116 to 120

 I tagged along with a fellow New Mexico Film Photographer on a visit to the Old San Ysidro Church and Cemetery in the community of Corrales.  

We managed to get to the place shortly after sunrise and found some very nice light.  I was pleased to get seven frames from a roll of 120 in my 116-format Kodak No.1A Folding Pocket Special.  Unfortunately, the film rolled crookedly onto the take-up spool, so all the shots were a bit cockeyed.  I had taped the film backing to the take-up spool to try to avoid that, but to no avail.

When I first began using this camera I had put some foam padding on the end caps to keep the 120 ilm from getting off track.  That reel got lost along the way, and I don't have any suitable material on hand to duplicate that arrangement.  I decided I would try some 116 to 120 3D-printed adapters which would let me use actual 120 film spools on both ends.  I ordered the adapters from the Film Photography Project at a cost of $20, and I should have them in about a week.  

A Walk in the Park

 I shot another roll of expired Tri-X in the No.1A Pocket Kodak on a morning walk through our nearby park.  My main objective was to test a strategy for correctly spacing the frames.  I decided after advancing the film by an initial eight and one half rotations to get to the first exposure I would then give two and one half turns to get to the second frame.  From there the plan was to decrease the film advance by one quarter turn for each subsequent frame with the hope of getting six or more shots on the roll of 120 film.

Well, the first two frames looked just right.  After that the pictures started to run into each other and I ended up with just muddled fragments of images on the rest of the roll.  Not the hoped for outcome, but it was a fun outing in which I learned something, and I thought the bits and pieces still showed some of the nice qualities which the Kodak Anastigmat lens can produce.

In addition to the frame spacing problem, I also ended up having to square up most of the images in Photoshop as a result of grossly tilted horizons.  For that, I'm blaming the use of the tiny reflex finder which seems to aggravate my tendency to misperceive which way is up.  So, for my next outing I'll try using the open frame finder which I usually tape onto the top of my folders, as well as a revised film advance routine.

The one thing I'm pleased to report was not a problem was focal distance estimation.  Snapping pictures under the full Summer sun with a top shutter speed of 1/50 and 400 speed film, the correct aperture setting is f45.  Having consulted a dof calculator before setting out, I knew that the hyperfocal distance for the 127mm lens at that setting was seventeen feet, and that everything from 8.5 feet to infinity would be sharply focused.  For some of the closer shots and with the aperture a stop or two wider the available depth of focus was still well within my margin of error for distance estimation.

New from the No.1A Pocket Kodak

 

I thought the camera performed well, though I am clearly out of practice with it.  Film advancing with 120 in this 116 camera has to be estimated.  I gave it 2-and-one-half turns between frames which yielded just five frames from the roll.  I should be able to get 6 frames if I graduate the advance properly.

The combination of expired Tri-X and HC-110b was a little disappointing.  I got better results with the previous roll of Tri-X in Rodinal at 1:50.  

I came across the tourist from Trumpland in downtown Albuquerque on a Sunday Morning, luckily on a short leash.

The ragtop was part of the regular informal Friday morning car show in the Plaza Vieja.

The No.1A Pocket Kodak has been the best performer among my collection of old folders, so I'm going to stick with shooting it for a while and do a little experimenting with different films and developers.

Couldn't pass it by...

In addition to the eye-catching thrift store price tag, the Minolta Hi-Matic 7s looked nearly new, the rangefinder seemed accurate, and the shutter clicked.  The camera dates to 1966; it strongly resembles the slightly earlier Yashica Lynx and is about as large and heavy.  I'm not usually partial to the over-sized 35mm cameras of this era, but the 7s has some redeeming qualities.

The nicest feature for me, as was true of the Yashica Lynx 14, is that the bright frame viewfinder is auto-correcting for parallax.  The CdS sensor is set inside the filter ring and exposure is fully automated while also allowing manual control of aperture and shutter speed.  The 45mm f1.8 Rokkor is a six-element design.  The Seiko-LA shutter has speeds from 1/8 to 1/500, plus B and Auto settings. The meter originally required a mercury battery, but a 1.55v 357 seems to work fine, even though it fits loosely in the compartment.  Aside from putting in the battery, the only other thing I had to do for the camera was to clean the finger marks off the viewfinder window.  I shot a roll of Tri-X to test the camera.

When I was 21 I bought a Buick like this one from a dealer in Glenns Ferry, Idaho for $500.  It had leather upholstery, air conditioning and an automatic transmission -- a real luxury machine.  I drove it to Mexico City and back.  It was the nicest car I ever owned.

