Stretching Film

The economics of shooting film has taken on some added importance lately.  It is not a new concern and I have adapted procedures over a long period to keep my interest in film use viable.  The easiest solution, of course, is to just shoot digital, but I'm not there yet.

In regard to general cost containment, home processing makes film use orders of magnitude more economical than sending out film for commercial processing.  With careful technique and attention to adjusting C-41 times to account for use, a roll of color can be processed at home for about a buck per roll.  Using high-dilution black and white developers like Rodinal and HC110 along with stand development can make processing costs nearly negligible.

Because of the rising costs of old favorites like TMAX and Tri-X I have already switched to using some lower-cost alternatives like HP5 and Kentmere which work well with HC-110, L110 and PMK Pyro developers.  I am also looking forward to experimenting more with some other film choices like Ultra Fine Extreme and Fomapan. Buying any of those films in bulk will also help to tame costs.

A simple way to cut cost per exposure is through the use of half-frame cameras.  Many film camera producers came up with compact and elegant camera designs which allow getting up to twice the number of exposures normally available on a roll of film.

My Certo Dolly SuperSport has removable frame masks which give me either twelve 6x6 negatives or sixteen 6x4.5 frames.  The SuperSport's film compartment is also big enough to accommodate a 35mm cartridge, which produces an interesting sprocket hole border and a lot of exposures per session.

My humpback Mercury II-CX is the only 35mm half-frame I have at present. The camera doesn't quite double the number of frames from a 35mm cartridge because of the added spaces between frames, but it still takes me quite a while to work through a full roll.  The Mercury's rotary shutter is ultra-reliable and accurate, and it has a 1/1000 top speed. The  f2.7/35mm Tricor is coated and produces surprising sharpness.

My Zeiss Ikon Ikonta A 520 was an early acquisition when I got back to film photography.  Using only the 6x4.5 format, the camera can fold up to fit easily into a pocket and yet provide medium format negatives from 120 roll film.  My example has the uncommon combination of a Compur-Rapid shutter with an f3.5/7cm Tessar. Most of the black trim paint on the little Ikonta wore away a long time ago, but the camera's high-quality construction and reliability make it an enduring favorite.

The Versatile Dolly

The Certo Dolly Super Sport
is one of my favorite old folding cameras.  I did not realize that until I had traded away my first one, and I ended up buying four more.  Some of my other medium format cameras are more compact and have somewhat more sophisticated lenses and shutters.  The Dolly, however, can do a variety of things the others can't.

For starters, the Dolly originally came equipped with two frame masks which allowed putting 12 6x6 frames on a roll of 120 film, or by clipping in the 6x4.5 mask, getting 16 shots on a roll.  Certo also offered a amazing array of accessories for that time for the Dolly, including interchangeable lenses, and camera backs which allowed the use of sheet film and plates.  As it turns out, it is also easily possible to use 35mm film in the Dolly.

The Dolly film compartment, unlike those in most medium format cameras, will actually allow dropping in a standard 35mm cartridge with no modifications needed.  Then, you thread the film leader into the take-up spool, give it a few turns and close the back.  Since there is no paper backing on the 35mm film, it is a good idea to tape over the three windows on the camera back to insure that no light leaks in to ruin your film.  If you have the 6x6 cm mask in place, the exposures you make in the Dolly using 35mm film will give you panoramic frames nearly twice the width of a normal 35mm shot, as well as showing an interesting line of sprocket holes along the top and bottom borders.

The final thing to bear in mind about using 35mm film with no paper backing in the Dolly is that you must come up with some way to advance the film for each frame by turning the film advance knob just the right amount to ensure proper frame spacing.  I've done this with a number of other medium format cameras by experimenting with a roll of film with the back open to determine the right amount to turn the advance knob as I work through the roll.  The amount of turns does vary slightly due to the increase in diameter of the film roll as it goes onto the take-up reel.

The clever Dolly as it turns out has a built-in solution to the film advance problem.  There is a circular index dial on the face of the take-up knob which allows advancing the film without reference to the numerals imprinted on the paper backing of the 120 film normally used in the camera.

