Monday, November 07, 2011

Derby Disappointment

Not all projects work out as hoped.







I shot a roll of film in my Foth Derby at the Day of the Dead parade. All the images were misframed and a large portion of the negative strip was black. I believe the problem lies in my efforts to use 35mm film strips rolled up in 127 backing paper. The process worked ok the first time I tried it, but the last two attempts have been failures. My guess is that the film is buckling and interfering with the movement of the camera's cloth focal plane shutter.



One company, Efke, still makes 127 roll film, but the price is now close to $10, and I'm not willing to lay out that kind of money even though I'm very fond of my little Foth Derby. If I can figure out how to properly roll up some 35mm film inside the 127 backing paper I have saved, I can shoot a roll for a couple bucks. I'll check around the net to see if there are any good hints available on using 35mm film with 127 backing. I may also break down and buy one more roll of Efke just to make sure that there is not some other source to the problems I am seeing; I'll be out the ten bucks, but the backing paper can be re-used many times.

Another possiblity I'm mulling over is to acquire a film splitter that would let me produce 127-format film from 120 rolls. Goat Hill Photo has a model for $35 that looks like it would get the job done.

3 comments:

Bill in St. Paul said...

Sorry about the loss due to malfunction. But what you did get, especially the first two, are really good; the combination of a kind of fantasy and photographic sharpness really works.

Bill in St. Paul

Norman Montifar said...

The motion and blur enhances the ghostly feel of these images.

Mike said...

I kind of liked the results too, but can't really take much credit for serendipity.