Craft! Bang! Boom!

In case you’ve been worried that I’ve been spending any profits from the shop on gummi bears and crack cocaine, fear not! I’ve really been spending it on things like this:

That’s right. I bought Travis a rocket launcher.

No! I kid! Really, that’s just one tube that came in this set:

You see, I was on ebay last week, and ran across an auction for a Beseler color developing unit. It has a motorized base and three tubes, and is designed for (I think) developing color photo paper. Color paper, unlike black and white, has to be handled in complete darkness, so you can’t really develop it in trays with a red safelight like black and white paper.

I have color paper and chems, and attempting to make color enlargements is definitely on my list of things to do, but I’m not too keen on being cooped up in my stuffy bathroom darkroom in the middle of summer (we don’t have central air, so it gets hot in there). However, I saw potential in the tubes for stuff other than color paper, and wound up winning the auction. Yay!

What I didn’t fully realize was how incredibly big the tubes are. They’re designed for color paper, sure – poster sized color paper. The biggest tube is over 2 feet tall. It’s potato cannon big.

The inside of the tubes, too, aren’t just a smooth cylinder. There’s a ridge to, I think, keep your paper from overlapping onto itself, and then there’s also a trough that your chems flow into. It’s pretty cool. The lot didn’t come with an instruction booklet, but it all seems pretty self-explanatory.

So, since I’m not going to be developing any color paper in the immediate future (watch, I’ll probably do some next week), I decided to try the Beseler system out with film. I had spent all day on Monday developing film with C-41 chems, so I had the chems all mixed up and ready to go, and they had had the night to come down to room temperature, which was about 72 degrees. Perfect for trying to develop C-22 film!

(As a refresher – C-22 is the process older Kodak color films were developed with. If you see a roll of Kodacolor-X, it probably dates from the mid-60s to early-70s, and is process C-22. In the mid 70s, Kodak switched over to the C-41 process, which involved different chems and, most importantly, a hotter developing temp – around 102, if you’re doing it right, or, if you’re like me and not really giving a crap, 108 degrees Fahrenheit. C-22 needs to be developed in colder temps, around, roughly, 70-75 degrees F. I can tell you from personal experience that if you put C-22 film in 80 degree chems, the emulsion just floats right off. That is bad. Also, I’m not the definitive resource on C-22, but in a few minutes of googling, I couldn’t find the tech pubs for C-22, so I’m just winging my facts here – think of it as truthiness!)

ANYWAY! I had a boatload of process C-22 film laying around, most of which came from that last camera auction we went to. We acquired, quite by accident, a bunch of rolls of 620, 127, 126, and other random film that was exposed… or, in most cases, partially exposed. By this I mean the photographer snapped a few pictures on a roll of film, and then, for some weird reason, just extracted the roll of film from the camera without advancing the film. It’s entirely bizarre – he’d just take out the two spools from the camera with the middle of the film exposed to light. Why, I have no idea. So, most of these rolls of film only had 1 or 2 pictures on them, if you could get any results at all considering the massive amounts of light the film had been exposed to.

And that gets to something very frustrating about trying to develop found C-22 film (or any color film that’s not C41) – the processing times are so long, since you’re working at a lot colder temps, that when you’re done, even if the film developed, if you only get one crappy picture that develops, it can be a little bit of a bummer. For example: “I just wasted 40 minutes of my life to get one blurry picture of someone’s garden!” This has happened to me.

But that brings me to the beauty of the Beseler system! It rolls! By itself! All you have to do is load the film inside of it, pour the chems in, start a timer, and walk away. And it happily does its thing for twenty minutes while you can go play Yahtzee or knit or watch Deadliest Catch! You don’t have to stand next to the tank, watching the timer and agitating it every 30 seconds. This thing rocks!

The only problem was, the Beseler system is designed for photo paper. Or sheet film. Large, flat, bendy things, not so much reels of film. That turned out to actually not be a problem at all, because the Paterson tank with the non-leaky lid…

…worked just fine.

So, with the mechanics of the developing system worked out, how well did it actually perform? Pretty damn well, as it turned out. Keeping in mind the fact that most of the film we were developing was only partially shot and had at least a few frame’s worth of exposure to light, and also the fact that I had developed about 25 rolls of film in 1000 ml of color chems the day before, I was amazed when I saw the results.

