Craft! Bang! Boom!

I think I mentioned a while ago that I had bought a box of random cameras and junk off eBay, but I don’t think I ever went into detail about what was in it. It was one of those auctions where the seller didn’t really know what they were selling, and only included one crappy picture of the entire lot, so you just have to guess at the contents. And let me tell you, I love shit like that. I’m a sucker for a box of crap any day of the week.

I paid about $50 for this particular box of crap, and the reason I did is in the picture above. I thought I could make out a Yashica in the pile, and decided to take a risk. Well, the box of crap came, and inside was the Yashica C, a little battered and flakey, but still – as far as I can tell – in quite good working condition.

The main two problems with the Yashi was that its lenses were dirty (easily solved with lens cleaning fluid) and that its leatherette was flaking off. The fact that it was shipped on a frighteningly cold day, and I immediately opened up the box and started handling the Yashica didn’t help either. Leatherette flaked off like dandruff. After some searching through my fabric for something appropriate, careful cutting, and a hefty amount of Gorilla glue, the Yashica C was turned into this:

Much better. When you get up close to it, you can see the imperfect job I did applying the vinyl, but it at least is an improvement. I consider it my Mad Men camera.

I loaded it up with some Rollei film that I’m trying to burn through (it’s really curly and is a pain in my ass to scan). Unfortunately, the crappy weather has precluded me from shooting many pics with it. I have limited motivation to go outside and be cold. I’ve taken a few inside shots… I’m up to maybe frame #6? What I do know is that if the pictures turn out good, I’m going to sell the Rolleicord. I like shooting pictures with the Yashica so much more than I did with the Rolleicord. The Yashica just seems a lot more intuitive. I’m sure that means I’m going to lose money on the Rolleicord, but serves me right, I guess. I think I got a deal on the Yashica, so maybe that will make up for it.

Also in my box of crap were two box cameras and an Argus Brick. It’s my first Brick. Hopefully, it’ll be my last one, too. It looks cool, but it’s a nightmare of a camera to work. You have to do about 80 steps and know the magic word and do a little dance before you take a picture. I loaded it up with a roll 12 exposure Fujicolor, but once I burn through the roll I’m going to eBay it. It seems like they’ve been going for between $10-$15 or so on eBay – maybe I’ll make some money.

The two box cameras were kind of interesting, although I’ve already sold one, just because I didn’t think I was ever going to use it. The pictures of the girls in bathing suits from the last post came from a camera in this lot, the Brownie six-20. This was the camera that was made in England. The other camera is an Ansco Craftsman, I think. It takes 120 film, so I may give it a go. I think this camera was actually sold in kits for people to put together themselves, which is kind of cool.

The box of crap also came with a bunch of filters and misc. weird shit. There’s a really heavy tripod which is probably circa 1940s in there. I don’t know what I’m going to do with that – maybe throw it in with the Argus when I sell it.

Anyway, back to the Yashica. I so like the way the Yashica works that I just splurged on another eBay auction. I got the notion in my noggin yesterday that I really, really wanted a nice 127 camera. Travis got me all that infrared Efke 127 film for Christmas, and I want something I can put a red filter on to take full advantage of the film. So, I started looking up Yashica 44s, which is Yashica’s TLR camera for 127 film. I almost bought one for $65 – it was a Buy It Now auction – but held back, only to be rewarded today by stumbling across an auction for “2 camers, Yoshica and Fujica.” Turned out that the Yoshica camer (and yes, I’m spelling it the way it was spelled in the auction) was actually a Yashica 44LM, which is the highest end model of the Yashica 44. I wound up winning that auction for a little over $16. True, I have no idea if the camera works or not, but I’d rather take a shot on something for $16 rather than $65.

Hoping the weather warms up soon so I can actually go out and take pictures with these cameras instead of just sitting around the house accumulating more of them…

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January has really kind of sucked. It’s been very cold, and very snowy, and I haven’t had the motivation or energy to get out and take photos. So, not much else to do but try to develop some found film.

I had bought a lot of film tins on ebay, and although the tins contained a bunch of 35mm cartridges, only 3 of those actually wound up having any film in them. I’m assuming the cartridges were saved by a photographer who had developed his own film, but liked the way the empty cartridges look. I can respect that.

