5 frames with a borrowed Konica IIIa

Sometime last year I borrowed a Konica IIIa off Rob Hawthorne. The plan was to shoot a few rolls and review it. He assured me it was an awesome camera with a great lens and viewfinder, and though I think I was aware of them as cameras, I’d not really engaged with them on any real level, so I decided to take him up on the offer of a loan (thanks again, Rob!).

Of course, in the meanwhile David Tan submitted a full review of the Konica IIIm. The IIIm is effectively the same camera but with a light meter fitted to the top of the camera. In fact, David’s IIIm is a little more similar to the IIIa since he has removed the meter due to it not working effectively. As such, I’ve decided a full review would just be doubling up on content… but, I couldn’t not write about it, not least because I was loaned the thing, but also because Rob was bang on the money with his assessment of both the lens and viewfinder!

I loaded the IIIa with a roll of Kodak Portra 400 toward the end of the summer. It was around the time we got our new dog, and most of the shots were just snaps I took whilst out on walks with him. I gave it enough of a run to get a feel for it though. I should probably first say that it wasn’t all plain sailing. To kick off, this particular IIIa has had its Light Value system lens modified so the coupling of the shutter and aperture settings to particular exposure values no longer functions. This isn’t really an issue, but it confused me a fair bit until I spoke to Rob and he explained it had been modified.

It has another unusual quirk too in that the shutter speed dial doesn’t like being set to 1/500th after the shutter had been cocked. This mean that if you aren’t sure you’re going to want to shoot at 1/500th, you have to get into the habit of not cocking the shutter until you’re ready to shoot your next frame. This is not how my brain works, as I am very much used to cocking the shutter straight after every shot. I also find the little focusing knob on the bottom of the lens hard to find sometimes, but that is something I would get used to I am sure!

Still, these little quirks aside the camera really is a really nice bit of kit – it has a really nice heft in the hand without being too heavy, and mechanically feels really nice and precise. Rob’s is also especially nice as the viewfinder is crystal clear, and the rangefinder patch is fairly easy to see – it might not have solid edges in the way a Leica does, but it is really clear and easy to use. This is pretty unusual in fixed lens rangefinders of this sort of vintage. Many now seem to suffer from hazy viewfinders, and I’ve had a few where the rangefinder has pretty much disappeared altogether. It also has parallax correcting frame lines which was a nice surprise.

The real treat though with this viewfinder is the fact that it is a 1:1 finder. This means there is no negative magnification to the view through it. This helps to give a sense of it being a big finder in normal use, but it also means that it can be used with both eyes open. When shooting like this, the frame lines seem to appear on the world in front of you, but you also have a large chunk of your normal peripheral vision which makes the framing process really quite engaging. The only issue I find is that I can’t really use the rangefinder to focus when framing like this – I just can’t really see it properly – but that aside, it makes for a wonderful shooting experience.

As I have alluded, my photos are perhaps nothing to get too excited about, but I am happy with them nonetheless, I also think the quality of them says a lot about just how good a lens the Konica IIIa has!

So, once again thanks go out to Rob for the loan of his lovely camera! You can find Rob’s work on his website here robhawthorn.com and on instagram here @rob_shoots_film

And finally, thanks to Analogue Wonderland who did such a great job of developing and scanning these photos!

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