Craft! Bang! Boom!

We were at an antique shop a week or so ago in Columbus, and found a bunch of big glass negatives. I bought a couple, but have been too afraid to scan them in since I don’t want to scratch up the glass on the scanner. I figure I’ll just make a print of them once I get the darkroom up and rolling. Fortunately, though, in another part of the store, I ran across this big glass black and white slide. The edges of the slide are covered in masking tape, making it scanner friendly, and it helpfully has a caption written on the tape as well: “Harbor Key West Florida.”

And hey, thanks to everyone who checked out my Etsy shop! Hopefully there are some cameras that are very happy in their new homes. Using the time tested “Husband-sitting-on-the-couch-random-number-generator” we’ve determined that the little Imperial Satellite goes to Wendyvee, she of the awesome Roadside Wonders website. Yay, Wendy! Which is absolutely appropriate, since Travis and I are about to go on a road trip ourselves. Hopefully we run across kitschy weirdness to share when we get back. See you guys later!

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(Don’t forget to to enter to win the little Mercury Satellite two posts down!)

So, you know how I just got a Speed Graphic?

Well, this is not that camera.

No, this is the much smaller and lighter Century Graphic, a camera that came home with me only days after getting the Speed Graphic. Yes, it actually cost more than the Speed Graphic. Yes, it takes an almost archaic film size (2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″, smaller even than 120 film). Yes, I am completely weak and powerless to resist an impulse buy.

But, I had my reasons! The main reason I picked this camera up was because of its lens.

It’s an 103mm lens, longer than the 75mm that was on my Speed Graphic. My thought, then, was maybe I buy this camera (which is actually in absolutely beautiful condition, by the way) and swap out the two lenses, and then maybe I could shoot pictures on the Speed Graphic that didn’t come out to be a circle.

(I think the not quite perfect circle here is due to the fact I had to hold the dark red filter over the lens, as the 75mm lens has no filter threads).

Anyway, at the same place I bought the Century Graphic for $80, I also picked up an old, old lens for $5. Do you see where this is headed?

When I got home and compared the two Graflex cameras, I realized that the lenses wouldn’t be easily swapped out. I’d need a new lensboard for both cameras, which would probably cost a total of another $50-$75. So, screw. Oh well. I had committed to the Century Graphic by that point and wasn’t going to take it back – it really is in outstanding condition. I bought some extra film holders for it, a rollfilm back so I can use 120 film, and some of its ridiculously obscure sheet film.

Then I considered the $5 lens.

The shutter still worked, somewhat. 1/100 of a second seemed sound, and the Bulb and Time settings worked fine, but any of the other speeds seemed iffy. That’s not that big of a deal, considering the Speed Graphic has the curtain shutter I can use instead.

There was no marking on the lens to indicate what size it was, but the top of the lens said this:

So, apparently this lens was originally used for a 5×7 camera? Well, that’s good news, I think. That means it should definitely cover the entire film plane of a 4×5 sheet of film.

Travis and I ran down to Columbus Camera Group this past weekend to talk to someone there and see if this lens was usable in the Speed Graphic. One of the CCG guys glanced at it, ran downstairs, and came up with a lensboard that fit it in about 2 seconds. They charged me $25 for the lensboard (cheaper than I had priced one anywhere else!), that and 10 rolls of expired Fuji Velvia later, and we were good to go.

I have to admit, the Speed Graphic looks freaking cool with its new lens.

There are actually pistons on the side of the lens that pump up and down when you shoot on the slower shutter speeds. I have no idea how they work (Magic? Gnomes?), but they’re awesome.

But, how does the lens actually work?

I gave it as good of a cleaning as I dared before installing it into the lensboard. Turns out the lens has a tiny chip on the front, and a light scratch on the back. I wasn’t sure how that would affect the pictures taken with it.

When I set the camera up to shoot, the first thing difference that jumped out at me was that I had to have the bellows extended really far out in order to focus. With the 75mm lens, I barely had to move the face of the camera out on the rails at all, unless I was taking a super close-up.

The second thing I realized was that the aperture settings on the new lens had absolutely no relation to reality whatsoever, at least not on this camera. For one thing, there are, inexplicably, two sets of apertures.

It’s kind of hard to see in this picture, but the top set of aperture numbers is labeled S and the bottom set is labeled D. I decided to go with the bottom set. But still, I was shooting outside on a sunny day. The sunny 16 rule says I should shoot at 1/100 of a sec using 100 speed film with an aperture of f16. Unfortunately, f16 on this lens looked more like f4 or something. Baffled, I adjusted the aperture to what the lens said was f64.

The good news? The picture covers the entire area of the film, and looks sharp and brilliant! The nick and scratch in the lens were undetectable to me. The bad news? Well, not that bad – the shot came out a little overexposed.

The top picture is what the negative scan looked like without being adjusted. The bottom is after I adjusted the levels in Photoshop.

So, the aperture is a bit wonky. That’s not a big deal; I can definitely live with that. What I wound up doing was just setting the 75mm lens and the new lens side by side, and opening up the apertures to both lens to approximately the same size, and made a translation of sorts between them. For example, to get an f16 on the new lens, I need to move the aperture setting between f128 and f256. Crazy, right? I made a little chart and taped it onto the Speed Graphic for quick reference.

Another thing I noticed about the new lens is that since it was originally supposed to be used for a 5×7 camera, it actually winds up behaving a bit like a telephoto lens. The picture above was taken from about 80 feet away. I took a similar picture with the Century Graphic from about 40 feet away.

Anyway, pretty happy with both the new lens for the Speed Graphic and the superfluous Century Graphic. And since each of the lenses for the Speed Graphic have their own lensboard, I’m able to swap them out in about 5 seconds for when I want to shoot macro pictures and whatnot.