I developed two of the rolls of film from this lot. One came out black, which has happened to me before (when I was trying to develop the old Ektachrome film that was in the Kowa), but I got really good results from the other roll.

I still have a roll of Kodachrome from this lot that I need to develop.

Another ebay lot I’ve gotten recently was an Argus 75 that came with 3 rolls of exposed film, and 4 rolls of unexposed film. The three exposed rolls were all Triple Print color film. After doing a bit of research, what I found out was that Triple Print film was developed using their own process – not C41, not even C22. I guess it’s kind of like Kodachrome or Agfachrome, not really workable for home developing. I went ahead and developed 2 of the 3 rolls in black and white developer.

I about shit when I saw how the first roll turned out. It was bright pink, and so paper-esque I thought I had mistakenly developed the backing paper instead of the film. However, it did develop, and I was able to get about 5 or 6 good, strong images.

The second roll of Triple Print turned out more of a dark amber than pink. Here is a negative from the second roll, scanned in as color:

The other roll, or partial roll, I developed the other day was some 120 Anscopan (black and white film). This roll was shoved in a Brownie six-20 that is only supposed to take 620 film. Halfway through the roll the film had gotten jammed, and the entire camera abandoned. I had to work some camera jujitsu, but was finally able to save 3 frames of the roll. The first pic in this post is from this roll, and you can see the chewed up corner. This film was in really bad shape.

All in all, I was pleased with how the pics came out. It’s always hit and miss when you develop old film, since you normally don’t know how old the film is, how it was stored, etc. So, if you’re going to try this, here’s how I’ve been doing it.

First, I highly recommend that you get a rollfilm tank with an apron.

Seriously, nothing is more irritating than trying to load dry, brittle, medium format film onto a developing reel in the dark. Just avoid the problem altogether. If you can find one of these Kodacraft developing tanks on ebay or in an antique store, you’ve struck gold. I got mine from ebay from a buy-it-now auction. I was hesitant about paying as much money as I did for mine (about $17), but I’m really glad I did. It comes with 3 aprons to fit the film sizes 116, 120, or 127 (or 616 and 620). My tank is really leaky (from where the lid sits on it) and you can’t do inversion agitation, but it still works well. If you can’t find a Kodacraft tank, you can get one of these 120 film developing tanks from Freestyle. It only works with 120 (or 620) sized film, but better than nothing, and it’s under $5.00.

Interestingly, I haven’t had a problem yet loading old 35mm film into reels. Maybe it’s just better protected being in the cartridge and doesn’t dry out as fast.

Do a little bit of research before you develop your film, especially if you’re trying to develop old color negative or slide film. Apparently, if you try to develop Kodachrome in color chems, not only will it not work, but it will also screw up your chems.

I’ve got some rolls of C22 film that I’m intending on trying to develop with C41 chems, but mostly, I develop old film in black and white chems. My process is to give the film a soak in plain water for 8-10 minutes, and then develop using HC110 dilution B for 7 minutes at 66 degrees. That seems to work more often than not.

If you’ve got a decent scanner, you should be able to pick up even faint images or images from really dense negatives. What I’ve found has helped in getting a more contrasty scan is to scan my negatives in as a color negative rather than black and white.

Also, scanning black and white negs as color happens to give you really fun tinting, too.

Yeah, that’s about all I’ve got right now. Looking forward to February and the possibility of maybe an odd day or so of warmer weather. I’ve got a biggish photography project that I want to work on, but it’s on hold until the weather starts getting at least about 20-30 degrees or so.

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The weather for the next week is supposed to be terrifyingly cold, which does not make prospects for photography bright. I’m supposed to be getting a box shipped to me today with misc. cameras in it (no clue as to what actually works or not) and other misc. camera junk, so that should be a nice diversion. Maybe there will be some film inside to develop.

Bundled up and took the dogs next door to take my test roll with the Rolleicord II and also try out the respooled 116 in the Agfa Shur Shot.

