Now, I have been studying twin lens cameras for the past 2 months or so, because i am naturally progressing from 35mm to a 120 film size. Its kind of the easiest way to progress with picture composition and overall quality without shelling out a crapload of change on cameras like a Mamiya 7 or a Hasselblad. The Lubitel 2 is an incredibly inexpensive camera that gives an entry level experience into twin lenses and was almost as fun shooting as the Yashica Mat i check out from school.
So, this camera is fully manual. No shortcuts here, my friend. In order to take a shot, the shutter has to be cocked. The shutter speeds go from 1/15th of a second to 1/250th of a second with an extra bulb setting. Not really too much to work with but that is where exposure compensation comes into play. The aperature settings go from a slow f4.5 through f22. There is very little in the way of getting any fast moving shots, but if you are a patient person, that should be no problem and just use this for still life, snapshot, or anything creative.
There is a waist level viewer with a flip up loupe for focusing, but I don't like the missing grid lines on most other waist level viewers. Its a bit harder to compose your picture.
The biggest confusion I had prior to shooting was the lack of an ISO meter. This is because there is no light meter and you should be using an external meter for setting the exposure. I think I goofed a bit since my light meter was my Canon Rebel and it was set for ISO 400 and the film I used was 100. One stop up shouldnt hurt the images thought.
I used Fuji Neopan 100 film and should be processing the film today and shall post my results and see if I will go out and shoot with it again.