This is, by far, the best result I’ve ever had developing C-22 film in C-41 chems. I adjusted the levels slightly from the original scan, but didn’t mess with it too much, because I liked the yellow cast.

Here’s another scan, this one from a roll of 127 film. This is a little more grainy, but still cool:

These were both developed using the Paterson tank on the Beseler base. The tank I used will fit 3 reels inside set at 35mm width (or two 120s or 127s). I filled the tank up with what I thought was 500ml of fluid, until Travis pointed out to me that I had actually been filling my measuring cup up to the wrong line, and had actually been using about 300 ml of chems.

Let that sink in for a moment. I can fill this tank up with film – 4 rolls of 120 (taped together, 2 to a spool), or 3 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm film, and develop that film using 700 ml *less* fluid than I do with normal hand tank agitation. I had mixed up 1000 ml of chems because that’s what it takes to fill up the tank, but because the tank is laying on its side and is constantly dipping the film in and out of the chems, I can use much less with the Beseler motor base. Since I am a fiend and shoot a ton of film, and develop it all myself, this will wind up saving me a ton of money in buying chems.

So, in short, I developed the C-22 film in the following manner: with my chems at 72 degrees, I poured 300-350 ml of color developer into the tank, and had it on the Beseler base for 20 minutes. When that was done, I poured in the Blix and had it rotate for 8 minutes. 3 minute wash, followed by a minute in the Stabilizer. Absolutely simple, and it worked every time.

The C-22 was developing without any problem, even if the majority of the film we were developing was unshot. But since we weren’t having to constantly babysit the developing tank, it was all good and not nearly as frustrating as it would have been doing hand tank agitation. With the success of the C-22, I decided it was finally time to give E-4 processing a try.

(And here’s another refresher, this time with more factiness to it than the C-22 one – I was able to find the E-4 data on the intertubes! With the exception of Kodachrome, Kodak’s color slide film – different versions of Ektachrome – were developed with various methods of the “E” process. The ones I’ve heard of before are E2, E3, E4, and E6, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an original E and an E5 in there somewhere. Ektachrome films from the 60s tend to be process E2, Ektachrome films from post 1976 tend to be process E6, which is the current chemistry for developing slide film, but there was a brief period of time where Kodak produced films that were process E4. E6 process temps are similar to C41 – you want to shoot for around 105 degrees – but E4 was processed at 80 degrees. According to Wiki, E4 processing involved the really scary chemical Tertiary Butyl-Amine Borane, which apparently wants to kill you. Kodak came out with the E6 process in 1976, which doesn’t want to kill you quite as much, but for some reason, was legally obligated to keep producing some sort of film and chemicals that used the E4 process for 30 years. As far as I know, the only films that Kodak continued to make that used the E4 process were its color infrared slide film, of which I have one roll, and its Photomicography Color Film.)

And, o hai! Look what I have here! It’s a roll of Kodak Photomicography Color Film! What do you know? This was another ebay purchase from a while ago – I bought a lot of this film, probably around 15 rolls, just because it was weird and I had never heard of it before or could find out any info about it. When it came in the mail, I discovered it was E4. My reaction: “Oh, crap!”

Not only was the film E4, but it also expired in December 1985 and was supposed to be cold stored. I had no idea how the film had actually been stored, but it was mine now, so I needed to make the best of it.

We shot a test roll when we were in Georgia using the Canon AE-1. The film box says the film is rated ASA 16 – I think we shot it at ASA 25. We had a few pictures left on the roll so we finished it off the other day, whilst driving aimlessly around Ohio.

I developed the photomicography film using the same exact technique as the C22 film above. And the results?

Awesome!

The negative scans were kind of all over the place, but overall, the tone of the cross processed E4 film seemed to be a cold blue-gray…

…or greenish cast…

…with, depending on the angle of the sun and what direction the camera was pointed, a healthy amount of light leakage from the sprocket holes on the film.

E4, I OWN you! Ha! Anyway, there was nothing weird, or tricky about developing this versus developing the C22 film. It didn’t contaminate the chems, either, as far as I can tell, because we continued to develop C22 film after running the E4 through it and we got the same results.