First, the Rolleicord. Honestly, it works fine. Once I got the film counter mechanism reset, it seems as if everything works as it’s supposed to. It took pictures, the film advanced, and I didn’t seem to get any irritating lines on my film like I do with the Argoflex. However, it is not an intuitive camera at all. The film advance dial and the focusing dial are right next to each other, so there were several times I tried to focus and wound up nudging the film forward instead. Also, I find the shutter cocking method extremely bizarre – not so much that you have to cock the shutter, but after you do that, you kind of have to push the shutter forward in order to take the picture. That’s the part that’s weird. It feels too soft when I do that, like something isn’t working right. However, like I said, everything came out fine, so I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I think my biggest problem is just getting accustomed to dealing with adjusting both my shutter speed and my aperture. I change my shutter speed all the time with the Nikon D40, but I’m not anyway near as used to messing with aperture. It’s one of those things that I have to stop and really think about, like, “Okay, it’s sunny outside, so I can use a smaller aperture and a faster shutter speed.” I know of the sunny 16 rule, but I can’t bring myself to actually remember it. I guess I just need to carry a cheat sheet and/or not get flustered.

So, I think the Rolleicord is a good camera, I just have to get a little more confidence in using it.

The roll of Ilford Pan F wasn’t even too funky, remarkably. I got some weird grain in a few of the pictures that were dark, but those pictures kind of sucked anyway, so no matter.

Next up is the Portra NC160 respooled onto 116 backing paper. The Agfa Shur Shot, by the way, is a camera I bought on accident. I bought it because it had film in it, and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized it was a 116 camera instead of 120. You would think the larger size of the box would have been a clue, but no.

I was able to develop two frames of the old film that was inside.

I really dig this photo, and it made me want to use the camera again. So it here, all loaded up with film. I had two problems actually using the camera. The first is that the film advance knob was really hard to wind. I think that’s because my backing paper was kind of eaten up to begin with. Also, it was cold outside, which always complicates things. Secondly, the shutter works okay, but the one flap that covers the actual shutter doesn’t spring back into place automatically like it should. It just kind of hovers behind the lens. I’ve got to jiggle the shutter thingy after taking a picture to get everything back to where it should be. It didn’t seem to affect the picture at all, though, so it wasn’t a big deal.

This was my first time developing color film in black and white chems. I was using HC110b (again) and had the film in the developer for 7 minutes at about 66 degrees, and then did my stop bath and fix as usual. When I went to wash the film after I fixed it, it looked absolutely opaque. Solid brown. I freaked out and thought that something had gone horribly wrong. I wound up putting the film back in the developer for 3 minutes, and then did the stop bath and fix again, followed with a minute bleach bath (one glug of bleach to about 500 ml of water). Took the film out and looked at it again, and it looked exactly the same.

That pissed me off, and I did an abbreviated wash, fixer remover, other wash, and hypo because I thought the film was rubbish. However, when I went to go hang it up after all this, I could see that yes, actually, there were images on the film. Go figure. So, lesson be learned – when you cross process C41 film in black and white negs, don’t be too freaked out if your film is really really dark, and looks like it didn’t develop while its reeled up.

Even with the really dark negs, it scanned in beautifully. I got a nice, cold, faintly purple cast to the scanned in pics. The only Photoshopping I did was to resize and remove some hairs.

It’s better viewed large.

I like the Shur Shot. Out of all of my cameras that take 116 film, it has the best viewfinders. The next 116 camera I was going to try was my beat-to-hell antique Kodak Autographic 2A bellows camera. I’ve used this before with a spool of 120. Results were sketchy. I suspect I have light leaks in the camera. The frame advance window was popped out so I replaced it with a developed negative (that actually seems to work really well). The film advance key thingy wants to pop out of place and cause havoc to where my film is situated. Also, the viewfinder only works if you’re taking vertical pictures, which, of course, means that I’m only going to want to take horizontal pictures. In spite of all this, the camera is lovely. Even though it’s all beat-up, it’s absolutely gorgeous and the shutter is still snappy. So, if the weather ever cooperates (or even if it doesn’t), using this with respooled 116 backing paper is going to be one of my next adventures.

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Last night, whilst perusing the eBay (as I am wont to do), I found an auction up for about 8 or so old, exposed rolls of film from Australia. Travis and I both thought that developing old Australian film sounded like it had the potential for awesomeness, so I bid on it. I think my max bid was Aus. $20 (which I think was about US $14), and international shipping was about the same amount. The auction was up at 6:00 am or so, and when I went to bed, I was the highest bidder.

