Seagull DF-1 camera review

During the last couple of weeks, I have been shooting a project based on forced evictions in rural Chinese villages. While exploring one of the derelict houses, I came upon a camera brochure for a Chinese camera called the Seagull DF-1.

I know the Seagull brand from their cheap TLR cameras, but I had never heard about the SLR cameras they sold. I took the brochure with me when I left the village and looked online to see if I could find the camera. Sure enough, they were readily available here in mainland China, so I ordered one that seemed to be in good condition.

The camera arrived with the box, manual/brochure, leather case, and a 58mm F2 lens. The camera seemed relatively heavy and well-made. Not as heavy as my Nikon F2, but still, it was a hefty beast. The Seagull DF-1 is constructed out of metal; I can’t find any plastics on this camera, and it feels solid. There is no give on the top plate of the camera, and the buttons and dials feel good enough when operating. The only part of the camera that feels flimsy is the self-timer switch. I pulled the self-timer switch down to test it, and it felt flimsy and got stuck on the first attempt. But the rest of the camera feels much better than the self-timer and works well.

The Seagull DF-1 is a very simple and basic camera. It has no light meter, no electronics, and no batteries, so basically, it is a light-tight box with a lens on it. This is what most film cameras are at the end of the day, which is why it is so hard to write reviews on film cameras. The quality of images that you get out of the camera has nothing to do with the camera but is completely dependent on the lens and the film that you are using. The only thing that a film camera body does is make it easy or difficult for you to shoot the photos that you are trying to capture.

Looking at the top plate of the Seagull DF-1, you can see that the design of the camera is fairly classical. It has the usual film advance lever and shutter speed dial, a small window to show the number of shots you have taken, and on the opposite side, a film rewind lever. The film advance lever sits very snugly next to the shutter dial, and it can be a little hard to engage it with your thumb when you are not looking at the camera or have the camera up at your face while shooting. You have to make an effort to move the film advance lever away from the shutter dial before you can advance the film to the next shot. This is a little annoying, especially when compared to my Nikon F2, which is so easy to advance the film when shooting. The film advance lever also has a very long throw to get to the next frame. It is twice as long as my Nikon F2, and I checked with all my other film cameras, none of them have such a long advance throw. It is not the end of the world, but it does make life a little less convenient. This is not the ideal camera to shoot continuously with the camera at your eye. I find that I have to move the camera away from my face to advance the film to the next shot because of the film advance lever and the long throw. This is great if you want to slow down when you shoot, but this did frustrate me when shooting with the camera.

The shutter dial is made of metal and is painted black. The dial serves two purposes with the camera. First, it allows you to set the shutter speed with the camera. Secondly, it allows you to tell the camera how many shots your film will have. You set this by lifting the shutter dial up and turning it left or right until you get the correct number you are looking for. This is very similar to how many cameras set the film ISO with the shutter dial. The shutter dial feels good; it is nice and tight, which means that you will never accidentally change the shutter speed. Each click of the shutter dial gives a nice audible click as you change the shutter speed and generally feels good—much better than the film advance lever. The shutter dial also indicates the flash sync speed for the camera, which is 1/60. Not great for flash work, but I rarely shoot with flash when I am using film, so this doesn’t bother me.

The shutter release button is built onto the film advance lever, and it feels okay. It is slightly soft and takes a good amount of pressure to fire off a frame, but I have no complaints about the shutter button. It is easy to use and find when shooting the camera.

The viewfinder is probably one of the best aspects of this camera. It is big and bright. I was convinced that it was bigger than my Nikon F2 viewfinder, but when I compared them side by side, they were the same size. The viewfinder on the Seagull DF-1 is slightly brighter than the Nikon F2’s viewfinder, and it makes manually focusing the lens much easier. The viewfinder provides a split prism to aid you with focusing, and I generally found it very easy to focus the lens on the subject I was shooting. I enjoyed the viewfinder on the Seagull DF-1 camera, and I had very few shots where I messed up the focusing.

Loading film onto the camera is easy, just like most other film cameras. To open the camera, you lift the film rewind dial, and it will pop open the back of the camera so you can insert your film cartridge and load the film. The film loads like most other old film SLRs. You simply drag the film across the camera’s film plane and shutter, inserting it into the film pickup spool. After that, you simply close the back of the camera, advance the film, and fire off a few shots until the shot counter on the top plate reads 1.

Now, I have to say that the locking mechanism for the backplate is not great. I had to keep checking that the rear latch was secure and the camera would not open up. I have a feeling that this is a weakness in the camera, and it could be easy to accidentally open the back. On my Seagull DF-1 unit, there were no light seals, and I was worried about it, but I haven’t had any light leaks yet, so I think the camera is fine and light-tight.