In other news, I’ve finally accumulated all of the various parts and pieces I think I’ll need to set up a proper darkroom. I have about 14,000 different things I want to experiment with, but will have to wait a few weeks to do so. Travis and I leave on a Random! Road Trip! on Monday, and will be gone for a week. Once we get back, though, I’m going to be insane in the dark room. Aw yeah. I’m excited.

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(Don’t forget to scroll down to the post below this one and enter to win the Mercury Satellite 127!)

Hey, finally getting around to writing about cross processing! Yay, me!

Cross processing (or X-pro for the short version) is, loosely defined, the act of developing film in a process that was not intended for it. If you develop a color negative film in black and white chems, that’s cross processing. Technically, my developing Kodacolor-X (a process C-22 film) in C-41 chems is cross processing as well. But the term most commonly refers to developing color positive slide film (process E6) in color negative chemistry (process C41).

You see a lot more examples of slide film developed in color negative chems rather than the other way around for two main reasons. The first reason is most photo developing places have to send out their slide film to be processed, and those labs will probably see a roll of C41 film and actually process it in C41, whereas it’s a lot easier to sneak a roll of E6 film in a one hour photo drop off place.

Since I do my own processing, that wasn’t an issue for me. So, last time I was developing E6 films, I threw a roll of expired Kodak Vericolor III into the soup. The Vericolor is a process C-41 film. Here’s what I got:

To be honest, I kind of like this particular photo. But, see how dark the sky is? That brings me to the second reason most people don’t process C-41 films as a slide: they come out really, really dark. Especially if you are, like me, shooting 17 year old expired film through a pinhole camera and only deciding that the roll is going to be cross processed after the whole roll’s been shot.

Right. So, that picture above? That was the best picture on the roll. Pretty much everything was dark, ranging from ‘Really Dark’ to ‘Indescribably Dark’ to ‘Oh my god, it’s darker than my soul!’

Yeah. Might try this again sometime. Maybe with some forethought and planning. If I do, I’ll try to remember to overexpose by bunches.

Anyway, back to the more common form of Xpro, slide film processed as a color negative. I’ve done this before, certainly. My favorite film/camera combo is actually crossprocessed: Kodak E100G shot through the Savoy and developed as a color negative.

You see, the point of cross processing, which I somehow failed to mention until just now, is to get vivid or altered colors than you would with just a regular C41 film. It’s all the rage amongst the LOMO crowd. In fact, Lomography actually sells a film that’s made precisely for cross processing in color negative chems.

I tried it out (again, in a pinhole camera, so that may not have been the best test), and didn’t find the colors especially crazy.

Most of the other experience I’ve had with cross processing has been using Kodak brand slide films. I’ve been able to get a hold of a lot of rolls of various expired Elitechrome and Ektachrome films, so that’s what I use. And for the most part, those films tend to go all green tinty once they’ve been cross processed (except for the E100G, which is a lot more subtle, but still has a distinct ‘look’). And it looks neat at first, but after a while, it’s just more green.

I went away from cross processing for awhile, because I was sick of the green, but then I bought some Fuji Velvia 100. This was actual brand shiny new unexpired film. I know! Crazy! So I went ahead and shot a few rolls and developed them normally.

And, funny thing – for some reason, I keep overexposing the crap out of them. Curse you, Velvia!!

Finally, before our trip to New York, I decided I would try shooting with film in different ways. I got over the psychological barrier of “Velvia is very expensive and people who shoot slide film worship it, so I need to use it as a slide film, too.” Yes. I would cross process Velvia, boldly and without fear!

Right before we left, I managed to pick up a box of expired 4×5 Velvia 100 film. I didn’t wind up shooting any pics in New York with it, but when we got back, I took Domo outside and took a shot with the Bollywood pinhole camera using the Velvia 100.

Not only did I finally get the exposure right on the Bollywood, but for once, I cross processed something that hasn’t gone green!

The funny thing is, I remember reading a long time ago a comment on a Flickr discussion regarding the cross-processing of Velvia. Whoever wrote it was of the opinion that it was a waste of time to do so, that the results weren’t great, and Velvia is such a fantastic slide film that it’s ridiculous to process it in any other way than E6. That must have stuck with me, and was why it took me so long to actually try it. Turns out, I’m absolutely thrilled about the results, and when I had a chance to scoop up some more Velvia 100 recently, I did so, for the express purpose of cross processing it. So, let this be a lesson to all of us – just because someone on the internet says a thing (including me!) that doesn’t mean it’s true.

After the Velvia 100 success, I cross processed 3 other slide films that day. After I scanned them in, I made an image comparing how the negative and positive image from each different film looked.

From top to bottom, on the left side, is how the unaltered negatives look of:
1. 35mm Fuji Velvia 50, expired 2003, shot in the Savoy.
2. 4×5 Fuji Velvia 100, expired 6-2007, shot with a 5 second exposure in the Bollywood Pinhole Camera.
3. 120 Fujichrome 64T, shot in the Yashica C.
4. 120 Kodak EPP 100, exp. 2/2003, shot in the Yashica C.

On the right side is how the negatives look inverted into positives, with their levels adjusted slightly.

At this point, I haven’t done enough experimenting with these films to know if the results are consistent – I don’t know if I’m always going to get vividly green negatives with the Fuji 64T, for instance. I also don’t know if I’m going to get the same tones with Fuji Velvia 100 120 film as I got with the 4×5 film. I don’t know how being expired has effected the way these films cross process, either. I do know I’m intrigued enough to play with it more.

What I found really interested was how different Velvia 100 and Velvia 50 looked from each other. In comparison to warm tones of the Domo picture above, Fuji Velvia 50 gave me this:

And this:

I wouldn’t've thought that two such closely related films would be so different.