I woke up to find out that the auction was cancelled about 2 hours before it would have been up. I was still the high bidder at that point. Travis’ theory was that the guy canceled the auction because he didn’t want to ship to the US. So, I looked at the reason why it was canceled, and the reason given was that the items had been stolen. 8 rolls of old-ass film. Stolen. Two hours before the auction would be over.

Remarkably, none of the seller’s other 50 or so auctions that are currently still up on eBay right now were affected by the outbreak of Australian thievery. So, I say this to eBay vendors – if you don’t want to ship internationally, then don’t do it. If you’re not 100% positive that you’re willing to sell items online, then don’t make them available. And, if you’re going to back out of an auction for whatever reason, at least make your bullshit excuse something believable. Things in the realm of believability: “Dog (or dingo) ate the film.” “Film accidentally fell into trash.” “Film ruined by enthusiastic small child.” “Film, specifically, stolen?” Not so much.

In other news, my color chems are toast. I have a few theories on what killed them. One is that maybe something in one of the older films I tried to develop funked up the chems, but my primary theory is that I simply got the Blix and the Developer mixed up, put the wrong caps on the bottles, and contaminated the developer by pouring it in after the Blix. Oh well. Still got quite a few more rolls of film developed that the kits recommends, so I’m not bitter. It’s going to be black and white developing for me for a while, though, until I place another Freestyle order.

When I do place that order, one of the things I’m going to get is an E-6 processing kit. I haven’t really seen much in the way of C-41 pics developed in E-6 chems, although I read a comment on Flickr that said that they come out much more subdued and low-contrast compared to how the E-6 on C-41 comes out. Still want to try it, though. I printed out the directions for the E-6 kit and was looking at them today, and notice that the E-6 processing involves a “First Developer,” “Color Developer,” and Blix. And the instructions also note that the First Developer is weak, and is the chem whose time is going to have to be adjusted with reuse. So, my immediate thought was, “Hmm. Wonder what happens if you replace the First Developer with regular black and white developer?” Don’t know what happens, but I want to find out.

Since my color chems are shot, I’m going to be doing black and white developing for the immediate future. I happen to have a huge stockpile of color film, though, so I’m going to try developing color negs in black and white chems. Maybe I can use up some of that damn Portra. Actually, yesterday I cut a length of Portra 220 and taped it to some 116 backing paper and loaded it into my Agfa Shur Shot (because you can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop). Panorama, baby!

I want to try out that camera tomorrow, and also try out my new camera, the Rolleicord II.

Just got this today, and it seems to be working okay, although it’s quite confusing. The film advance locking mechanism intimidates me, and you have to cock the shutter, like a gun, before you take a picture. I’ve taken two pics today, but just inside the house, and mainly more to see if it was advancing the film okay.

It’s loaded with some of the Magic Ilford Pan F, from the antique store haul back in August. It’s become a little bit of a tradition with me to try out a new camera with a roll of this film. Why? Because I had 26 rolls of it, and the film is of dubious quality. Sometimes I get results like this:

And sometimes I get results like the photo at the top of this post. That’s from a roll of Ilford Pan F that I had loaded into an old Brownie box camera. It’s actually a No. 2 Cartridge Hawk-Eye Model C, but just picture any generic Brownie box camera from circa 1918, and that’s pretty much it. I loaded this camera with film this summer, managed to take 4 pictures, and then couldn’t cope with it any more and set it aside. I can’t remember exactly why I was so adverse to this camera, but apparently my ill will seeped into the film, because the four pics I took all came out like ass. And not good ass. Sad, sorry ass. Here’s the best of the lot:

I gave this camera to Travis last week, and he finished up the roll. His pictures came out far better. The backing paper imprints were nowhere near as dark. He took his photos on a very foggy morning, whereas I think I took mine in the late afternoon of a hot summer day, so maybe that had something to do with it? Crazy film.

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Liquors. I need some now.

A few days ago, I got my color chems back out and tried developing the few rolls of color film I hadn’t gotten to during the big C-41 day. My test rolls were shot using Kodak Gold of unknown origin in the Kowa, and 35mm Fujicolor 200 taped to 127 backing paper in my Frankensteined Starluxe. I tried doing some macro photography with the Starluxe by holding up one of my Lensbaby macro lenses up to the Starluxe lens.

