Fed 5B

Never mind the weight – it builds character and steadies your shots as well! The FED 5B is your perfect street shooting companion.

After a while in my Lomographic life, I craved something that gave me a little more control on the output. I wanted the freedom to tweak my depth of field, shutter speed and aperture but still wanted to retain and discreet and incognito nature of my trusty plastic cameras. The answer was to get a rangefinder and in my case, it was the Fed 5B

Once you hold it in your hands the first reaction you’ll get is that its heavy – really heavy. But while some may not like this, I appreciate it because this lends to its sturdiness and you’ll lose apprehension of it being fragile unlike plastic cameras. It is fitted with a sharp multi-element Industar 61 f/2.8 55mm lens to get you started. This is great as you can use the 2.8 aperture to get grate bokeh shots and f/16 for sweeping landscape images. Its lenses are also interchangeable so if you’re lucky enough to ahve some Leica lenses you can use them in the FED or you can buy other Russian lenses off the net for a relatively cheap price.

I like to use the FED for the second exposure in doubles so that I can control and tweak how I want the image to come out by varying the combination of the shutter speed and aperture. There is virtually no need to push/pull the film in a custom photo lab when you can do it in camera! Lastly, since no FED review is complete without this piece of advice: Don’t forget to wind before changing the shutter speed!

written by cruzron on 2009-05-29 #gear #rangefinder #review #green #fed-5b #organge