might become my favorite ISO 100 film. Next step will be trying the 35mm version.
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