Third Time Lucky [400] – The Petri Flex V

Until fairly recently (at the time of writing this), I was the custodian of a wonderful Petri Flex V. Made in the early 1960’s the Flex V was a unique design in its time as instead of a combination of usual gears, the innards of the Petri are based around a single long camshaft with a large torsion spring wound around it. You can feel this difference in use I think – something about it feels more direct somehow. Its a nice SLR to drive.

A bygone name in the industry now, Kuribayshi – later renamed Petri was a decent player in its time in the Japanese camera segment. They didn’t quite get the status of the ‘Big 4’, but had a solid line of cameras in most design types.

As directly hinted int he title, my most recent film through the Petri was my third roll of Lucky 400. Prior runs of the batch have had interesting albeit imperfect results. It seemed common that shots were riddled in marks and ‘black snow’. When you look out there in the www, its not just my experience, but one others get time to time. It’s a bottom priced bargain film stock, so with it comes perhaps some quality control. Anyway – this time overall was [nearly] great!

Results this round were simply nice, mixed condition, 400 Speed film. All developed the same as prior runs. Nearly blemish free. Though one shot had a pretty major swirl that I simply cannot explain to being my own fault:

Shots this round were featured around a lot of North Auckland over multiple outings with nowhere specific… though the Harbour Bridge did feature throughout.

I worded ‘until recently’ in my opening paragraph. The Petri moved onto a new home recently. A combination of me not wanting to allow my collection to keep growing as well as making some funds to keep it growing perhaps in rotation of ownership. The Flex V was a nice model which I suspect I will regret selling – but who knows what I will find and experience next around the corner. Downsides to it was the very specific lens mount – so other lens choices were limited and hard to find. I guess also being reasonably uncommon parts might be non-existent if ever needed.