It didn’t exactly work.

I did manage to get a cool shot of Bela through the Starluxe. I scanned this in using the 35mm carrier for the scanner, because the sprocket holes were starting to be a big pain in my ass.

The Kowa pictures came out better.

I only had one instance of the Kowa shutter flipping open while I was advancing the film, and it happened on the last frame. I liked the effect.

The main thing I wanted to try with the regular film was developing the roll of Portra 160NC 220 film that I had in the Brownie Twin 20. I was curious if I’d get something similar to the red dot effect that I got with the Ansco Shur Flash. The developing went fine, and only a few pictures had what I’m assuming is a reflection from the film window on them. The majority of the shots turned out fine. Really incredibly boring, but fine. The liquor store one at the top of the post was the most interesting, and that’s only because I got a weird coloration on it. Everything else just looked normal and dull. I’m not sure if that’s because I just wanted to burn through the roll of 220 in order to see what it was doing, or because the Twin 20 isn’t the most exciting camera, or because the actual film is just kind of meh. I hadn’t anticipated how much more commitment a roll of 220 is than a roll of 120. I happen to have a buttload of 220, though, and need to come up with creative ways to use it. I think I may try spooling it onto some 616 backing paper next and running it through one of my 616 cameras. I also know that whenever I get my E-6 kit from Freestyle, I’m going to take a bunch of 220 pictures and hope to god that cross-processing them does something interesting to them.

After I did my regular C-41 processing, I let my chems cool down to room temp and then attempted my first go at developing process C-22 film in C-41 chems. My guinea pig roll was a roll of 620 Kodacolor-X that, I think, came out of one of two Brownie Hawkeyes – one I grabbed in an antique mall in Winchester, Indiana, or one that I got on eBay that came from West Virginia. I failed to make any notes at all on this film. Oh well. Anyway, this was my procedure for developing the film:

Presoaked the film in room temperature water for 15 minutes.
Poured in the C-41 developer (which was at 70 degrees), and let it sit in the C-41 developer for 20 minutes, with inverse agitation every 2 minutes.
Poured out the C-41 chems, poured in the Blix, and soaked it in that for 8 minutes, agitating every minute.
Washed and stabilized as usual.

This actually worked! Holy crap! I was thrilled. True, the negatives were really thin, and I only got 6 images out of 12 (but that could have been due to people opening up the back of the camera), but I actually got images! In some weird sort of color!

Here’s the scan of one of the negatives, unaltered in photoshop (although I’m sure the Epson tried to adjust for film base color when I scanned it in):

The big spooge streak was across the entire film. I figured that happened because I didn’t agitate as much as I should have. The darker blue splotches are… what? Mold maybe? Something.

Anyway, after I cropped the splooge mark from the images and adjusted the levels, here is the best that I could come up with:

Sure, the color is uber-funky, but I was pretty happy with it, enough to try again the next day with a roll of 35mm Kodacolor X that frabjousfrocks from Craftster sent me. This time I tried to adjust my method based on the first results and wound up with an uber-FAIL. I got nothing. I got a roll full of blank. Something went horribly, horribly wrong. I’m not sure if it was my fault or if the film was screwed up before I got it (maybe wound back into the canister without ever having been exposed?), but whatever happened, it was bad, bad, bad. I’m just assuming right now that it was something I did. So, in the sake of whoever might be reading this that wants to try C-22 in C-41 chems, here’s what I did that you probably should not do:

1. Presoaked 10 minutes in room temperature water.
2. Had my developer at 80 degrees, and had the film soaking in the developer for 15 minutes, agitating every minute.
3. Also had the Blix at around 80 degrees, and soaked it in the Blix for 8 minutes, agitating every 30 seconds.

I think upping them temp to 80 was probably my big mistake. I suspect it melted the emulsion off the film. Stupid finicky film emulsion. Sorry, frabjous.

There is, of course, a bunch of other possibilities of what could have gone wrong, including my chems suddenly going funky within 24 hours. So, today (or tomorrow, maybe, since I screwed up my back a few hours ago and it really hurts), I was going to test out the color chems with a few rolls of 35mm film to make sure they still work, and then try lowering the temp and seeing if they’ll develop another old roll of film. I’ve got two old films loaded onto reels right now. They’re both 126, but one is Kodacolor-X and the other is GAF. I was planning on trying to develop both at once, but now I’m scared and I’ll probably just do one. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just revert to plan B – developing my old C22 film in HC110b chemistry (black and white).