After you load the 35mm cartridge into the Dolly, you will want to give the advance knob several full turns to bring an unexposed section of film into position.  As you are coming to that point, just be sure that you end the last turn with the numeral "1"  at the index mark on the post beside the knob.  After making the first exposure, you will then turn the advance knob a full 360 degrees plus a little more to get to the numeral "2" on the dial.  And so on up to the twelfth exposure.  Examining the dial closely, you wil see that the amount indicated to turn decreases slightly on each exposure so that by frame 10 you will actually be turning the advance knob less than a full turn.

Well, so that has gotten you to the twelfth frame with very precise spacing.  After that you're on your own, assuming you have loaded a 24 or 36-exposure roll of 35mm. If you still have some unexposed film left I guess you could engage in some higher mathematics to calculate the advance routine for any remaining length of the roll, but I think I'd just go with around three-quarters of a turn for any remaining frames and accept the fact that the spacing is going to get a bit wider as you go. 

I only tried 35mm in my Dolly on one occasion a few years ago.  I shot with the 6x4.5 mask, so I did not get the nice panoramic effect, but I thought having the image overlap the full width of the fillm and show the sprocket holes was pretty neat.  I also just took a best guess on the film advance.  It was a lot of fun and gave me a series of images I liked.

Getting in the Mood

With the Day of the Dead fast approaching I decided to revisit some of the local historic cemeteries.  I've been to many of them and have often made pictures of them with my old film cameras.

All of the old graveyards were originally associated with churches, but time has cut that connection in many cases.  Many of the old churches are gone, and many of the cemeteries have been buried under housing and commercial development.  San Felipe de Neri Church in Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza is a good example.  There are some known burials on the grounds, and likely some under the church's floors as well which may date back to Albuquerque's founding in 1706.

San Felipe de Neri -- Certo Dolly Super-Sport -- TMAX 400

A survey report of local cemeteries made in 1999 shows that there was a San Felipe Parish Cemetery located just a few blocks from the church and in use from 1854 to 1869.  The report notes that "... the Jesuits sold this cemetery to John Mann for his market garden in 1892.  He planned to level the ground to accommodate his irrigation ditches, but agreed to move any bones he turned up to a common grave in the new cemetery.  He ultimately plowed up two tons of bones, which were moved to the Santa Barbara Cemetery..."

No visible traces of the old Parish Cemetary remain; the site is now occupied by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and the Explora Science Center and Children's Museum on Mountain Road.  (Coincidentally, our house is just south of Mountain and directly across the street from the historic Mann House.)

There a quite a few Day of the Dead events that take place over the course of about a week in Albuquerque.  The biggest is the Marigold Parade in the South Valley, scheduled this year for Sunday, November 2nd.  I've made pictures of the parade participants for the last several years and will likely do so again this year.

dolly

I shot a roll of TMAX 400 in my Dolly Super-Sport after doing a little work on the shutter recently.  It may need a little more tuning still, but this is close enough to show some of the nice characteristics of the three-element F2.8 Trioplan lens.  

I was surprised and pleased to find some TMAX developer recently at the local Camera and Darkroom store just off Menaul in Albuquerque. The bottle showed an expiration date of Feb. 2014; I opened it to process this roll.  HC-110 and TMAX have always been my preferred developers for this film, but both have been discontinued.  The film may remain available for some time, but I doubt that I'll find either of those excellent Kodak developers again.

Blogging Rewards

People often come to my web site and blog looking for resources to restore their old cameras. I dispense whatever crumbs of wisdom I can dredge up. As a rule, I seldom hear back about how the restoration efforts have gone. A very nice exception to the rule was a recent inquiry about a leaky bellows on a rangefinder-model Super Sport Dolly.

Leon Neal, an exceptionally talented UK press photographer, had enjoyed shooting the Dolly which had been handed down to him by his father. However, the light leaks from the damaged bellows had progressed to the point where they were no longer possible to overlook. Leon was told by a camera repairman that there was no way to repair the bellows on the old German camera. Of course, I took exception to that judgment.

I was able to steer Leon to the workshop in Wales of Sandeha Lynch, an exceptionally talented artist and craftsman who makes custom bellows for medium and large-format cameras. Sandeha performed his usual magic in crafting a bellows for the Dolly, and he also fully serviced the shutter and restored the camera's leather covering and metal fittings. You can read all about the camera, the photographer and the restoration process on Leon's blog.