The Fuji 64T was a treat, also. Besides the negatives being ridiculously green (I think I gasped with delight and shock when I pulled them out of the tank), once I inverted them I got images like these:

The “T” in 64T stands for Tungsten, by the way. That means it’s a film designed to compensate for artificial, tungsten-based indoor lighting. When you shoot it outside in daylight and process it correctly, it tends to make everything go all blue-y. After seeing the results of the Fuji 64T cross processed, I’m wondering what Kodak Tungsten balanced films will do, too.

I wasn’t as impressed with the Kodak EPP100 cross-processing.

Still, though, considering I have been getting slight purple-y tones that I alternately like and dislike with the EPP when it’s processed as a slide, this now opens up more options for this film. Which is good, considering I just got 4 boxes of it in 4×5 film. (I know, I said I was done with it. But I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse).

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Yes, there is the potential to win a free thing. I will tell you how at the bottom of this post. In case you just want to jump down there and read how to enter the contest, here’s the cliff notes version of the meat of this post – I started an Etsy shop for vintage camera stuff and photography-related funtimes. You can get to it through that link or through the widgety thingy on the side of the page.

Okay, long version now.

Whenever I get interested in a subject, I go way, way overboard. When it comes right down to it, I just really love learning how to do something. And I don’t just want to know the basics, no, I want to know why things happen, what the history is behind this subject, and hey, what happens if…? The what happens if? may be my favorite part.

I’m interested in photography – not just recovering found images, not just using old cameras and film, not just making prints – I’m interested in the whole big ball of photography. So, this has led to my accumulating a myriad of photographic stuff in order to experiment with.

And I’ve made some progress in narrowing down what I really like dealing with. There are certain cameras (the Savoy, the Yashica C, etc) I find myself reaching for, certain films that I have fallen in love with (Kodak E100G and Vericolor III, I yearn for you!). There are also things that, for whatever reason, I haven’t connected with as well. I really dislike dealing with 35mm film for the most part, although I’ve come across some ways to use it more joyfully. I have two Canon AE-1 35mm cameras, one with a wide lens and the other with a telephoto, and those are probably the only 35mm full frame cameras I need. This doesn’t mean 35mm is a bad format, it just is a personal preference. The same thing with Polaroid integral films. I’m absolutely thrilled that the Impossible Project has managed to raise these films from dead, and I do enjoy goofing off with my Polaroid One-Step every now and then, but it’s just not a camera I find myself reaching for frequently.

Basically, I have a lot of camera-related material that I’m not putting to full use. So, in the interest of making some excess cash (that will probably be funneled right into more photo paper or something like that), and also in the interest of getting this stuff to people who will actually use it a lot more than I currently am, I started a new Etsy shop called ‘i shoot film like it’s digital.’ Because I do.

Yes, I already have an Etsy shop up and running – Gaslight Dyeworks, which focuses on the yarn/fiber materials I produce. I figured, though, that I would probably be getting two entirely different customer bases, that I should have two different shops. However, if anyone does want to buy yarn and cameras at the same time, I will combine shipping.

Right now I have mainly cameras and some other paraphernalia listed. I’m slowly sorting out the equipment and materials I haven’t been using or have duplicates of – I currently own 4 Brownie Hawkeyes – 4! – and getting them listed in the shop. I haven’t started going through my film stash yet, but I’m sure that some of it will wind up there, too. That may include things like respooled 127 or 620 film.

Also, I’m planning on selling little bundles of found slides if people want to use them for crafty projects, and maybe selling some prints of my own photographs if I can actually print them and make them look decent. In addition, I’m also offering, conditionally and with no guarantees, film developing, particularly of film that has been neglected for a long time. I say conditionally because it would depend on how busy I currently am, and with no guarantees, because there’s no way that I can guarantee that a 35 year old roll of Kodacolor-X is going to develop. However, it is something I have some experience with, and something that other people may not have the time or resources to be able to try.

It’s my intent to keep the items available in the shop limited to things that are either interesting in some way or are actually still functional. Trust me, I’ve gotten enough boxes of crap from ebay to know exactly what to save and what to pitch from them. Also, if I’m selling a camera, for instance, that’s broken, I will come out and say that it doesn’t work. If I even suspect that the camera doesn’t work, like in this Ansco listing, I’ll say that, too. I’m in no way interested in selling things under false pretenses – I’m not going to be the person who lists a hundred cameras, and then coyly says in every description, “I don’t know anything about cameras!” I hate that.

It’s also my intent to keep the prices of what I’m selling actually in touch with reality. Do I want to make some money? Of course. But I don’t want to fleece people either. For example, I saw someone on ebay a while ago trying to sell a plain old Kodak Autographic Jr. for a buy it now price of $200. And the listing had a blurry picture with a one sentence description. Really? I guess, if someone buys that, they get what they deserved, but I don’t want to be that person. If I have a camera that I’ve tested out and works fine, if it’s clean, if it comes with additional stuff like a manual or box, I’ll have a higher price on it than a cheap little plastic camera that looks cute but is broken. My goal is to be fair.

I happen to be extremely uncomfortable with self promotion, and I definitely do not intend for this blog to be ‘Oh hey! I’m selling these things! Come give me moneys!!’ If I have something for sale that’s particularly neat, I may mention that, but for the most part, the Etsy widget on the side of the page will probably be the biggest mention of the shop here. I’m going to keep doing the photography related madness, just like usual. In fact, I have an order from Freestyle on the way that contains the few missing pieces to my brand new darkroom set up. Yay! Two word preview of coming attractions: lith printing. I haven’t tried it yet, in fact, I haven’t even successfully made a print using an enlarger yet, but is that going to stop me? No, of course not! Once my secret underground lair (read: makeshift darkroom in the bathroom) comes together, there’s no stopping me!

Which is all well and good, but by now you’re probably thinking, ‘For the love of god, wasn’t there something about winning a free thing?’ So, yes, let’s get back to this little number:

Travis and I went trolling around the more Amish-y part of Ohio a few days ago, and I came home with an embarrassment of cameras. Most of these were bought at an antique store actually run by the Amish, which was a little strange. Anyway, as a gesture of thanks for reading about the shop, I’m giving away this camera as a prize. The winner will be picked at random from anyone who leaves a comment on this post between now and noon Eastern time next Friday (April 30).