One of the rolls of 35mm that I was going to use to test the color chems was respooled onto 126 backing paper and put back into a 126 cartridge. If that actually turns out okay, I’ll post some info on how to do it on here soon.

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Sunday I busted out the rest of the color chems I had from my Freestyle kit, and had myself a C-41 marathon. I developed (or attempted to develop) 9 rolls of film – 3 35mm, 1 220, and 5 120. Since the kit is only supposed to develop 8 rolls of 35mm total, and I only used half of it for this time, I figure I’m doing pretty good, even considering that the first half of the chems wound up going bad before I could use them a second time.

I’m trying to be far more careful with the chems now – I’m keeping them in spare Lipton Green Tea bottles, which happily can hold about 500 ml of liquid. Hopefully, they’ll still be good tomorrow. I’m going to try to develop at least a few more rolls of film – I’ve got another 35mm roll I shot through the Kowa, a roll of 220 that went through the Brownie Twin 20, and then, the excitement… I’ve got 6 or 7 rolls of film that would, ideally, be developed with C22 or E2 chems. I’m going to try doing a room temp development of one of the C22 rolls with the C41 chems. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just suck it up and try to develop the rest with HC110b. I’d really rather have funky color photos than black and white, but black and white is better than no images at all.

But back to the developing I did on Sunday. The first roll of film that went through the developer was some 100 speed Arista.edu color film. Travis shot it through the Kowa, and fortunately, third time was a charm, because we gots us some pictures!

I didn’t intentionally mess with the levels to make turn it 60s colors. That’s just what happened after I equalized them in Photoshop. Travis’ version of the picture looks different than mine. I don’t know.

Then I developed – or, tried to develop, rather – 2 rolls of 35mm. One was Fujicolor 200 speed that I ran through the Excell pinhole. The other was the mangled bit of Ektachrome that had come from the Kowa. Unfortunately, the Ektachrome didn’t develop. After the film dried and I was examining it, I could see, just barely, on one of the images a faint image had started to form. I expect that maybe I needed to presoak the film longer than a minute because it was so old. Oh well. I just wish I would have been able to develop it in case it had anything neat on it for Travis (the Kowa was his grandfather’s camera).

The pics from the Excell pinhole were mainly just me screwing around. 200 speed film in a pinhole is always kind of risky, but I had a few shots turn out:

The next roll was Fuji NPS 160. This was the roll of 220. Since I don’t have a camera that is made to shoot 220, I tried taping up the red window in the back of my Ansco Shur Flash and running it blind through there. I only got overlapping images on the first few, but my main problem was this:

The hell? I used electric tape to cover up the window, and thought that that would be opaque enough. I guess not. Either that, or the light reflecting off the window hit the back of the film or something. I hope it’s not the reflecting theory, because that means the roll of 220 in the Brownie Twin 20 is probably screwed. Guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Random cross-processing with E100SW film. The first is from the Genos Rapid:

The second is from the Argoflex:

Developed some Fujicolor 160C. This is with the Argoflex as well:

All this is nice, but none of the photos compared to the absolute joy that was the roll of E100G I shot through the Savoy. The E100G (Fine grain Ektachrome) came from an auction I won on eBay a week or so ago. I got 24 rolls of various expired Ektachrome for $19, including shipping. It was a buy it now auction, and I’m so very glad I bought it then, because I flipped out when I saw these pics:

It’s such a welcome change from the neon green cast of my E100SW. I also love how the little Savoy takes pictures, with its blue around the edges and slight vignetting. If I had to pick a desert island film and camera, this would probably be it. At least right now.

In other news, I just bought a Rolleicord on eBay. God help me. Found some more found 616 film in Columbus – one roll of Verichrome Pan, and one of Kodacolor (C-22). Bought this awesome new box camera:

I’m not sure yet if its as cool as the Savoy, since I haven’t taken pictures with it, but right now it’s in the running.

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I promised you FAIL potential, and boy, do I deliver! Where to start?

