El Vado, pinholed

 Some blue sky and bright sun prompted me to load some Fomapan 100 in my pinhole camera.  I then headed down Central to the motels near where Route 66 crosses the Rio Grande.  The area is undergoing rapid development and the few remaining motels are being surrounded by multi-story apartments and shops.  The El Vado, closest to the river, was built in 1937 and restored in 2018 with the help of a 2 million dollar grant from the city.

The Fomapan 100 negatives had good density with two second exposures and I was pleased with the film's grain and tonalities.  This was the last roll of Fomapan I had in the refrigerator and I probably won't buy any more even though I was satisfied with its performance.  It is $6.49 at both Freestyle and B&H, while Ilford's new Kentmere 120 is still just $4.99 from the Film Photography Project.  

Welta Perle

I snagged this fine little Welta Perle with an f/3.5 Tessar on ebay for $20 as the only bidder.  Hard to believe that such fine examples are going for such trivial prices.  I attribute it mainly to the scarcity of film in retail outlets and the disappearance of local one-hour film processors.  In this specific case, the seller also inadvertently torpedoed his chances of a better price by scrupulously entering in the camera's description that the shutter was not working on the B and T settings.  He was evidently unfamiliar with the fact that one does not need to cock the shutter when using the time settings on the old Compurs.  In fact, there is nothing at all wrong with the camera.

I shot a roll of Tri-X and processed it in Rodinal.  That gave me some period authenticity for the images, though it didn't really show off the nice qualities of the Tessar.

riverside

ojo

side channel

The Welta Perle superficially resembles cameras from the same era made by Certo and Balda, though it is considerably more compact that the Dolly Super Sport as it is not dual format and shoots only in the 6x4.5 format, yielding 16 frames from a roll of 120.  The construction is very sturdy and innovative in the details.  I haven't found an on-line manual for the camera, so I'll share a few quick observations about it that are helpful in getting started with using it.  First, the operation of the back latch is not immediately apparent.  My first inclination was to try to swing out the little lever, but it actually just needs to be slid to the left to allow opening the back.

The Perle is unusually well-designed to avoid light leaks which are a problem in some similar cameras of the time.  On this model there is no need to tape over the ruby windows as the rotating light guard provides protection from light leaks between exposures.

Inside, the camera has shrouds which cover the film on both ends.

The supply side shroud can just be rotated to allow introduction of the film roll.  On the take-up side, the advance knob must first be lifted outward to allow rotation of the shroud to put the take-up spool in place.

There is not a lot of information on the web about the Perle.  The company may not have been as commercially successful as some of the other makers of the time, but this model seem just as well built to me as the Zeiss and Voigtlander offerings available.  Several key components are identical to those on competition machines including the Compur shutter, the Tessar lens, and the flip-up finder.

Shooting the No.1 Pocket Kodak

Kodak's folders like this No.1 Pocket Kodak used 120 rollfilm prior to the 1932 introduction of the 620 format.



Kodak marketed the Kodar lens as a mid-level product, situated between the older standard Rapid Rectilinear and the later three-element Anastigmat design. The Kodar does a very credible job of making images, though I would be hard-pressed to distinguish them from those from the Rapid Rectilinear. What really appeals to me about this camera, however, is the fact that the aperture can be stopped down to f45. That means 400-speed film can be used at the top 1/50 shutter speed in direct sunlight, and in low light one can still use small apertures with good depth of focus.



I usually make some minor modifications to my old Kodak folders to make their use more practical. A flap of black tape covers the ruby window except when I am advancing the film. A lensless eye-level finder taken from another old camera is held in place with duct tape, and it makes composition considerably easier than using the squinty little reflex finders. A depth-of-field table for the particular lens shows the hyperfocal distance and assists in establishing the range of sharp focus at different f-stops.



I tend to employ cable releases with my old folders at it is easy to jiggle the camera using the lever release out near the lens. A lens hood would also be a good idea with the uncoated lens, but it still produces nice contrast and sharpness as long as you don't angle it too close to the sun. As may be seen in the last photo, I haven't yet stamped out all the light leaks.

Using 120 rollfilm in a 116 folder

I put another roll of film through my No. 1-A Folding Pocket Kodak Special after making some modifications to make it easier to use 120 rollfilm.

The easiest part of the conversion is the modification of the 116 take-up spool. I made a couple washers from the rubber backing material off a mouse pad, cut them in half and glued them to the inside faces of the spool end disks. The 1/8-inch thickness is just right to shield the edges of the 120 film against the light.

For the supply-side, I made a film holder from a plastic Adox film can. A hole in the bottom and another in the rubber disk holds everything in place securely, and the film comes out through the slit down the side. Besides being simple to implement, this solution didn't require any irreversible modification to the camera.

The film rails need to be just an eighth-inch wider on each side to properly mask and support the 120 width film. I used some black mounting board. The first strip was made a bit wider so it would slide under the existing frame rails and help support the new ones. On top of that, I glued two more 1/8-inch-wide strips, and these were also glued on the outer sides to the metal frame using hide glue. The mounting board is tough stuff to cut, but using my mat cutter enabled me to make the strips thin and straight.

One solution to frame spacing is to relocate the red window to the center of the camera back, enabling the use of the center row of numerals on the 120 backing paper; using every other number yields six non-overlapping frames per roll.

I was reluctant to drill a hole in my nice old Kodak folder to get the proper frame spacing. However, I found that the existing red window in the lower right corner of the back let me make use of the 6x4.5 framing numerals to get five evenly spaced frames using every third number, starting with number 3.

I'm not sure that I made any real improvement in image quality through the conversion, but the camera is quite a bit easier to use. One problem that cropped up was that the film edge is closer to the red window, and I am presently getting quite a bit of light leakage onto that side. I'll try painting out half of the window, and I'll also see if some well-placed foam light seal helps.

So, still a bit of work to be done, but I only have an hour or two into the project, and it turned out to be quite a bit easier than I had anticipated.