Did I mention this?

The camera still has film inside. It’s on frame 10. So, if anyone wants to experiment with developing found film on your own, here’s a little bugger to get you started.

I haven’t advanced the film or opened the camera, so I don’t know what kind of film we’re looking at (I hope it’s not Triple Print!), or even if the camera still works. So, theoretically, this could turn out to be a dud. But, the camera is a cute enough little thing, so even if it’s full of FAIL, it’s still retro-nifty.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and for checking out this little photo blog in general.

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My contact printing success with the old Kodak Velite paper led to me to digging through some old negatives I had gotten when I first started getting interested in found images. One of the first set of found negatives I got were in an ebay batch from Louisiana – there was some undeveloped film in there, but it was mostly already processed negatives.

At the time, I only had a 35mm film scanner, and had to try scanning anything bigger than that on our old flatbed (not designed for scanning in negatives) scanner, with mixed results. Most of the negs in the batch were 35mm, but the 120 sized negatives just wouldn’t scan in worth a crap.

So I set them aside, and forgot about them, even after I got the Epson V500, because I was too busy scanning in all of my medium format negatives that had piled up by that time.

But what better to try contact printing with, especially when using 50+ year old paper and equipment, but negatives from that same time period?

Because the Velite paper had been warped by time and the elements, the edges of the paper didn’t print well in most cases, leading to a sort of reverse vignetting. I think it’s appropriate.

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This past week, I did a bunch of C-41 processing with my weird, but still usable, Unicolor chems. When I had developed all of my C-41 films, I got out my little stash of odd color films that needed to be developed. I had two rolls of Kodacolor-X, Kodak’s earlier color negative film which was popular in the 60s and 70s. Kodacolor-X is supposed to be developed using a process known as C-22. From what I understand, C-22 is different from C-41 primarily in the temperature it needs to be developed. C-41 films are designed to be developed at around 104 degrees F. C-22 should be developed in colder temps, around 70 degrees F, I think. There’s also different chemical components and what not. It’s technical, so I just kind of skim over those bits.

I have developed Kodacolor X in cold C-41 chems before, somewhat successfully.

According to my Flickr notes, when I did this before, “I used room temp C-41 chems instead, and gave it about an 18 minute development time and 8 minutes in the Blix.” My main problem from doing this was that I didn’t agitate the tank enough – I guess I was afraid I’d shake off the emulsion? – and I got a big spooge streak along one side of the film. You can read more about that developing session here, if you’re interested.

Since that time, I’ve had Moominsean’s E-2 developing post bookmarked and keep meaning to try his method for E-2 processing, but I haven’t gotten around to shooting or finding any E-2 film since reading it. When I went back to it recently, I saw he had updated his post to include a few pictures from Kodacolor-X film that were processed in the same manner.

So, it was time for me to experiment! I had the two rolls of Kodacolor-X, like I said, but I also had two rolls of the dreaded, unholy Triple Print film. Triple Print is a major pain in the ass to deal with. I’ve had a small amount of success with it when I developed it as a black and white film…

…but I’ve also had my share of FAIL. So, not really expecting much results, if any, I plunged forward.

The first thing I tried, with the thought that in E-6 and Kodachrome developing, a black and white developer is applied first, was to develop a roll of the Kodacolor-X in HC110b and then cold C-41 chems. I know, I wasn’t developing a slide film. This did not deter me. So, I loaded up the mystery roll of 620 Kodacolor X and did the following:

1. Presoak in 64 degree water for 10 minutes.
2. HC110b for 10 minutes at 72 degrees.
3. Rinse.
4. Color Chems for 20 minutes at 70 degrees.
5. Blix for 8 minutes.
6. Wash for 3 minutes.
7. Stabilizer for 1 minute.

And, the results?

Ermm… Hey! I shot this photo! What the hell? This wasn’t found film at all! Apparently, in the fall of 2008 I loaded up some mystery camera with long ago expired Kodacolor-X 620 film. I have no idea what camera I used, and I have no recollection of shooting with the Kodacolor-X on purpose. Weird.

But, about the actual results?

Not too great, I’m afraid. The negatives are in pretty good shape, no fog or anything, but the images are very faint – which makes sense, considering I was shooting on color film that was probably around 35 years old. Any residual color on the images most likely comes from the fact that I scanned this in as a color print, and the scanner had to search like hell to get any image at all. I think these pictures came out sans color, sadly.

Allrighty then. Let’s try something else. My other roll of Kodacolor-X was a roll of 127 that was delivered to me inside a Brownie Fiesta given to Travis (he has the people at his work looking out for old junky cameras for me!). Loaded that roll inside the tank and processed it in the following manner:

1. 10 minute presoak in room temperature water.
2. Color chems for 20 minutes at 72 degrees.
3. Rinse.
4. HC110b for 10 minutes at 73 degrees.
5. Blix for 8 minutes at 70 degrees.
6. Wash for 3 minutes.
7. Stablizer for 1 minute.

This is more or less Moominsean’s E-2 procedure, except I subbed out the Diafine for HC110b and omitted the black and white fixer (my guess was that the Blix would work just as well). And the results?

Well, okay. That looks like color, and it’s actually a decently sharp image. I don’t really have any idea of what I’m looking at, but that’s okay.

The roll in the Fiesta was only partially shot, and I shot the last few pictures on the roll really quick just to use up the film. So, how did a new picture shot on the same roll of film fare against a picture that had been ingrained in the film for decades?

Ah. Well, at least with this picture we can definitely tell that the film developed in color, although with weird color shifty-color. Bela’s tags are blue and her collar is pink, just like in real life. But this picture seemed to turn out a lot grainier than the one above.

