Retour à Aurec (Back to Aurec) - a photo on Flickriver

            My SEMFLEX Standard 3.5, a French TLR camera year 1959, is "born" in Aurec-sur-Loire, a small city not far away (65km) from Lyon, France. 

On July 14, 2024 (the French National Day) I decided to go in Aurec with my SEMFLEX for a very enjoyable excursion.

The SEM ("Société es Etablissements Modernes Mécaniques") factory was between the Loire river and the railway station. The buildings in which SEM produced their camera's starting from 1947 to 1976, were still there at least in 1994 (pictures presented in the Patrice-Hervé Pons book, "SEM et les SEMFLEX", Editions FOTOSaga, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1994, ISBN 2-906840-09-2). Today they do not exist anymore and the field is only constructed  in part of private residential housings. 

For the photo session, my SEMFLEX was equipped with a Semflex yellow filter x2 and the Semflex metal shade hood. A Rollei RPX 100 120 film was loaded and exposed  for 50 ISO (Instead of 100 ISO to compensate the filter absorption) using a Minolta Autometer III equipped with a 10° finder for selective measures privileging the shadow areas. 

The view Nr. 7 was overexposed in full due to the accidental blockade of the shutter open ! The view could not recovered but I repeated to exposure on view Nr. 8 successfully.

View Nr. 10 : 1/100s f/8
Note: for this view I used the sport viewer but due to the important parallax error, a piece of the bridge edge was included wrongly in the lower-left corner.
This view is edited within Luminar AI software to remove it.

July 14, 2024
43110 Aurec-sur-Loire
France

France

After the view #12 exposed, the film was fully rolled to the taking spool and was developed in a Paterson tank with a spiral adapted to the 70mm large film. 500 mL of Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developer were prepared at the dilution 1+25 and the film processed for 9min at 20°C.

Digitizing was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) held on a Minolta vertical macro stative device and adapted to a Minolta MD Macro lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The light source was a LED panel (approx. 4x5') CineStill Cine-lite  fitted with film holder "Lobster" to maintain flat the 70mm films. 

The RAW files obtained were inverted within LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printed files with frame or the full size JPEG.

About the camera and lenses :

My French Semflex TLR year 1959-1960 is equipped with f=75mm SOM Berthiot lenses as descripted bellow. 

The SEM company ("Société des Etablissements Modernes de Mécanique") was founded in France by Paul Royet in 1946, in the small city of Aurec near Saint-Etienne (Loire). The SEM camera's was known essentially for the TLR Semflex that were a great commercial success in France until the 70's. The camera's are constructed around an injected aluminum alloy chassis, very resistant and rigid permitting precise optical alignments. The focusing mechanism is made of a cam system like the Rolleiflex giving an accurate and smooth focusing. SEM constructed their own shutters called Orec with 5 leaves capable of the 1/400s to 1s with B. 

Semflex received in majority French optics Berthiot with 3 or 4 lenses (Tessar type). Some camera's were also mounted with Angénieux lenses.

Semflex were trusted TLR camera's used by amateurs and for professional purposes. From 1949 to 1976, 171.000 Semflex were produced in many different types and versions. 

My Semflex in a middle grade version Standard 3.5 type-10 (1959-1960). It was the last version mounted with the 3-lens SOM Berthiot 1:3.5 f=75mm. I got the camera with set of accessories  and several documents including the user manual of the Semflex Standard 4.5 versions. The accessories include a leather SEM ever-ready bag, a Semflex push-on shade hood, a Semflex push-on yellow filter x2 in its original box, and close-focusing lenses. The 1D one is constructed with a prism for the finder lens that compensates the parallax in the zone 1m to 0.5m.

The decorative ring around each lenses can also receive push-on accessories in 36mm diameter as the FOCA or Leitz 36mm filter series. I adapted two protective lens caps from Kodak film canister snapped covers.

Taken on: July 15, 2024

Tags:

Aurec-sur-Loire

Aurec

France

SEM

SEMFLEX

Standard

3.5

French

TLR

Camera

SOM

Berthiot

lens

1:3.5

f=75mm

Rollei

film

format-120

RPX100

Adox

Adonal

Agfa

Rodinal

1+25

Sony

digitizing

analog

negative

black-and-white

pictures

Minolta

Macro

50mm « less

Sets appears in: • Retour à Aurec (Back to Aurec)

Camera: Sony ILCE-7, 1/13 sec, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony ILCE-7
Lens:	----
Exposure Time:	0.077 sec (1/13)
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Luminar AI
Show full info

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