The first place would probably be with the Kowa film eating disaster. In September Travis inherited a Kowa H 35mm camera that had belonged to his grandfather. We found it in the closet of his grandmother’s condo, still loaded with film (I think it was on frame 4 or 5 at the time).

The Kowa is a Japanese camera, and is what Travis’ grandfather used to shoot carousel after carousel of family slides. So, it has a history and a lot of sentimental value, in addition to being nifty in its own right.

We’ve had the camera since September, but haven’t really played with it much – I’m more into roll film rather than 35mm, but we both wanted to see how the camera shot and what kind of film was inside, so we took it with us the other day when we went out shooting pics. Travis was shooting with it, and noticed the film advance being really funky after a while. I said it was possible that the cold weather might be causing it to bind up, so he put it away.

When we got home, I tried opening it up (it took me a while to figure out how to do it – turns out there’s a sneaky mini-latch that pops open the back) in a dark bag to see if I could free the film. My thought was that I would be able to shove it back into its cartridge most of the way until I was ready to develop it. Once I got the camera open in the dark bag, though, I felt all kind of badness – namely, the mess seen at the top of the post.

I had to keep my hands in the bag, so Travis got my film developing tank and a spool ready for me in the bathtub (where I do all of my film loading, of course!) and after I was in the dark, I was able to cut off the bad chunk of film, and wind the rest onto a developing reel. It’s now sitting in the spare tank I have.

It’s sitting there because, although I had every intention on doing a big batch of color developing, it turns out my color chems that I had mixed up have gone bad, leading to FAIL #2. Fortunately, though, the roll of film I wasted in order to test this was a roll of junk 35mm that we ran back through the Kowa. It was just shots taken around the house, but once I ran it through the developer and Blix, I saw that absolutely no development had taken place.

It wasn’t exactly a big surprise that my chems were muck, considering I had mixed them up in September. I had hoped, however, that I would be able to reuse them, like alspix did. I think I had left too much air in the bottles, though, and that’s what killed it.

I loaded yet another roll of spare color 35mm into the Kowa, and Travis shot that up yesterday. That’s going to be my test roll for tomorrow. I’m planning on mixing up the other half of the color chems I have and just developing a veritable buttload of color film all at once. That is, of course, if the unmixed color chems haven’t gone rubbish on me as well. That’s what the test roll is for, I guess. I’m starting to wonder if the Kowa has a curse on it, though.

So, since my plans on color developing yesterday were trash, I decided to develop the three rolls of black and white I had shot on New Year’s Eve. There were from the Uniflex pinhole, the Savoy, and the Falcon Mini. I started with the roll that was in the Uniflex pinhole, and discovered FAIL #3

The Uniflex was a FAIL of sorts already, as I had bought it in an eBay auction where the seller claimed it was in “Fine condition!” only to have it arrive and find out that its shutter was bunk. Trust me, I left an appropriately sternly worded negative feedback. Anyway, as it would have cost me more money than I spent on the auction to return it, I tired to make the best of a bad situation by gutting the Uniflex, removing its lenses and other random parts, and then putting it back together as a pinhole. The film advance still worked fine, there’s a nice big viewfinder, and the camera is heavy like a brick, which is nice for those long pinhole exposures.

I don’t have a shutter on this camera – instead, I’m just using the cap of a plastic 35mm film can as a lens cap/shutter thingy. It’s a little tricky in order to smoothly remove and replace it within a few seconds. The whole time I was shooting with the camera, I was concerned that I was way overexposing the images.

I kind of stopped worrying about that once I dropped the Uniflex pinhole down the side of railroad tracks onto stone in 20 degree weather, though. That sucked. Amazingly, the thing held together and life moved on.

Once I developed the film, I found out that I had other things to worry about besides overexposing. True, every image (and there were only 4 or 5 that could be made into anything recognizable using Photoshop) was severely overexposed, but part of that wasn’t just my fault.

See the lines? I think I’ve got a light leak along the bottom edge of the camera. I’m pretty sure the lines form from when I advance the film – turn and then stop. Light gets exposed onto the film. Turn and then stop. Repeat.

My first thought to solve this is to seal that bottom edge with electrical tape once I have the camera loaded with another roll of film. I’ll see what that does. I’m also going to drop down from TMax 100 to my Ilford Pan F. The Ilford stuff is ASA 50, and very likely expired, so it should be a bit slower than the first roll. I’ll probably still overexpose, but maybe not quite so badly. Freestyle sells several films that are ASA 25, so I might have to try a few rolls next time I place an order.