Since I was on a roll, I threw in probably the weirdest shot film I had laying around in the developing tank, too – a roll of 35mm Anscochrome that probably expired in the mid-50s. Yes. This film:

We shot this in Georgia, too. It was a roll of 12 exposures, and we probably rated it at ASA 25, as well. I honestly didn’t expect to get any results from this. As far as I know, Anscochrome was some sort of magic process similar to Kodachrome, but now even more obscure. Also, did I mention the film was probably between 50-60 years old?

The negatives were a bright teal color, but I thought I could make out a faint… something on them. Scanning revealed a bright green image, and subsequent adjustment of levels brought us to this:

I know. We’re not talking any great work of art here, but at least you can tell it’s some flowers and some trees and a sky. That counts as a win in my book.

So, to recap – Beseler motorized thingy? Awesome. C22? Doable. E4? WIN! Anscochrome? Not really recommended, but a little bit like Everest. (Why did you climb it? Because it was there.) If you do a lot of color developing and can get your hands on a Beseler or anything similar to it – and heck, it doesn’t even seem like you need the other tubes, as long as you have a longer Paterson tank – buy it! It rocks!

Next up? Trying out the Beseler system with E6 chems. I have a boatload of 4×5 slide film I need to develop. I’m excited! Woo!

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Travis bought me a mint green Savoy Mark II a while ago, a younger sibling to my beloved mint green Savoy. It was loaded up with a roll of Verichrome Pan, so I shot the rest of the pictures on the roll and developed it with Diafine to see what I’d get.

Turns out, I got pictures of a grumpy man, his dog, his shack, and his pipe.

I’m not sure if it’s the distortion on the Savoy Mark II that caused the supreme bendy-ness of the chimney, or if it actually looked like that in real life:

It just cracks me up that this guy, who looks extremely unimpressed with the photographer, had his picture taken with this camera:

Oh, and the pictures I took? Only a few came out, but it’s interesting to see the difference in quality you get when you compare old pictures on old film to new pictures on old film.

Still, though, not too bad.

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Okay, I lied. Haven’t gotten around to doing any more developing this week, have been distracted by things like this:

It turns out that the Kodak Brownie Special Six-16 is the absolutely perfect camera to recover. They came in 620 models, too, so if you see one and want to get crafty, pick it up. The leatherette pieces all peeled off the camera without tearing, so I was able to use them as templates to cut the vinyl.

I even made sure the film advance knob got some action!

I had been planning on sewing the vinyl strap, but I was afraid that my sewing machine would scuff up the white vinyl, so I used some industrial strength velcro on the handle instead.

Except for getting a funky glue spot on the front (which makes a small area of the red vinyl look dull – I’m going to see if I have anything to clean that with today), I’m really happy with it! It’s sparkly! Now I just need to dig out another 616 spool (I have some 116s, but not so many spare 616s) and respool some film.

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I mentioned the ottoman last post. Here it is.

I’m fairly certain that owning this now cements my status as ‘Geekiest Woman in the Neighborhood.’ Not that that was in any doubt.

Even after Travis and I did the big sort of all the auction stuff, I still really don’t have any firm idea of what I bought, mainly because we were each going through different boxes at a time. For instance, I think now we own 3 Graflex SLRs… but I’m not sure? I picked up two more Speed Graphic bodies without lenses… I think? And why? Who knows! Cameras were being sold by the flat, like plants at a nursery. I hope somebody out there likes box cameras, because I wound up with two flats of those. ???!!!

I’m thinking, with the box cameras, if I have any where the covering is in bad shape, I may try to retrofit them with new clothes. I just did this yesterday with a camera I got on the way back from Georgia, a Meteor. I scraped off the leatherette on the camera, and glued on some new sparkly vinyl I picked up at Joan Fabrics. Behold, another unholy alliance between sewing (kind of) and photography!

It kicks ass, if I do say so myself. This camera was a lot easier to recover than the Yashica C, due to the simplicity of the camera design. I’m probably going to wind up selling it, but I took it for a test drive yesterday with a roll of film just to make sure it works (and because it’s so damn fun to use!). I bought a bunch of different vinyl/leathereque pieces of fabric at JoAn’s to try to do more camera hacks with.

