Three more from the Foth Derby

I've used about half the bulk roll of my 127 bulk Portra 160, mostly in the Foth Derby.  The film needs about an extra stop for proper exposure.  It performs pretty well except for some spots on the negatives that I have to stamp out each time.  I'm not sure if the fault is with the film or my C-41 developer.

The KIMO Theater is Albuquerque's Art Deco landmark.  It was built in 1927, and bought by the City in 1977, at which time it was extensively restored.

We had perfect weather for our Thanksgiving Day in the Mesilla Valley.

Making pictures with my old cameas always gives me a sense of connection to past times.  Making a self-portrait with the Foth Derby adds an additional dimension with a hint of time traveling.  I don't usually use the self-timers on my old cameras as it often jams the shutters, but the Foth Derby's shutter seems quite robust, and I decided to take the risk.

Parade's End

I had no better results processing Rerapan in Rodinal than I did with HC-110.  Also, the film jammed in the camera near the end of the roll; I had to cut it out in the dark bag and broke the plastic spool in the process.  Given the price-per-roll, that is likely the end of my experimentation with this product.   Still, I tend to like about anything I get out of the Foth Derby.  The camera seems to provide me a portal to a time and experience that would otherwise remain just out of reach.

A work in progress.

Acros in the Foth Derby produced only a couple images at the end of the roll I thought to be of acceptable quality. Most of the others were kind of fuzzy and low contrast, and four in the middle featured a broad, blank stripe. I haven't fully sorted out the issues, but I suspect I did a poor job of rolling up the film in the backing paper. I think the film buckled and interfered with the travel of the focal plane shutter curtains.

Albuquerque and New Mexico are still struggling to get beyond of the 2008 financial collapse.  The Intel plant which gave the local economy a boost in the beginning of the century is down to a skeleton crew.  The city's main industry at this point seems to be tattoo parlours.

Rude Boy offers a varied menu.  I'm going to take a pass on Tuesdays, which appear to feature a dead cockroach.  The coffee shops and restaurants around UNM which cater to the local student crowd seem to be surviving the disruption of the rapid transit construction on Central Ave., but many of the other businesses are on shaky ground.

Complications

My efforts at film splitting to produce 127 from 120 roll film have been complicated by poor results from the film I have been using in the project, Arista Edu Ultra 400.  While it seemed a good idea to use cheap film while sorting out my DIY film splitter, the results only made life more difficult.
   In the past, I've gotten perfectly fine images from Arista films, usually combined with my favorite all-purpose developer, HC-110, both with dilution "B" and as a stand developer.  This time, though, the first roll resulted in images with extreme grain.  The next roll had images that were barely discernible.
   An on line search turned up quite a few experiences similar to mine with Arista 400.  A lot of people showed perfectly fine images made with the film, while others like me reported a mixed bag with inconsistent, sometimes disastrous results.  So, when I put in an order this morning for some film, it won't be Arista.

nice rides

Saturday morning found me and my Foth Derby at a motorcycle swap meet near the railroad tracks on Central Avenue.

One block to the west was a long line of low riders, most on trailers, waiting to get into a car show at the Convention Center.

The overcast sky was a challenge for the expired Portra 160.  I lowered the shutter speed to 1/50, but most of the shots were still a bit under-exposed at f9.0.  I knew that would be the case, but a wider aperture would have given too little depth of focus for the subject.  I had to do some fancy PhotoShop work to get acceptable color and contrast, with variable results.

I'm mostly happy with interesting results from the expired bulk Portra 160, but it would be a nice change of pace to shoot some higher speed black and white film which would be better suited to the camera and its rather sharp Foth Anastigmat lens.  I'm trying to talk myself into making some sort of film splitter to produce 127-size film from 120 roll film.

Portra Adventures

We are having afternoon clouds and some thunder, lightning and rain at night as the monsoon season sets in.  I shot a roll of 127 Kodak Portra 160 in my Foth Derby today at 1/50 and f-9.0.  I'm happy with the results, but they don't look much like the low contrast, rather pastel images I see other people making with Portra.  My bulk roll of Portra shows no expiration date; I've had it in the refrigerator for about five years, so it is at least that far along.  I used some freshly brewed Unicolor C-41 today for processing, so the expired film and the uncoated Foth Anastigmat lens seem to account for the unique color signature.

I'll likely use up most of my 127 Portra in the Foth Derby.  The camera's compactness and consistently good performance makes it a pleasure to shoot.  I did try one roll of Portra in my Brownie Reflex, and I will probably shoot a roll soon in my Brownie 44A which also makes square images.   I'm hoping too to make some full-frame vest pocket size images in a Bilora Bella which is on the way to me now. 

Derby Color

The Albuquerque sky is a little hazy this week because of a couple fires burning in the north end of the state.  The one burning up near Los Alamos caused us to make a hasty exit from our Jemez Falls campground on Thursday.  The haze makes some nice opportunities to capture saturated color, but getting the exposure just right with the Foth Derby is a little tricky due to the odd progression of f-stops, which goes 3.5, 4.5, 6.3, 9, 12.5, 18.

I've mostly been shooting Portra 160 in the Foth Derby lately, but I was able to try some Konica 160 recently due to the generosity of James Harr who sent me a couple rolls.  The Konica 160 is fine grained like the Portra, but I would not hazard further comparisons given the many variables of shooting old film in an old camera.  In any case, I was pleased with the results.