Update:
Johan Niels Kuiper has an excellent review of the Minolta Hi-Matic 7S with some good advice on how to use the EV exposure system.

Retratos de Muertos

I took three cameras to the 2017 Marigold Parade in Albuquerque's South Valley.  A roll of Tri-X in the Leica IIIa was used up in minutes.  Last year's parade had a big political component just before the election.  This year, it was just a lot of people having a great time.

Shooting the Kiev IIa

My Kiev IIa dates from 1956.  Aside from the addition of the flash synch socket it is a well-made close copy of the Zeiss Contax II.  This is a camera that demands some familiarity to get the best performance it is capable of delivering.  The best explanation of the peculiarities of the Kiev rangefinder I have seen is at Laszio Gerencser's blog, The Camera Collection.

The Contax grip is an essential part of using the Kiev IIa.

Though no fault of the camera, the pictures I snapped during our recent snow storm were not worth posting.  I did like a couple of the compositions from the previous day's outing when the storm was just developing.

Tiguex Playground

San Felipe de Neri

I believe both of these shots were made with the 35mm Jupiter 12 lens which I generally prefer to shoot on this camera, mostly because of the brilliant accessory finder which goes with it.  The 5cm/f2 Jupiter 8 is also a very good performer.

lean and mean

The Soviet-era Sukhoi S-26 has been dominating aerobatic competitions since 1984.

There were many different light sport aircraft at the Double Eagle field show on Saturday.  It is nice to have a reminder in this age of jumbo jets and terrorist threats that the real dream of flight still lives on.

copper chopper

My Patent Etui is performing well, but requires some care in use.

As with any of the ruby-windowed cameras, it is important to only open the frame counting view port briefly while advancing the film, and that must be done away from direct sunlight.  Even with strong reading glasses it can be difficult to discern when the numerals crawl into sight in the window.

Since I was shooting with the Rollex rollfilm adapter and not planning on using the ground glass for focusing, I left the adapter's dark slide at home and just put a strip of black tape over the slot where the slide is inserted to avoid any light intrusion that way.  I also put a strip of tape over the hinge on the Rollex, though the back closes up very tightly, and the cloth curtains over the film spools also seem to be doing their job of keeping out any stray light.  The bellows have remained light-tight, thanks to the application of some dabs of black fabric paint to a few pinholes.

Getting the image properly framed is something of a challenge with the Patent Etui.  The little reflex finder has a mirror that is slightly deteriorated, though it does allow accurate framing with care.  The wire frame finder with the rear flip-up pin provides a very poor guide to framing, certainly not adequate to ensure full-frame display of the final image.

The fine Tessar lens easily makes up for any of the inconveniences of shooting the camera.  I shot the whole roll at 1/250 and f-22 in bright sun at the air show, and every exposure was tack sharp.

Fly-in

We enjoyed a light plane air show this morning at Albuquerque's Double Eagle Airport.

At the Zoo

The three-month-old snow leopard twins have made their debut at the Rio Grande Zoo.  This is the sixth litter for the Zoo's very productive pair.

I was inspired to do some pictures by the acquisition of an old Sears/Ricoh TLS with a T-mount 400mm Vivitar lens.  The pre-set lens is pretty awkward in use, but it has nice sharpness, even at maximum aperture.  Certainly worth the ten bucks I paid for the outfit.

The combination of Tri-X and Rodinal wasn't one I was planning on, but I discovered to my dismay that Kodak HC-110 developer suddenly commands a sky-high price, and it can't be had locally at all.  Life is getting complicated for film photographers.

Kodak Flash Bantam

These are the first images from my new Kodak Flash Bantam, shot on Tri-X at the War Eagles Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

This camera was built to use 828 roll film, which is the same width as 35mm, but having just one sprocket hole at the beginning of each frame.  I decided to use some regular 35mm for my first efforts.  I attached the film without paper backing to the little 828 reels with masking tape for loading into the camera.  The frame counter viewing window on the back was securely covered with black tape to prevent fogging, and the film was loaded in a dark bag.  About 30% of the 828 format is lost to the sprocket holes and film borders on 35mm, but the upside is at least twice the normal number of eight exposures per roll of 828. On this roll, one-and-one half rotations of the advance knob between shots got me twenty images.

The Flash Bantam dates from 1947; it was based on a 1935 design by Walter Dorwin Teague. The simple construction of the strut folder used features developed even earlier by Kodak, but the quality was greatly enhanced and a number of advanced post-war features were incorporated into an ultra-compact camera that is about the same size at my Olympus Infinity Stylus.  The flip-up viewfinder is compact and bright.  The four-element Anastar lens is very sharp.