Which probably explains why some of the auction cameras wound up coming home with me. I bought some that were just in an absolutely lousy cosmetic condition with the express intent of trying to sex them up. Stay tuned for Extreme! Camera! Makeover!

It was funny, at the auction, because most of the other people there were 1. Male (there was only one other woman bidding on stuff, and I think she only got a few things), and 2. Camera vendors. These are guys that deal in thousand dollar cameras, military cameras, stuff like that. As a result, some people were openly scornful when lots of the Kodak 60s era plastic cameras came up for bid.

But you know what? They can suck it, because I took those damn plastic cameras home with me, and you know what I found?

A 1964 Kodak World’s Fair camera! Ha! I had no idea it was in the flat, and apparently neither did anyone else, because I got the whole box of cameras for $40, and this camera alone went for more than that at the last auction I went to. WIN! Also, I’m a kind of a World’s Fair nerd, so I’m really excited to finally own one of the Kodak World’s Fair cameras. Yay!

Oh, here’s some more weirdness I picked up – I bought a box specifically for one thing that was inside of it (it may have been some film, or books or something), but the box – which was open and had no lid – was almost entirely full of heavy white paper. So when we got to that box when we were sorting stuff, we were both just kind of ‘What?” when we came to it, and almost put it out for the recycling. But then I noticed the edge of one of the pieces of paper was discolored, so I took it outside and sat it in the sun, and what do you know – the paper reacted with the sunlight. Turns out the whole box was filled with photo paper, just paper that was loose and not in any sort of packaging at all.

Fortunately, I know what to do with paper like that. We stuck the box inside a black garbage bag, and the next day I pulled out a sheet and tried making lumen prints with it.

And one of the finished products…

The moral of the story being, that apparently even if photo paper has been exposed to light for an extended period of time, it still may actually work for doing lumen prints. Anyway, I’ve got a ton of it now, and also picked up a nice selection of vintage Kodak photo paper still in its packaging. Some of it was just given to me by a friendly guy at the auction – it was in a box he won, and he wasn’t going to use it. There was a lot of that type of stuff going on, which was pretty neat. Travis traded some mysterious wooden plate holder thingy for a few rolls of film, and also got rid of a slide projector in exchange for… something? I’m not sure what. It’s all a blur.

Oh, and hey! Travis developed his first film today! He developed 4 sheets of film and one roll of Kodacolor-X 620 in Diafine. Everything came out, too, which is kind of amazing, since I know the sheets of film expired in 1969 and the Kodacolor-X is probably circa late 60s or early 70s. Here’s one of the photos of mine that he developed that came out:

We were using some 3×4 Kodak Plus X Pan that we got at the auction. It expired in March 1969. The milkweed picture was shot with the RB Telescopic Graflex SLR, which apparently now has 2 other cameras that are remarkably similar to it in the house. Travis got those – he has, quite overnight, turned into a Graflex SLR junkie.

I did a small bit of developing today, too, and had a colossal WIN. A month or so ago – I may have mentioned it here – I bought a lot of 4 boxes of 4×5 sheet film off of ebay. The film all dated from the 1950s, and two of the boxes were of some mysterious military issued film. Exciting! I didn’t expect much from the film, but went ahead and opened up the oldest pack – Ansco Isopan, Class V Type A that expired in 1952 – and loaded a sheet film holder with it. We took some of the Zarls out a week ago and shot some pictures with them. I used Bonnet Zarl, and the 58 year old film, and took this picture, rating it at 12 ISO, with an aperture of f5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/50.

The film is 58 years old! And it came out that well! I’m still stunned. I’ve had really crappy luck when I shoot old Ansco roll film – my only guess is that someone had the box of film refrigerated for forever. Anyway, I’ve got 23 more sheets of this, and 3 other boxes of 25 sheets each left from the same lot. Yay!

My plan is to try doing some C-41 processing this week, so stay tuned for color filmy goodness.

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So, we hit the second camera auction yesterday. It was a lot more chaotic than the first one we went to a few weeks ago, but also had a lot more of the boxes of crap that are really what I was looking for. We bought an obscene amount of stuff, but now I’ll have plenty of camera goodness to post in the Etsy store for… a very long time, anyway.