You’ll notice that I cropped the Bela picture. That’s because the top and the bottom of the film had some wickedly discolored streaks. Don’t worry. You’ll be seeing more of those.

For the next go round, I loaded up the roll of Triple Print 620 film into the tank. This particular film had a band around it with red writing on the label. I’ve been told that’s significant – apparently the red label Triple Print is easier to develop than the black label (which, unfortunately, was the label around the other roll of TP I had). Since I had some sort of success with the 127 Kodacolor-X film, I repeated the above steps for the red label Triple Print.

And the results?

That’s an unaltered, inverted scan of one of the negatives. Let adjust the levels a little bit, shall we?

Holy orange banding, Batman! What the heck is up with that? It’s not just on that frame, either, it runs the entire length of the film. So, is it fog? Some weird side effect from putting the film onto plastic reels with the big friendly tabs on them? No clue.

But if you get past the fog, you can see that, yes, actually, I did manage to get a color image from the Triple Print!

Look at the kid’s pants. Definitely red. Hair: brown. Sky: blue. It’s all coming together! This kid is so happy about it, he’s going plaid.

For the fourth roll, a roll of 127 sized Triple Print with the doomed black band, I decided to not even try to get a color image. Instead, I just omitted the color chems altogether. And the results?

Yep. Nothing.

I was curious, though, what the effect would be to develop a film in black and white chems and use Blix as the fix, instead of using a black and white fixer. I mean, I already have the Blix mixed up. Might as well use it.

I had a roll of film I shot a few weeks ago that had been respooled, but not exactly labeled, by me. I had no idea what type of film was in there. I figured that was a good candidate as any to try out the Blix as fixer theory. So I went ahead and developed the film in black and white chems, gave it a quick rinse (no stop bath), and then fixed with the Blix.

And the result?

Mmm! Grain-tacular!

True, it turns out the mystery film was some old-ass Kodak Vericolor IIIs that expired in July 1993. So, all things considered, this isn’t a bad result for 17 year old film developed in the wrong chems.

Scanning the images in as a color negative gave me some fun tones:

Ending thoughts?
1. I don’t think adding the HC110b in with the cold C41 chems necessarily helps when developing C22 films. I think I had better color results leaving it out.

2. The HC110b may be beneficial when recovering images from Triple Print films, however. I’d have to develop two of the same types of TP back to back, one using the HC110b and one without and see if I could still get color from them.

3. Triple Print sucks ass in general.

4. I still need to try developing a black and white film using black and white developer and Blix as a fixer, just to see what happens.

5. Did I mention that Triple Print sucks ass?

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I am ridiculously excited. I am all, WTF? OMG! LOL! Yes, that’s exactly how I am because as of last night, I get it. I finally get it. I finally understand why there are some people who absolutely love darkroom work, who love the time and energy and attention to detail it takes to produce a photographic print.

Not saying I’m anywhere near doing that (or will ever be able to do that – my attention span is short, and I’m normally, “Dust specks? Splotches? Yeah, whatever.”), but I was rocking the contact printer last night.

Remember this?

I busted it out last night because when I went to Columbus Camera Group to buy Zarl, I also got a bunch of other stuff. Most of it is film I haven’t even started to go through yet, but one thing was a packet of photo paper developer chems. They had some old packs of Dektol there, which is what I was looking for to use with the paper that came in the Hobby Outfit, but when I was checking out, the people there were all, “don’t you want some fresh chemistry instead?” and swapped the Dektol out with a pack of Clayton photo paper developer. Since I don’t know what hell I’m doing, it was fine with me.

I wanted to use the cute minty green contact printer that came with the Hobby Outfit, primarily because the Velite paper was supposed to be illuminated with a 60 watt bulb, and my other contact printer can’t handle wattage that high. However, the Hobby Outfit’s glass was broken. Sadness!

We fixed the glass problem by cutting an appropriate sized piece from a sheet of Optix Acrylic, which is glass-esque, but not actually glass. We got it last time we were at Lowes. I think it was about $7 for something like a 2′x3′ sheet of it, so if you need any replacement glass stuff that can be cut without proper tools, give this stuff a try.

I got the contact printer and the adorable Kodak trays set up on the counter, mixed up my Clayton chems, and got everything ready to go. And then, even though the Velite box says “Normal room illumination,” I turned off the kitchen lights (I have a lot of ambient light coming through a big cut-out in the wall to the living room) and cracked open the 60ish year old box of Velite photo paper.

There was definitely paper in there, tiny, tiny sheets of paper (2.5″ x 3.5″). I guessed there were maybe 25 sheets left, but I developed that many last night, and still have a small stack left to go, so I seriously underestimated the number. The papers were warped, and looked as if they had been subject to both severe damp and humidity, but there wasn’t any mold growing on them, so I figured I was good to do.

The first picture I tried to print was the ortho negative of Domo. I had the contact light on for the suggested 5 seconds, and then threw the paper into the developer. After a few moments, I realized two things:

1. The Velite paper was still quite active.
2. A 5 second illumination with a 60 watt bulb is way too high for ortho film (the Arista film has a much thinner base than typical black and white films, which is what led to the problem).

Anyway, my first attempt came out almost entirely black. But who cares! The paper still worked! Hooray!

Undaunted, I tried again.

And that, my friends, is what a contact print made with a negative shot using a 60ish year old camera on a contact printer that looks and feels like a metal lunchbox, and put onto a 60ish year old sheet of Kodak Velite photo paper looks like. Is that not freaking awesome?

