Heavy Metal Brownie

The metal bodied Flash Six-20 was an outlier in Kodak's post-war plastic Brownie lineup. Perhaps the choice of materials was related to the sudden availability of steel for consumer products.  I loaded mine with a roll of well-expired Ilford Pan F 50 for a neighborhood stroll.  As I walked out the door I was thinking about the fact that I had not tried the camera's built-in close-up lens, so I snapped a shot of our deck furniture as a test, which the Six-20 passed comfortably.  The next two shots gave me some dull, blurred results.  I'm not sure if I misjudged the distance, or just didn't hold the camera steady enough to accommodate the slow shutter speed.

I switched back to the camera's "Beyond 10 Feet" setting and got a nicely sharp rendering of some winter- bare trees.  However, the left fifth of the image was black -- don't know why.

I stuck with the non-close setting for the rest of the roll and the following full-frame images nicely illustrate the central sharpness of the meniscus lens along with some corner vignetting and blurred periphery.

I got to the Plaza Vieja in Old Town with just one frame left, which was good luck as Elvis was making a rare appearance there for a small group of devoted fans.

Ilford Pan F 50

Thanks to my friend, Kodachromeguy, I have a big pile of expired film to play with.  First up is a roll of Ilford Pan F 50.  The expiration date on this one is June 1991.  I loaded the first roll into my Argoflex Forty and went to the Botanical Garden to shoot some familiar scenes.   I gave the film a couple extra stops of exposure to compensate for age and processed in Rodinal 1:50 for 11 minutes at 20 deg. C.

The first shot of the brick path through the garden seemed perfect in regard to exposure and tonalities, but I either misfocused, or the speed was a bit too slow.  The next shot of the fountain was better in regard to sharpness.  Bracing the camera on the ground probably helped to keep it steady.

In the middle of the roll there were a couple very dense, strange looking frames.  Hard to say what happened there.

Toward the end of the roll the images seemed normal in every respect.

Here is what I really, really like about this film:

the backing paper.

The numerals and lead-up symbols are marvelously visible through the ruby window which is used for advancing the film in a lot of old medium format film cameras.  By contrast, the framing marks on modern films are so dim and low contrast that it is nearly impossible to properly advance the film without overlapping frames or missing frames altogether. 

I have a couple more rolls of Pan F and am looking forward to shooting them, perhaps in different cameras which offer a bit more control over exposure and focusing.