Travis loaded stuff up in the car during the auction, so I had no concept, really, of how much we had bought. We came home and started tearing through boxes, and there were plenty of things I had absolutely no memory of getting, or things I found hidden in boxes that I didn’t realize that were in them.

One of those things was a cigar box full of negative sleeves, loaded with negatives, taken with a Minox camera. The negatives are very, very tiny, but still seem to produce a nice, sharp image. I don’t know what the enlarging limits would be on the negatives, but scanned in, they’re not bad.

One of the things we got at the auction was a cooler/ottoman that looks like a 35mm canister of 70s era Kodacolor II film. Yes. An ottoman. I’ll have to try and get a pic of it uploaded. It’s hilarious.

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So, funny story. I was trying out Bonnet Zarl, shooting a few pictures, when I decided to load up a few sheets of film that I had gotten at the auction with that camera – it had come in a case with some filters and film holders and a few miscellaneous things, including an old box of Ansco 4×5 sheet film from circa 1960. I loaded up one of the film holders and took a few pictures of flowers just to see if the film was still viable.

I developed it in Diafine, since the Diafine has been rockin like Dokken in developing old film, and once it came out of the tank, I held it up to the light to reveal this…

Ah. Well, that’s certainly not a picture of a nasturtium. But, hey! Found film! Neat!

There were five sheets of film in the box, and I developed all of them that day. Here’s the guy who apparently carved the gun chunks:

It wasn’t until the last picture that I realized that I had probably just wasted my time. The fact that there wasn’t even a faint image of a nasturtium on the film I had shot over should have been a clue, but I missed it.

This picture wasn’t like the others. It’s background, which scanned in as white, was weirdly blacked out on the negative. At first I thought something had gone wrong during the developing, and the emulsion had started to melt, but on further inspection, it seems like the original photographer had just tried masking out the background to an image only of the gun stock, without any other distractions in the photo. I’m about 99% certain that all of the negatives had already been developed. I had just assumed it was undeveloped film since it was being stored in the film box.

So, I probably wasted a few hours worth of time. But at least I discovered that redeveloping already developed film doesn’t seem to hurt it (at least, not in this particular case). I still feel a little silly, though.

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With all the hubbub over the new cameras (Tank and Bonnet), it’s taken me to today to finally get around to trying out the new lens for Zarl.

The 1/400 shutter speed doesn’t work on it, which I was told is pretty common. That’s not a big deal, since I normally work with slower speed film anyway.

Did I mention I know nothing about lenses? I’m clueless. From what I understand, the new Graphex lens is a basic lens, nothing to write home about, but gets the job done. Apparently, there are much better lenses in the world that cost a lot more money, but heck if I know why. I’m assuming as I shoot more large format pictures, I’ll start to get a handle on what I like to use – whether that has any relation to what the lens is worth is debatable. After all, one of my favorite cameras to use is a distorty plastic 50 year old Savoy.

Anyway, I tried out the Graphex today. Set the camera up, focused on the dog, slid out the darkslide, and snapped the shutter the exact same moment as this:

Yep. That’s my dog! I guess the lens works!

I also tried taking a picture using the Edupe slide film with the new lens. I mainly did that to see if my E6 chems were still good. The photo barely developed, so I guess that means I have to mix up some new chems. Oh well.

I was curious about the lens in Bonnet Zarl, so last night I did some googling, and discovered that the lens the one guy told me was probably worth about $100…

…actually probably is worth $100. If not more. Turns out it’s a Dagor lens, made by C.P. Goerz, and those lenses have a cult following. Apparently, they are the bomb. So, knowing absolutely nothing, I managed to luck into owning something really cool.

I guess what I need to do is take the same picture using the two different lenses (the Dagor and the Graphex) and compare the images. Maybe then I’ll start to figure out what makes a great lens great.

I also took a picture of a fly earlier today. I used the Nikon D40 and cropped to a macro picture, but I thought it was neat anyway.

eta – Here’s what the Edupe pic looked like after I scanned it in and adjusted the levels:

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This is just a wild guess, but I’m thinking this set of found pictures was shot in the aftermath of the Blizzard of 77. I’m not sure exactly what type of car that is (other than a Dodge), but the style of it seems to fit that time period.