So then I went nuts. I dug through my shot negatives and started going to town doing contact prints. Some stuff came out. Some didn’t. Some almost did. But the cool thing was, since I was developing everything in regular (if a little dim) light, I could see what was going on with the developing process. If I overexposed a print and it started turning dark too quickly in the developer, I could yank it and throw it into the stop bath. If something seemed like it wasn’t developing at all, I could give it extra time in the developer. Which is what I wound up doing with this picture:

This was an image from an old negative I got in an ebay lot a few years ago. The negative was extremely sharp, black and white, and I had no idea why it wasn’t developing. So I got pissed off and just let it sit in the developer for probably about 6 minutes to see what would happen. It’s not the greatest print, of course, but the point is I was able to see what I was doing and learn how to adapt based on conditions.

Which leads me to – why the hell isn’t Velite paper made anymore? Because this stuff is the shit. I don’t understand it – it’s such a fun product, and it makes an absolutely fantastic introduction into making photo prints. It was so nice to be able to do everything by room light, but I think it will also give me more confidence the next time I try developing prints by safelight. So, if anyone ever sees any old boxes of Velite paper anywhere for sale, buy them. And if you don’t want to use them yourselves, let me know, and I will buy them off of you (within reason, of course!).

And another thing – since I’ve started doing a little bit of research on vintage photo paper online, it seems that whenever anyone asks the question, “Hey, I came across an old box of photo paper that expired [however many years ago]. Can I still use it?” that there’s some asshole who invariably replies, “No, it’ll be all fogged, you might as well throw it away.” My response to those people are, “You must lead a fabulously empty and bitter life. Eat a bag of dicks.” The appropriate response to the original question (“Can I still use the photo paper?”) is “Who knows?! Maybe! Try it and find out!”

Not counting the time to set up equipment, it seriously takes about 5 minutes to expose a contact print and develop it. Now, why would you not give it 5 minutes and see if it’s still viable? Is it going to print exactly like brand new photo paper? Probably not. Is it going to have its own personality and might just be perfect for certain types of photos? Maybe! It’s just like shooting with expired film, except with even less risk, because you already have an original negative – you’re not shooting a new picture and then worrying about if the film will develop okay.

I don’t know. I just think the Velite paper is fabulous, and the more prints I make with it, the more I realize how I could improve my darkroom (which is actually my bathroom) set up to actually make printing safelight prints enjoyable. I think the addition of a couple of folding tables and an extension cord might do the trick. For right now, though, I’m going back to burning up the pack of Velite paper. I’ll be sad when it’s all gone, but I feel like I’m learning so much from actually making the prints. Exciting!

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I swear, I didn’t intend for this to happen. I didn’t intend to go to Columbus Camera Group (the best camera shop I’ve ever been into – seriously, if you’re anywhere in a 3-4 hour radius of Columbus and are into film cameras, it’s completely worth the drive to visit) and walk out with a large format camera. However, being married to an enabler (“Don’t you want to look at the 4×5 cameras here? Are you sure you don’t want to get one now?”), I wound up walking out the door with Zarl.

Zarl is an old Speed Graphic camera that shoots 4×5 film. For some reason, there are two stickers on him that say “Zarl,” so that’s what I’ve started calling it. Anyway, Zarl is completely functional, and wound up costing me $75, which is the second most expensive old camera I’ve ever bought (the most expensive was the Rolliecord, which I never liked using, and wound up selling a few months after buying it).

I’ve wanted a proper (read: not made out of foamcore) large format camera for a while. The problem was, I didn’t know anything about them. I didn’t know how they worked. I didn’t know what I should be looking for in one. I was nervous about buying one off ebay, because although I have no problem buying small lots of film or old crappy cameras on there, I’m not too keen about spending a hundred dollars or more on an old piece of machinery I haven’t been able to handle in person.

And it’s not like I needed a great camera. I’m not a professional photographer, I just think taking and developing photos is neat. I know nothing about quality of lenses or anything like that. So, when I was at CCG, after being prodded by Travis to look at the large format cameras they have there, I explained that what I wanted was something functional that I could learn on. A starter 4×5 camera. And they showed me Zarl.

Zarl is a Speed Graphic camera made by the Graflex corporation, which basically rocked the large-format press cameras for about 4 decades. There’s a ton of information about Graflex cameras here. The model that I have, a Speed Graphic, is a little different from the rest of the cameras in the Graflex stable.

For one thing, it’s considerably heavier than other Graflex models. It weighs in at over five pounds, sans film holder. That’s heavy, especially if you are, like me, someone with pretty much no muscle mass whatsoever. You see footage of old school newspaper men taking handheld pictures with their Graflexes, and let me tell you, those guys were in a lot better shape than I am. I have to use a tripod with this camera. A sturdy tripod.

The main difference, though, is that the Speed Graphic doesn’t just have a shutter on its lens, it also has what is called an internal focal-plane curtain shutter. What the heck is that, you may ask? Well, it’s a big honking shutter in the back of the camera near the film holder that can shoot at speeds of up to 1/1000 of a second. The shutter on the lens, on the other hand, can only shoot at 1/100 of a second. The fast speed of the curtain shutter gives the Speed Graphic its name.

The curtain shutter is what gives the Speed Graphic its extra weight, too. I’ve read a couple of articles talking about the curtain shutter as being an optional feature to the camera, which it is, but I’ve already found it useful – The picture taken below was shot in bright sunlight using a pretty wide open aperture on 100 speed film. Normally, I’d have to close the aperture to something like f16, which would give me wider depth of field, but I wanted the DOF to be pretty shallow. So I used an aperture of f3.5, and a shutter speed of 1/1000.

That picture was shot with the Domo just inches away from the lens. Which is awesome, because that means I can take macro pictures with this big-ass camera. I love shooting macro pics!

Because the Speed Graphic has an internal shutter, this means I can use something called barrel lenses on the camera. Most large format lenses include not only the actual lens, but a shutter element as well. These LF lenses tend to be crazy expensive, costing anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Which is unfortunate for me, because while I enjoy the macro shooting ability of the 75mm lens Zarl came with, it turns out that a 75mm lens on a 4×5 camera is massively wide angle, and when the camera is shooting focused on infinity, doesn’t come close to covering a sheet of 4×5 film.