I am not willing to pay the going price for 127 film these days, so am fortunate to have a bulk roll of Portra 160.  Rolling the film into a strip of backing paper is a bit of a chore, but it does make handling the film and shooting it a lot more convenient than shooting unbacked film which must be loaded in darkness, and which sometimes interferes with focal plane shutter operation in the Foth Derby.

127

I made some 127 backing paper using some old Efke as a template.  I rolled up a two-foot strip of Portra 160 in the backing paper and shot it in my Foth Derby.  I was pleased to get 16 perfectly spaced frames.  It is likely I'll do this many more times as I've got enough film left in the bulk roll to make about forty rolls of 127.  The film was free and it costs me only about a buck per roll for the Unicolor C-41 processing.

Getting the 127 film into a form that is ready to use requires some effort, but it does get easier with practice.  I think my next step will be to try to shoehorn a card table into my little bathroom to give myself a bit more working room than is available in my dark bag.  I'll probably try shooting some of my other 127 cameras as well.  The Kodak Brownie Reflex has a marvelously bright screen which makes it a real pleasure to shoot.

Shooting the Foth Derby

(Much of the following article originally appeared on my web site.)

The Foth Derby appeared shortly after the original Leica and shares some features with it including its rounded, compact form, the helical focus lens mount and a cloth-curtained focal plane shutter with speeds to 1/500. The camera uses small 127 roll film cartridges which provide 16 exposures with a 4x3 negative size. The Foth 50mm Anastigmat f3.5 lens is uncoated, but well-corrected and capable of good resolution. Later versions of the camera had a rangefinder added, and during WWII an updated design with a silver metal exterior was produced in the French Gallus factory.

The shutter is unconnected to the film advance in the Foth Derby, so one must remember to both advance the film and then to rotate the shutter dial to cock it before pressing the shutter release. The shutter speed must also be set prior to cocking the shutter. The camera produces a 127 4x3 half-frame format which makes use of the 4x6cm frame numbering on the roll film. That means that the user initially advances the number one frame to the first window to make the first exposure, and then the film is advanced to show the same number one in the second window for the second exposure.

The camera is actually equipped with four windows on the back, one pair in red for orthochromatic film and one pair in green for panchromatic. Those distinctions are no longer of importance in using modern films, and because they are considerably more sensitive than the emulsions available in the 1930's it is prudent to keep the windows covered except when advancing the film.

The Foth Derby, in spite of its classic design and construction, can often be found on ebay selling for as little as ten dollars. The reason for this is that the cloth shutter curtains in the camera are always severely deteriorated. This can be verified by holding the open back of the camera up to a bright light and looking in through the lens. What is revealed is a field of tiny pinholes where the rubberized covering has worn away from the cloth base of the shutter curtains. Fortunately, the deterioration can often be corrected by recoating the curtains with a layer of opaque ebony matte fabric paint, obtained in the U.S. in craft stores under the brand name, Tulip.

There are, however, some other things that go wrong with these old shutters. The tension on the curtains may become uneaven so that they do not travel at the same speed to maintain the proper gap during exposure at each setting. The ribbons holding the curtains in place can come loose and do not hold the two curtains in proper alignment, thus permitting a fatal gap to appear during film advance. If you are an adventurous repairman, some directions are available on line from RaulM for shutter restoration in the worst-case scenario.

The Foth Derby was imported to the U.S. prior to WWII by Burleigh Brooks.  I acquired my camera from ebay in February of 2011.  It was in pretty good shape except for the pinholed shutter curtains which were easily repaired.  My first pictures from the Foth Derby were made on a strip of 35mm film rolled into some Efke 127 backing paper which I had previously used in a Kodak Brownie Reflex.  After that I shot a couple of fresh rolls of Efke in the Foth Derby, but the company ceased film production soon afterward.

A web search on 127 film will still turn up a few remaining retail sources; the prices run the gamut from exorbitant to ridiculous.  Similarly, one can find a vast number of strategies for rolling your own 127, but all  are at least somewhat labor intensive.  Many will ask, "why bother".  One answer is that classic camera manufacturers produced a great quantity of exquisitely designed 127-format cameras, of which the Foth Derby is but one example.

The Foth Derby Manual is at the Butkus site.

More pictures made with my Foth Derby may be viewed in a folder at Flicker.

Foth Derby meets Portra 160

Thanks to a generous on line friend I have had a can of bulk Kodak Portra film sitting in my refrigerator for several years.  It remained unopened all that time because I knew it would present a severe challenge to both my manual dexterity and my patience.

The idea of getting the film can, camera, scissors, tape and developing tank into my small dark bag and then getting the film wound onto a 127 reel and into the camera had a certain nightmarish quality.  Well, nothing ventured ...

I walked out of the house with the loaded Foth Derby thinking I would just snap a few test shots.  As it turned out, the yearly car show was in progress at the nearby Albuquerque Art Museum.  Seemed like a good omen.  Since I was blind winding the film with no backing paper and the ruby windows taped over I got just ten shot from a film strip that had room for sixteen.  Still, I was pretty happy with the outcome, and I thought some of the shots showed the surprising quality that the little Foth Derby can deliver.  I'll try this again sometime soon, and maybe I'll even have a go at using some backing paper.  I'm thinking it may help to break the process down into several discrete steps so I don't have everything in the bag at once.

Foth Derby

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.