These pictures are from the roll of found film I got out of Travis’ Agfa Readyset. The Readyset dates from the 1930s, I think, but obviously the car in this photo is from a much more recent era – so perhaps the Readyset was a well used camera for years? That’s kind of neat. The actual type of film was Kodak Verichrome Pan 620, and as mentioned before, Diafine developed this roll with no problems whatsoever. Diafine loves found film!

It was amusing, though, that Travis instantly bonded with the camera… and then the roll of found film inside was discovered to yield the following pictures:

That’s a railroad snow plow.

And, obviously, railroad tracks somewhere. Travis happens to work for the railroad. “I know where that is,” he said, but after studying the picture and looking at maps, couldn’t remember exactly where it was. He’ll probably run across that location again someday at work, and since he started carrying the Readyset with him, may be able to take a picture of it, 30+ years later.

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This is not a pumpkin.

But we’ll get back to that later.

So, it’s time to introduce you to Ninja Zarl, aka the $95 ‘What the hell was I thinking?!’ auction camera.

It’s a Speed Graphic 4×5 camera, definitely older than Zarl, but I have no idea how old. Maybe 1910s? 1920s? The curtain shutter works like Tank‘s, and even has a similar shutter speed chart on the side, but no date.

I still have no memory of what I was thinking when I bid on this camera, except that there had been a bunch of other Graflexes go for what I thought was crazy inexpensive (although still more than I could pay), and I guess I just wanted one. I knew I didn’t remember looking at it in the preview, but it didn’t matter – regardless of its condition, it wound up going home with me anyway.

In the car on the ride home, I sat it in my lap and tried to examine what exactly I had bought. My main concern was that the lens and shutter were there and working – I seriously bought this camera without even knowing if it had a lens! I am an idiot. But happily, the lens was there, and although a little more complex than what I was used to, seemed to work just fine.

That was a relief! At least, if nothing else, I got a lens out of the deal. Maybe I hadn’t overpaid too badly after all.

Further inspection revealed two serious flaws to the Ninja Zarl (I started calling it Ninja because it’s painted all black). The first, and most serious flaw, is that the bellows was completely shot. It wasn’t just pinprick holes in a few corners, it was more like holes you could almost poke a finger through. Not good. The second flaw, which fell into the ‘irritating, but not fatal’ category, was that the viewing hood that is supposed to surround the ground glass focusing screen in the back had been removed. The ground glass, although hazy, still worked, but without a viewing hood, was difficult to see and focus on without a glare.

The day after the auction Travis and I packed up both Zarl and Ninja Zarl and took them down to the camera show, with the thought that maybe we could get a lensboard for the lens in NZ and use that in Zarl (since the $5 lens’ shutter is iffy and aperture ring is designed for a larger format camera). We wound up talking to a guy who specializes in large format cameras (he’s the one we bought the new lens and lensboard for Zarl from). I told him about how I had bought Ninja Zarl and paid too much for it, and he took a look at the camera.

The lens, he said, was probably worth about $100, which was good to hear, although I partially suspect he was inflating the value some to make me feel better about how much I had spent. But even though NZ had some neat features, replacement bellows were expensive, and so this would probably wind up being a camera that sits on a shelf. And then he turned his attention to Zarl, and went about finding a new lens (not a great lens, but an affordable workhorse lens) and lensboard combo for it.

We got that taken care of and left soon after, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he had said – that Ninja Zarl was destined to become a shelf camera. Every instinct in me rebelled against this. I did not just pay almost $100 for a shelf camera. Oh hell no. I may have some cameras I don’t use very often, but I expect them all to be functional if required. Besides, Ninja Zarl had some neat features on it that Zarl doesn’t have. For example, there’s a little flip up viewfinder on the top that I quite like, even though I’m not sure how to use it (I assume it shows you what the picture looks like with the lens set at infinity, but I’m not sure).