It makes a perfect, charming, vignetted circle on the film (my scanner can’t scan in the width of 4×5 sheet film – it cuts off the top and bottom. But trust me, it’s a perfect circle). I actually quite liked it in this shot:

It kind of looks like something from a Beastie Boys video!

So, as good as the 75mm lens is at macro photography, I’m going to need to get another lens for it. Anything in the 135mm to 200mm range should do. I don’t particularly want to spend the money on a new lens, which brings me back to the barrel lenses – barrel lenses are just that: lenses. They don’t feature a shutter element, and some of them don’t even have an adjustable aperture element (I guess those were just mainly for portrait photography). They tend to be less expensive than other large format lenses, apparently because a lot of LF cameras can’t use them, due to the lack of the shutter. However, since the Speed Graphic has an internal shutter, the barrel lenses are an alternate option for me. Now I just need to find one…

Actually shooting a picture with this camera is kind of a crazy process. It’s definitely the most challenging camera I’ve worked with before. When I was reading about the Speed Graphics I read on one of the pages a quote that went something like, “This is a camera that will increase your skill as a photographer every time you use it.” I like that.

So, here’s what I have to do when I want to shoot a picture with Zarl:

1. Haul camera, tripod, and loaded film sheet holder to whatever I’m wanting to take a picture of.

2. Set up tripod, place camera on tripod, try desperately not to knock the whole shebang over.

3. Open up camera. In my particular case, the one massive flaw that Zarl has is that the button that pops open the camera has disappeared. So, I’ve taken to jamming the little metal spoke that controls that mechanism with the metal tip of my shutter release cable. That seems to work out okay.

4. Remember to drop the camera bed. I have to do this with the lens I currently have on Zarl, otherwise, the camera bed shows up in the bottom of the picture. The picture of the van, above? The scanner cropped that out, but the very bottom of it has the camera bed in it.

5. Open up the viewfinder hood and see if there’s any light coming through the ground glass. In order to focus, I have to make sure that both shutters on the Speed Graphic are open. That means that both the curtain shutter and the lens shutter are set to the T setting (Timer) and clicked open. The lens aperture also needs to be set to pretty wide open in order to get enough light to see the image correctly.

6. Compose and focus the image. Upside down. Because here’s what it looks like through the ground glass:

7. Adjust the aperture to where you’re actually going to shoot with.

8a. If shooting with the lens shutter, click the timer button again to close the shutter, and then set the shutter to whatever speed you’re going to shoot with, or…

8b. If shooting with the curtain shutter, click the curtain shutter button to close the curtain shutter, and then set the shutter to whatever speed you’re going to shoot with.

9. Say a quick prayer to whatever deity you choose, and then shove the sheet film holder into the back of the camera. This is seriously the hardest part – the Speed Graphic has a spring back, which means that the possibility of the camera moving when you do this is high, even if the camera is on a tripod. If you jostle the camera, especially on a close-up shot, you have to remove the film holder (because you can’t see an image through the ground glass with the film holder in place) and go back to step 5. The picture of Domo above is slightly out of focus because I jostled the camera a little bit when putting the film holder inside. I’ve gotten a little bit better about trying to hold the spring back open and carefully placing the holder inside, but it’s still pretty tricky.

10. Remember to move the dark slide out of the film holder before taking the picture.

11. Finally, you’re ready to take the picture. Say cheese!

I know that made it seem really complicated, but the truth of the matter is that I’ve shot about 10 pictures with Zarl and it already feels intuitive. It’s just like using an unfamiliar sewing machine – it can seem really scary and intimidating at first, and then after a few minutes it all seems to make sense.

I’m thrilled with this camera. It’s not in the best cosmetic shape, it’s currently outfitted with this wacky periscope lens, and it has ZARL stickers on it, but it works. It’s a heck of a lot easier for me to learn about large format photography when I actually have an LF camera in front of me.

And the image quality! My god! It’s amazing! I guess a lot of LF photographers focus while using a loupe against the ground glass, but I’ve just been winging it. So, when I blow the photos up to their maximum size in Photoshop, I can see that things are slightly out of focus, but no so much it matters. For example, I’ve been scanning in my negatives at 3200 dpi. The picture of the van, above? Here’s a detail from it:

And that’s probably a bad example, since the picture was slightly out of focus, but you get the idea. There’s almost no grain at all.

I’ve just shot with black and white film so far, but the grays are so smooth, and the amount of detail is insane. When I blew this picture up, I could see individual little flecks of dust on the car (and no, it wasn’t because my neg was dirty!).

Most of the film I’ve used in Zarl so far has been expired 4×5 Kodak Tmax 100. However, I had a film holder loaded with some of the Arista Ortho Lith film in it, so I tried shooting a few pictures of the Domo with that as an experiment. Ortho Lith film is something that I’ve just started using, so I’m not totally comfortable with it yet. It’s film that acts like it is photo paper. It’s very slow. So, where I used an aperture of f3.5 and a shutter speed of 1/1000 with the Tmax, I used the same aperture but a shutter speed of 1/25 with the ortho lith film.

Ortho lith film can be developed in black and white paper developing chems. Or, you can develop it in special ortho lith developer (sometimes referred to as A+B developer) and get a solely black and white image, devoid of gray tones. I have some of the A+B developer, but haven’t tried using it yet. I have been developing my ortho lith film in black and white paper developer, but when I tried developing one of the Domo shots the other night, it came out clear, which probably means my paper developer puked on me and I need to mix up a new batch.

Because I’m lazy, instead of doing that, I dropped the other Domo 4×5 ortho lith picture in the HC110b (which is for developing film) to see what would happen. Well, guess what – it developed the ortho lith film just fine.