The one design flaw that I see with the Seagull DF-1 camera is the film rewind lever. It works almost the same way as most film cameras, i.e., you push the button at the bottom of the plate and use the film rewind lever to wind the film back into the film canister. However, the film rewind lever is very close to the viewfinder, so it is an absolute pain to wind the film up. You will keep banging your fingers against the viewfinder, and it takes ages to wind the film up as you have to go slow with the winding action because your fingers keep hitting the pentaprism hump on the camera. On most cameras, winding up the film is no problem and I can do it relatively quickly, but I would guess it takes me maybe 5 times longer to wind the film up.

When I bought the Seagull DF-1, it only came with the Haiou-64 58mm F2 lens, and this lens seems to be very good. It reminds me a lot of my old Pentax film lens in terms of how it feels to use. The lens comes with the Minolta bayonet fit mount and is supposed to be a Biotar 58mm f2 clone. The Haiou-64 58mm F2 lens is constructed with 6 elements in 4 groups, has 6 aperture blades, and a minimum focus distance of 0.6 meters. There is not a lot of information about this lens online, but from my shooting experience, the lens is sharp, even when shot wide open.

Shooting the lens proved to be very easy thanks to the bright viewfinder on the Seagull DF-1. The focus throw on the lens made it easy to get focus on any subject I was shooting. The focus scale on the lens itself made it easy to estimate the correct focus before I even put the camera up to my eye to shoot. The lens does have one thing about it that I strongly dislike, and that is the aperture ring. The aperture ring is very loose on my copy. You can change the aperture with almost no pressure applied to it, and I had the lens aperture change on me a few times while simply walking around with the camera hanging on my side. I did get into the habit of checking the aperture before shooting each shot, but that is a pain to do. I would have preferred to trust that the lens would maintain the aperture I had chosen and not have to keep double-checking that my setting is right

Looking at some pictures that I have shot with the camera, the lens renders black and white film shots nicely. The shots are sharp, and there is good separation from the background when shooting with a large aperture. The bokeh is good, but it is very clinical, similar to the bokeh you get with Fujifilm XF lenses. Not bad, but it lacks character. I haven’t seen any flaring with the lens, and there seems to be minimal vignetting in my shots. Overall, I would say that this lens is a great performer and a steal at the price you can buy the Seagull DF-1 camera and lens for. I will be looking to buy a Minolta to Fuji XF adapter so I can use this lens on my Fujis. I am sure I will get some great shots with it.

I have always hated writing conclusions to any review, as it is extremely difficult to do, especially for this camera. I have enjoyed my time shooting with the Seagull DF-1 camera, and I will shoot with it again in the future. It is a solid, well-constructed manual film camera. There are no electronics that can go wrong and no meter to fool you. It is as simple as photography can get—just your eye and the image, nothing else in between.

However, this camera does have some weaknesses. The film advance lever can be a pain at times. Rewinding the film is horrible, and I don’t trust the latch on the rear door of the camera. I am sure it will pop open sometime in the future, so I will probably start taping the door closed when I am using the camera. The positives for the camera are simple: great viewfinder, really nice lens, and the price. This camera is absolutely dirt cheap, and you get so much more than you are paying for. It was purely happenstance that I came across the brochure for this camera, but I am happy that I did, as I have added a nice little beast to my collection of film cameras.

I would recommend this camera to people who are looking for a fully manual camera and don’t have a big budget. Can this camera compete with my Nikon F2? No, and I don’t think it is supposed to. This was a camera that was produced for Chinese people to use in the ’60s, and for once in your life, you will get far more than what you are paying for.

Pros

Solid heavy camera
Completely manual, with no autofocus or even a light meter on the camera.
Nice, bright viewfinder
the default lens on the camera is sharp.
Minolta lens is cheap to buy so building a complete kit for the camera would be cheap.

Cons

Long film advance throw required to advance to the next frame.
Horrible experience rewinding the film.
The aperture ring on the lens is just too loose.
I don’t trust the latch on the rear camera door and I am afraid the back door will open up during shooting.

On a final note, I am aware that the Seagull DF-1 is a copy of the Minolta SR-3, but I have never shot with a Minolta before, so I cannot compare the Seagull DF-1 to the Minolta SR-3. There is not a lot of information online about the Seagull cameras, and there is a lot of conflicting information on some blogs. No one seems to be sure about anything regarding the camera, and many of my Chinese photography friends seem to know about the camera, but they are just as clueless as we are about any detailed information. I guess that the camera was produced at a time when information was not widely shared in China. If I do meet anyone in China who can give me more information about the camera, I will update this page with that information.