My other thought with the Uniflex Pinhole is to try a filter with it. I got a pack of cheapy little plastic filters (presumably for a Brownie Hawkeye) at a flea market in Muncie. I’ve used the red one in the Hawkeye with a roll of Ilford SFX infrared film and it worked pretty well. I’ve got a pale orange one (and a yellow, green, and clear one, too), that I’m thinking about taping to the inside of the pinhole. Is it still a pinhole if I use a filter? My theory is that the filter would give me a little additional time to make my exposures, and also give me slightly more contrasty daylight skies.

The Uniflex wasn’t a complete FAIL, though. I’m pretty happy with the actual pinhole I made for it.

Things look relatively sharp and in focus. The diagonal streaks in the above photo, by the way, is from a train going by. This was maybe a 30 second exposure? I’m not sure. It’s all a blur.

The last semi-FAIL I had is with my beloved Falcon Mini.

I realized that something inside the camera is causing lines to sctratch across the film. The first roll had this on it, too, I just didn’t realize it until I saw how this roll turned out. I’ll have to see what can be done about this.

I removed the most obnoxious line from this diptych:

And finally, in happier news, I can report that the Savoy is awesome.

I ran a roll of expired Ektachrome through it yesterday at the park. If my color chems work, hopefully I’ll be able to see the results of it tomorrow.

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This is the first 127 camera I acquired. Last summer I won an eBay auction for two old folding bellows Brownie cameras (the Autographic 1 Jr. and the Autographic 2A). The seller threw in three other cameras along with them as a bonus, which was nice. The Falcon was one of the three and suddenly I had a 127 camera.

I liked the way it looked, but it was pretty funky – the glass in the viewfinder is gone, so composing a picture is pretty much blind, the shutter was sticky, the lens was dirty, and one of the spool cradles didn’t want to move to allow me to put in more film. I was able to fix most of the problems except for the missing glass, and since Travis hooked me up with a bunch of Efke 100 127 film for Christmas, I was finally able to shoot some pictures with it.

The inside of the Falcon is pretty nifty (and, of course, I forgot to get a picture of it). There’s a little compartment inside to tuck away an extra roll of film. The camera, instead of taking 10 or 12 square photos, has the set up where there are two red windows on the back of the camera – you advance the film until the number appears in the first window, take a picture, advance the film again until the same number appears in the second window, and then take your second picture. With the Falcon, the result of the means you get 2 slightly overlapping images, and if you don’t tilt the camera, they’re both vertical.

I loaded up the camera before we left for Christmas, and shot a roll of film while we were in Indiana. Developed it a few days ago and was absolutely tickled with what I got.

Where to start? First of all, I knew, from reading Marcy’s review of it that the images would overlap. I just didn’t anticipate that they would overlap in perfect little pairs.

Secondly, the film was kind of warped or loose in the camera, I guess. See the waviness along the top edge of the photo, and the way the road is distorted? I’m not sure what was going on inside the Falcon to cause this, but it’s neat.

I’m also not sure if it’s the film distortion or something to do with the lens that’s causing the weirdness of image/loss of sharpness along the edges of the photo. Altogether, the final result is goofy – it’s the most pinhole-esque of any non-pinhole camera I’ve shot with.

This is the only single frame I got from the roll (because I accidentally advanced too far).

The film, too, is a joy. I had not used Efke before, but was quite pleased with the contrast I got. I took this picture on an overcast day but still got cloud definition.

I also got some misc. funk on the bottom edge of some of the negatives. That may have been my error, though – I was loading the negatives onto developing spools that were damp.

The Efke film also cracks me up by the huge frame numbers they run along the bottom edge of the film. What is up with that? They’re gigantic!

After seeing how the first roll of film came out, I’m now crazy about this camera, so much so that I immediately re-loaded it up with film and took it out again yesterday. It’s great as a snapshot camera. It fits in my coat pocket (barely, but I can get it in there). I was thrilled with how it shot from a moving vehicle (you can see from the image on the right above that it was taken from a moving car). Finally, it just looks cool. It’s a hoot to use. This camera and I, we’re going to have many good times together.

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