This just in.

Back today from Phoenix with a side trip to Tucson to visit the Pima Air and Space Museum. I shot four cameras there, starting off with the Certo Dolly Super Sport.  I was pleased to see some progress with that old folder, though I still have some work to do on it.

got focus

I ran another roll through my Certo Super Sport Dolly after adjusting the focus.  

I traded away a very nice Dolly some years ago and have been looking for a replacement ever since.  I bought four in various states of repair in the intervening time.  Mostly they were junk, but I've got a good supply of parts now, and the latest purchase has me nearly to the finish line.

This one has a good bellows and, being an early model, it sports the elegant diamond-pattern on the leather covering.  The cloudy front lens element cleaned up pretty well.  The low-speed escapement has a lazy spring, so I'm limited to shooting at 1/25 and faster, but that is not much of a problem.

Since everything is really working pretty well at this point, I'm looking forward to shooting this camera on an upcoming trip to Phoenix.

Back to the Bar

I rode my Shadow back to the bar at the end of Highway 6 on a windy Monday afternoon.  I carried along a Super Sport Dolly which I've been working on.  Most of the pictures on the first test roll were a little off focus, but the Trioplan looks like it will get the job done.  I'll have more to say about the camera once I've shot another roll or two.

Certo Dolly Super Sport (rf model) Part 2

(Guest Post by Gil Zilberstein -- Part 2)

So, after all that what kind of pictures does it take? I have some samples below:
(NOTE: all color photos are on Fujichrome film)












The above 4 pictures were taken within 10 minutes of each other at the end of the day. The location is a road off the main highway at the northern (Marin) end of the Golden Gate Bridge. For the sunset photos, I turned almost 180 degrees around from the photos of the bridge. Now these things are a matter of taste, but I really like these photos, especially for an experiment with an old camera to “see if it works”. Also note that these were taken without the 6x6 mask, and therefore without film rollers . . .

The next set of photos were taken in Times Square in New York City, AFTER I installed Mikes 6x6 mask with the rollers.












Now, these kinds of photos were difficult or impossible when this camera was built. I really like the way these photos came out.

It is a credit to both the camera (especially the lens), and modern films that these photos came out so well. And, I guess that I as the photographer should take some credit too . . .

And finally, some black and white photos:












With the exception of the above interior shot taken in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these are all catch-as-you-can street scenes. The results are not bad, but this kind of photography is not my forte, so I feel that I need a bit of practice for this kind of work.

So, that’s it for now. What do you think?
Am I crazy to use a 70 year old camera with a 100 year old type of film (120 rolls) in a modern slide emulsion, scanned to a digital CD so I can download it to my computer and sent it out over the web?

Maybe, maybe not, but I like it, and I had fun doing it. And as a side-benefit, I find that the slides themselves are beautiful on their own! I love just holding them up to a bright light and looking at all the colors. It really turns my camera into a magic box ! !

Gil Zilberstein
< gzilbers@gmail.com >

Certo Dolly Super Sport (rf model)

(Guest Post by Gil Zilberstein)

Mike Connealy asked me to write a bit about my Certo Dolly camera.
If you haven’t seen it yet, his website is: < http://mconnealy.com/ > .

Let me start with the markings on the camera:
While I am sure it is a Certo Dolly, all it actually says on the camera is “ Super Sport” embossed in leather on the front.

On the lens/shutter assembly, it says: Compur for the shutter (the speed range
is 1-250 plus “B” and “T”). The lens is marked: Meyer Görlitz Trioplan 1:2.9, f=7.5cm, Nr. 884813.

I bought the camera on ebay, and didn’t expect much from it. I just wanted an inexpensive large format folder, and I have had good luck with getting nice photos from German folding 35mm cameras from the 1930’s (a Certo Dolina, and a Weltix).

The camera came with a leather case in excellent condition, with what appears to be a locking latch ! (No, I don’t have the key . . . ) (see fig. 1 below)

1

Here are some general views of the camera with the front closed:

2

3

Now, I don’t know how evident it is in these photos, but the top viewfinder/rangefinder/extinction meter unit was probably heavily brassed, because when I got the camera, someone had touched these areas up crudely with black paint ! I wish they had left it alone . . .

