Ilford HP5 developed in HC110. Beautiful, contrast-y stuff.
A writer’s domain
Door to the garden shed
Goodbye cruel world
For lending me the camera — Thanks Dave!
Amazing collection of Kodak catalogs at Kodakcollector.com.
A clarification: The camera could be as late as 1934. The catalog years overlap — 1932-33, 1933-34, 1934-35. The 34-35 catalog is the first one to show the “Action Front” push button bed release. The 32-33 catalog is the only one that explicitly states the camera is available in black or brown but I don’t know if later model years had the color choice. If it is from 33-34, the doublet was the low-end lens with an f/6.3 or f/4.5 anastigmat as an upgrade and a Diodak shutter option which added 1/10 second to the speeds of the Kodon.
View of the Truchas Mountains.
The scalloping at the top of the next image is from re-spooling the film. I didn’t have it perfectly parallel to the 620 spool rim so the film & paper came off at an angle and wrinkled.
No idea — it looks like water.
Taken with the tape and poster board seals. Still leaked.
Trinity in the sun. Instax with the tape/cardboard seals.
Trinity on the sun porch. No leaks!
Dark room and an LED flashlight inside show just how leaky the bellows is.
Sketching out the “over bellows”.
Getting the cardboard between the bellows and the folding front was a challenge. Good view of the aperture setting: U.S. 8=f/11, 16=f/16, 32=f/22, 64=f/32.
Nothing like a closeup to show how dusty it is.
I thought I was done here.
The back is 6 X 9cm and the front is sized to let the Instax frame slide in.
Instax Mini adapter.
I still got light leaks between the top and body. I tried yet more tape before giving up and shrouding the whole thing with my dark bag.
Getting kind of silly with the tape.
I don’t have a proper darkroom so here’s the process. I taped up the Instax film box to use as a transfer station.
I got turned around a couple of times and loaded the Instax frame with the image side towards the lens. I burned through most of a box of 10 prints to get two OK images but it was still a lot cheaper and faster than using negative film (re-spool, reload, process) for each iteration.
Thanks Sonette!
Ansco also made a box camera ca. 1926 called the Craftsman No.2A.
Because the shutter is slow I used a Y2 filter (1 stop) for most of the shots on this roll. The yellow provides a nice contrast boost too.
I’m really impressed by the sharpness of the images. No post-processing other than resizing.
Zoe checking out the new-old rug for my office.
Lousy composition but I love the contrasts in aspen bark.
The neighbor’s goats.
Checking the focal length
I taped the inside edge, where the film insert goes and marked the tape at the film plane.
Marking the film plane
Next I taped the lens inside so I wouldn’t scratch it with the calipers and put a thin piece of card stock along the film plane line.
Card stock to measure against the calipers
The calipers have a post that sticks out as the jaws open allowing depth measurements.
90mm-ish
Checking the aperture
You can see the aperture in front of the lens but behind the shutter.
Aperture
The Play-Doh was covered in plastic food wrap as I held the shutter open with the stem from a cotton swab and pressed it into the aperture. I could have used about five hands for this operation. Thankfully, there isn’t glass in front of the shutter.
7mm-ish
~90mm focal length / ~7mm diameter = ~f/13.
And then I found this ad. I need to re-find it on the web so I can give proper credit.
f/14
Checking the shutter speed
I set the Olympus to 240 frames per second and shot the shutter six times. In Quicktime, I counted frames from closed (pure black) to closed again. From my working notes:
Vid at 240 frames / second = 4.17 ms / frame
1. 14
2. 12
3. 12
4. 14
5. 12
6. 11
——
75 / 6 = 12.5 frames
12.5 x 4.17ms = 0.0521 seconds = ~ 5/100 = ~ 1/20 second avg.
fastest = 11 = ~ 4.6/100 = ~ 1/22
slowest = 14 = ~ 5.8/100 = ~ 1/17
Frame counter window
The red window is bright and easy to read. Maybe too easy. The right edge of the aspen image and the top of the goats have some funky marks. It could be from processing. I’d need to shoot another roll doing frames with the window covered and uncovered to be sure.
