I'm having trouble figuring out why my Kalimar 500mm f/8 reflex lens, manual, doesn't seem to work.
Pictures I've taken with it seemed greyish, grainy, low contrast, under-wxposed. I took pictures of animals in snow and the prints came out kind of dark showing snow texture and animals too dark to see many details. I had the shop do a few reprints and the normal setting on the machine turned out a truly dark print, they'd been done with considerable brightening as-is. I put the lens on a TC and put a pencil mark where it brought the feedthrough, and compared it with other lenses I have. And it seemed to be telling the camera that it's about an f/1 lens! But then when I put that and other lenses on my ZX-L and K1000 and set parameters for proper exposure (in my room with incadescent lighting) they all matched. E.g. 400 ASA, f/8, 1/8 second. That says the camera is metering correctly through the lens, but the pictures and the TC say different. So what's going on?