Also, strangely, there’s a magnifying loupe built into the back door of the camera. That’s the brass cylinder thingy sticking out in the picture of Ninja Zarl above. Even the camera guy who sold us a lens said, when he was examining NZ, “I’ve never seen one of these before.” It’s actually pretty cool, though – you just compose your picture, fold down the back door, and then look through the loupe so you can achieve maximum sharpness. You can’t see your entire image, obviously, but if the center of the picture is what you want in focus, you’re in good shape.

Clearly, NZ wasn’t all bad. It certainly deserved a chance to perform before being relegated to a shelf camera (and I don’t have anything against people who put cameras on display, I just don’t have the room in my house to have something as big as a 4×5 camera that doesn’t actually do anything). So, now what?

I had to fix the bellows before the camera was usable. But, after looking around on ebay, the cheapest I could find something that might work was over $50, and most bellows were priced between $75 and $100. I definitely couldn’t justify that cost.

However, what I did have was some leftover black out fabric that I had purchased from Freestyle. I had used it to make a curtain for the darkroom so I could seal out any light that might come in from the doorway.

Unfortunately, after getting the fabric back out, I realized it was too thick and sturdy to be used to protect the bellows. But, it just might be perfect to construct a new viewing hood.

I went to work sewing, and about 15 minutes later, I came up with this:

It’s a removable hood! I slid a wire through one of the channels along the edge of the hood to give it a little bit of structure. The magnifying loupe turned out to make a perfect anchoring point for the hood.

I tried it out yesterday morning. With the sun behind me, it seemed to help at least a little. The photo on the top is looking through the ground glass with the hood; the photo on the bottom is the ground glass without.

So, onto the bellows! My idea to repair that was to just leave the original bellows in place, but to make a sort of light tight bellows cozy to fit around the existing bellows. You think I can write the word “bellows” any more? Bellows bellows bellows. It’s starting to look weird to me.

Anyway, the blackout fabric was too stiff to be able to expand and contract easily (since I have to slide the front of the camera back and forth to focus). Serendipitously, this past weekend, I also wound up buying a brand new (used) film changing bag. It’s gigantic, which will let me easily load and unload sheet film on the fly. My old bag, won in an ebay auction for $1, worked fine, but was just too small to handle working with 4×5 sheet film comfortably. Since the changing bags are made of two layers of thin, light tight black nylon, it seemed like the perfect fabric to use for the bellows cozy.

I cut off the end with the zippers, cut off the sleeves, and then trimmed the fabric down to where it would cover the bellows when fully extended, plus a couple of inches. I put some velcro squares on the short ends, and then sewed a piece of stretchy brown ribbon to the longer ends (if you’re making something like this, be sure to stretch out the elastic as you sew it, to make the fabric get all bunchy). It only took a few minutes to do. I removed the front of the camera off the rails, wrapped the cozy around it, and then slid the camera back on. What I got was this:

After it was in place, I popped off the lensboard and held the camera up to the light, looking to see if I could see any light passing through it. Everything turned out looking fine and light-free. Yay!

So, here’s the revamped Ninja Zarl:

There’s only two issues with the camera now, both of them minor. The bulk of fabric with the bellows cozy (since I made it to extend the length of the bellows) means I can’t close the camera with the bellows in place. That’s kind of a pain in the butt, but it’s not too difficult to remove the cozy. I’m just lazy. The second is that the way the cozy flares out around the face of NZ makes it look like the camera is wearing a Victorian mourning bonnet or something. It’s a little undignified, and I seem to have renamed Ninja Zarl ‘Bonnet Zarl.’ Which isn’t anywhere near as bad-ass as Ninja Zarl.

Yesterday morning I took Bonnet Zarl out for a test drive, since I couldn’t be positive that the bellows cozy worked until I actually shot with the camera. And that brings us to the pumpkin at the top of the post. It’s not a pumpkin. It’s a detail from this picture, the first one I shot with BZ:

It’s actually a clematis! Here’s the obligatory van shot:

And a detail from the above at 100%:

I used the magnifying loupe on the back of the camera to aid in focusing. That thing is handy!

So, anyway, now I have a working camera, not a shelf camera, and I’m no longer freaked out about having spent that much money buying a broken camera, since I was able to fix it for free. Yay! Behold the mighty power of sewing! I’m just lucky the shutter works – I’m very good at taking apart shutters, but I have yet to successfully put one back together.

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