Note to self: Cover the window on an old unknown camera unless that’s part of the test.
I only got six shots on the first roll before the film jammed. A couple of examples are in the video.
Expired Kodak Ektar 100 film. Processed by The Camera Shop of Santa Fe and scanned on a CanoScan 9000f at 2400DPI.
The view from our room at The Line in LA. We paid for a view of the Hollywood Hills and it was foggy the whole time.
Kodak Tri-X 400 developed in HC-110 and Ilford rapid fix. Scanned on a CanoScan 9000f at 2400DPI.
“Urban Light” by Chris Burden at LACMA.
My sweetie at Ray’s & Stark Bar at LACMA.
Palm tree and marble.
There’s always construction in LA.
Waterfall at the La Brea Tar Pits museum.
I forgot to include a couple of things in the video. The Rover has 3 focus settings, 4-6 feet, 6-12 feet, and 12 feet to infinity. It also has a bulb setting. Bulb is a bit of a challenge since it has no cable release and no tripod socket.
I bought another lot of expired film. One of the 120 rolls, some Kodak 200 of unknown provenance and vintage, was exposed. I gambled a few bucks and took it for processing with the color roll from an upcoming camera-of-the-week.
Processed by The Camera Shop of Santa Fe and scanned at 2400DPI on the CanoScan 9000f.
The images are 2 1/4 inches (~6cm) and they’re vertical, as in if the film is hanging, the images are right-side-up, so I think it’s from a TLR or a 120 SLR like a Hasselblad or Mamiya that doesn’t feed film sideways. There is vignetting on some of the shots and the film spacing was all over the place so it was probably a cheaper camera. Not a Hasselblad at any rate since there aren’t any edge markings on the frames.
I’m pretty sure the light leaks are from after the film was shot. It wasn’t very tight on the spool.
I think it’s a golf course.
I have to look at the frame numbers — I don’t know if the double exposure is before, after, or more probably, in between the other shots of the same scenes.
Christmas double-exposure.
It looks kind of like Los Alamos. Wouldn’t that be a bizarre journey for the film.
Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, you’re really green and stuff. Thanks Steve.
No idea. The carpet looks the same as the Xmas tree photo.
Scanned at 4800DPI on the Canoscan 9000f. Resized to 10% for upload. A little color tweak on the door picture but no other edits.
Test roll – Kodak Tri-X. Jem photobombs Zoe.
Near Niland, CA. Kodak Ektar.
Derelict building in Niland, CA. Kodak Ektar.
Your doorway to the good life. Salton Sea. Kodak Ektar.
More posts soon. This first batch is to make up for not having samples in the video.
Expired Lomo ISO 100 B&W that came with M’s Diana. I’m pretty sure it’s really Shanghai or Lucky. The emulsion and backing paper are really thin so longer exposures have the same problem I had with the Voigtlander (week 9). What looks like grain or a noisy scan is the texture (and sometimes the dots and numbers) of the backing paper showing on the negative.
A few shots came out OK. I’m really happy about that since this is the first roll I have ever processed. I used Diafine, because it’s pretty much idiot-proof, and Arista Universal Rapid fixer at ~ 70F.
Ghost bike on NM 502.
Goober on the sun porch.
We finally got some snow.
Scanned on the Canon 9000f at 1200DPI. Straightened and cropped but no exposure tweaks.
This is a nice camera. The shutter and aperture controls are a bit stiff but they’re loosening up with use. The shutter speeds seem pretty close. It may be a couple of weeks but I’ll run another roll through it.
Kodak Ektar 100 film. Scanned on the Canoscan 9000f at 1200 DPI and resized for upload. A little cat hair cleanup in Photoshop but minimal exposure tweaks and no color correction for the bluish Ektar.
Tree tunnel.
Grass on the bank of the Rio Grande.
Old trucks near La Puebla, NM.
Hair flip.