Now here are some views of the back, with the depth-of-field table/ red window cover open and closed:

4


5

And here is a close-up of the depth-of-field table:

6

And now for some views of the lens/shutter assembly:

7


8


9

So that’s what my camera looks like. So, how well does it work?

I’ll answer that in two parts: firstly, how well the features work over 70 years after it was built, and secondly, what kinds of photos it takes with modern films.

The shutter works perfectly, as far as I can tell, at all speeds. This alone is remarkable for a 70-plus year old camera. By the way, the shutter release lever is a backwards “L-shaped” lever on the lens/shutter mount. You can see it above in fig 9, with its hinge/fulcrum to the left of the “COMPUR” label. One rotates the top part with the teeth and the hole in it outward and downward to trip the shutter. The action is very easy. The shutter must be cocked manually before each picture. Referring to fig 7, the lever with the hole in it above the “B” on the shutter speed ring is for cocking the shutter. It moves to the right as seen in the photo.

Now for the focusing, referring to fig 7, the solid lever without the hole in it above the “1” on the shutter speed ring is the focusing lever. It is to the right of the shutter cocking lever mentioned earlier. As you swing it around, the whole lens/shutter moves forward and backward from the front of the bellows. The focusing action is smooth, but the rangefinder is very difficult to use. I don’t know if that was the original design, or if it is age-related and subject to improvement by adjustment.

Exposure adjustment is from the front. Referring to figures 7-9, the shutter speed is changed by rotating the ring at the top so that the desired shutter speed is opposite the pointer. To adjust the f-stop, there is a silver metal triangular tab (just below the shutter release lever fulcrum and under the letter “C” in “COMPUR”. you slide this back and forth to the desired f-stop setting.

By the way, you open the front by pushing a chrome button on the bottom, next to the wind knob (see figures 1 and 2). To open the back, there is a sliding cover-tab on the wind-knob side of the camera, under the carrying strap.

Now to the back of the camera for viewing. Referring to figures 4 and 5, the larger round window on the left is for viewing and composing. Right above it is a flat round knob for moving a mask into place if one is shooting 6x4.5 photos instead of 6x6. The knob can also be seen in figures 2 and 3, but note that the window for the viewfinder is square on the front. To the left of the viewfinder window is a slightly smaller round window for the rangefinder. Mine is so far out of adjustment, that only a particular, low eye position even lets me see it, and then it is hard to tell if it is the coincident type, or the split-image type . . . To the left of these round windows is a long rectangular window. It is on the left when viewed from the back (figures 4 and 5), or the right when viewed from the front (figures 2 & 3). This is the extinction-type “light meter.” I say “light meter” because: a) this device was always notoriously inaccurate, b) it is not a light meter in the modern sense. The way it works is you look through a kind of graduated neutral density filter at a series of numbers, and read off the dimmest one you can read without straining. Then you look up this number in an exposure table to get your shutter speed and f-stop settings. The problem is that your eye adapts, especially if you stare and take too long trying to figure out the dimmest number. (In other words, if you stared at the numbers long enough, more and more of them would become readable ! ! ) It was better than nothing, but not really accurate.

Film advance is by a rather stiff knob on the bottom. AND, you have to flip down the depth-of-field table by pulling up the tab at the top. Then you can see the three red windows so you can see the paper backing of your film roll and know where to stop advancing the knob for the next picture. (See figures 4, 5, and 6). I only use the middle window, which is marked for “6x6” (barely visible after all these years). If one wanted to shoot 4.5x6 photos, one would have to do three things: 1-install a special mask inside the camera BEFORE loading the film; 2 – turn the knob above the viewfinder window all the way counter-clockwise to put the correct viewfinder mask into place; and 3 – advance the film carefully until the next exposure’s number is in the LEFT-hand upper window, shoot the photo, then advance it carefully just a bit to put the same number in the RIGHT-hand upper window, and repeat for the next
exposure’s number. As I said, I only have the 6x6 mask (thanks to Mike Connealy’s generosity), so I only use the lower 6x6 window and use each exposure number only once. (Note: before Mike sent me the 6x6 mask, I did manage to shoot a roll successfully. What was remarkable was that I didn’t scratch the film, since the camera has no built-in rollers. The film rollers come with the mask . . .

(continued in next post with pictures from the camera)