Lubitel 166 (vs. Bronica ETRSi) – Testing an impulse purchase

Having succumbed to the temptation to impulse buy a camera that I knew only by its reputation for having long been the inexpensive way into medium format, a Lubitel 166, I decided to compare it with a camera that should provide it with stiff competition. Ideally I would have used my Minolta Autocord, which also takes 6×6 images, but there was already a part-used film in my Bronica ETRSi, so I decided to use that. I went out, on a sunny day, to the nearest riverside with both cameras, a tripod and two QR plates. I am just ignoring the difference between the two formats.

I found a view with lots of detail that I thought would make for a good comparison, put a 75mm lens on the Bronica, and took a shot. I then went to put a QR plate on the Lubitel, and found the first issue with the camera: the tripod bush was too short for the screw on the QR plate. Of course, that undermines my comparison in that the Lubitel was not fastened to a tripod, but I hoped that resting it on a solid wall wherever possible would be a substitute for the tripod. I then took half a dozen shots of the same scene with both cameras, the camera settings being whatever my exposure meter said. It was a bright day, so most of the shots were f8 to f11. Of course, I am well aware that the comparison might have been different wide open.

The films, both Kentmere 200, were developed together in freshly mixed ID-11, 1+1, for the recommended 8.45 minutes.They were scanned at 3200 dpi in an Epson V700, with the only adjustment being auto levels. In PhotoLab I did not more than adjust the occasional image so the horizon was horizontal, correct errors in cropping when I was scanning and remove the most obvious dust spots. Here are the images, with 1:1 crops of a couple of them.

Next, 100% crops from both images. Here I wonder whether the issue might be focus, but I get similar results from pixel-peeping all the other images, so I assume not.

I took a number of shots with the Bronica where I decided that square format would not make any sense, and this is one I liked.

Of more interest are two taken on the Lubitel after the film on the Bronica was finished. I finished the roll on a cloudier day, and lower contrast landscapes. A couple of shots of green landscapes made me wonder whether the Lubitel/Kentmere 200 combination was up to the task, but I thought these two were encouraging; the tones in the first one and the contrast and brightness in the second. (I know I should have tried to tone down the highlights, but I was deliberately not doing further processing.)

The Lubitel has a lot going for it. Weight, size, simplicity (and of course price). I also liked the the light touch on the shutter button, and having to cock the shutter separately from winding the film. That way it was easy to avoid accidental exposures or double exposures. Against that, winding on was difficult as I found I needed to have bright sunlight on the red window to be able to see the numbers on the back of the film and there was the issue with the tripod bush. A surprising issue was that the images were large enough to overlap the numbers printed on the edge of the film, making some of the negative numbers difficult to read, not that this is a significant problem, given I can count up to 12. It was also inconvenient that when I tried to look in close to focus, I found it hard to see the whole image in the finder, and sometimes saw only a circular image and needed to move my eye further away to see the whole image.

There are clearly good reasons to take out the Bronica, not least that I can also use it for panoramic shots on 35mm film (this was my first use of 120 film in it) but I thought the Lubitel held up well. It might even be possible to lessen the difference with more processing, such as sharpening with Topaz Photo AI.