You can see the tones are slightly different than the picture shot on Tmax. In real life, Domo is brown, and has a bright red mouth. The ortho lith film reads the red as black, making his mouth very dark, and his body darker than the Tmax photo. I actually like the way ortho Domo came out better than the way Tmax Domo did.

The ortho lith experiment has opened up a few doors for me, because a box of 50 sheets of ortho lith film from Freestyle cost $17, as opposed to a box of 50 sheets of 4×5 Tmax 100, which costs $65. I may not be able to sub in ortho lith film for everything I’d shoot using regular black and white (mainly because I think that skies will probably be washed out with the ortho lith film), but I can use it for a lot of other subjects.

Oh, HC110b, is there anything you can’t do?

I still have a ton of stuff to write about with the big C41 developing bonanza of this week, so I’ll try to get to those things in the next few days.

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Sometimes the reason found film was never developed is easy to determine – the camera the film was shot with had been malfunctioning.

This has happened to me more than once. For instance, I once bought a lot off ebay for an Ansco Ready-Flash that came with 5 rolls of exposed film. The camera’s shutter didn’t work, and of the 5 rolls, only one roll turned out to have clear images on it.

Yesterday I developed the two rolls of 127 film that came with the Kodak De Luxe Photo Outfit I got a few weeks ago. I’m not sure what type of camera was used to take the pictures, but it was something I haven’t come across before – instead of having 12 square images on the roll of film, it had 16 smaller images, with a frame of unshot film around each. My Falcon Mini takes 16 rectangular images per roll of 127 film, but the image stretches across the film, and normally 2 frames wind up overlapping.

Whatever the camera was, judging by the pictures of the rolls, the shutter had been malfunctioning. Most of the pictures that came out looked like this:

You can see the slight double image on the picture. In fact, it reminded me of what’s been happening on and off with my beloved Hawkeye Funflash (also a 127 camera, although it takes 12 square images per roll), where one of the rolls I developed recently had pictures that look like this:

It’s still fun to develop the film and have it come out successfully, even if the pictures are slightly shaky-cam. That’s better than what happened to me yesterday, when I developed what I thought was a roll of exposed film from an old Kodak Autographic bellows camera, only to find out that for some reason, the film had been loaded backwards, and the roll was actually not exposed at all. ARGH! The thing that was the most disappointing was that the blank film developed beautifully (it was also Kodak Verichrome Pan), with a minimal amount of fog, so if there had been pictures on the roll, I would have gotten great images. So. Frustrating.

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Did a batch of C41 developing this weekend and I still feel completely knackered from it. So… much… standing… My ankles still ache. But it was a good batch of film, and I tried out some different things, and as a result, have a ton of photography stuff to write about. Instead of trying to cover everything in one epic post, I’ll try to narrow it down to one topic per post for the next little while.

Before I go into redscale, I feel like I should talk about my chems, first. Some time last year I ordered a Unicolor C-41 kit from Freestyle. I had been using the Arista liquid C41 kits that they sell, but since the Unicolor was cheaper, I wanted to try that out, too. I bought the 2 liter kit and decided to divide it into 3 batches of 666 ml – that amount was enough to fill my small tank and have a little extra, to account for chem loss during the developing marathons I normally do. So, last year, I mixed up and used two of the three batches of chems, and then promptly forgot about the third batch. I had some more liquid chems from the Arista kit, so I used those last time I developed film, and didn’t realize I had the third batch of Unicolor powder chems left over until I went scrounging around in my developing stuff a few days ago.

Like I mentioned in the last post, I took the box out of the plastic bag it was wrapped in and immediately smelled ammonia. I figured that probably wasn’t a real good sign. However, the Unicolor powder chems were the last C41 chems I had in the house, so I decided to mix them up and see if they still worked. If not, I’d just develop black and white film instead.

Amazingly, the chems seemed to work just fine. They scared the crap out of me – I made sure to wear gloves and my respirator when I was mixing them just in case – but I have no complaints about their viability. The developer powder looked like sawdust, which I distinctly remember it not looking like when the chems were fresh, and the two Blix powders had somehow absorbed enough moisture to make them into bricks instead of powders. However, everything dissolved just fine when I swirled it around in water. So, I have to say, two thumbs up on the Unicolor chems. I’ll probably just be dealing with powdered C41 chems in the future. They’re cheaper, and seem to handle less than ideal storage conditions with aplomb.

Anyway, redscale! If you’ve never heard of it before, redscale is the technique of shooting pictures on the wrong (non-emulsion) side of the film. It gives the resulting images a reddish/orange cast. It’s something that all the cool LOMO kids think is nifty.

I’ve admired some redscale pics I’ve seen on Flickr before, but the one time I experimented with it, I wasn’t real impressed. However, I was using the redscale film in a light leaky 35mm pinhole camera, so that may have had something to do with my meh-ness.

Since I’ve accumulated a gaggle of 35mm film and really don’t find myself shooting 35mm all that often, before I went to New York, I respooled some of it onto 120 backing paper to shoot in the Yashica C and the Savoy. I flipped some of the film backwards to be used as redscale, and shot a roll of it by Union Square and Bryant Park using the Savoy.

So, okay. Redscale. Yep. It’s red. The above pic shows how it looks with a minimum of Photoshopping. And it’s okay, but still didn’t make me be all ‘yay!’ about it.

However, I found if I kicked the saturation down a few notches, I liked it better.

I shot a picture looking straight up at the sun, too, and had the sky come out orange rather than red.

I took one of the pictures and sexed it up a little in Photoshop.

Redscale still isn’t something I think I’ll be doing a lot of, but it’s kind of a fun way to use up random boring rolls of film. I think the next time I shoot with it, I’ll use the Yashica and and a slower than normal shutter speed to see if I can get more natural contrast, or maybe try using 400 speed film in the Savoy instead (all of these pictures were taken with 200 speed Fuji). I also haven’t tried shooting redscale film with slide film, so that may be something interesting to play with.

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