Spare Parts

 In one week I managed to break the plastic rewind cranks on two old cameras that I like, the Nikon EM and my two-decade-old Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim.  Luckily for me I had a spare crank for the VUWS, and the Nikon EM was put back in working order thanks to the generosity of a friend.

So, time to test the repairs.  I headed over to the Los Poblanos fields to see if I could find some wintering Sandhill Cranes.  Thee were plenty of birds, but none were willing to allow me close enough for a picture.  I had to settle for a shot of an old cottonwood which showed no objection to being photographed.

Nikon EM

The next day I took  both cameras to the Tingley ponds. The little Ultra Wide was loaded with Kendtmere 100.  In the Nikon EM I had a roll of slightly expired Fuji Neopan Presto which Jim Grey sent me some time ago, 

I had walked around one of the ponds with the Vivitar 70-210 Macro Zoom on the Nikon EM.  That gave me more than enough reach to shoot the lounging ducks and geese.  Back at my starting point I rewarded my subjects with a single slice of bread which caused quite a lot of excitement.  There is a sign at the pool's edge requesting that people not feed the birds, but I figured my small transgression would not be noticed.

Shortly afterward this woman arrived in an suv and distributed about forty pounds of bird food to the ducks and geese.  She told me she did this daily!  I captured the scene with the Ultra Wide.

With two rolls of film to process I decided to do them together with semi-stand development in highly diluted HC110, following the technique developed by hjlphotos.  That turned out well with the Fuji Neopan 400.  The Kentmere 100 from the Ultra Wide did not like that choice however, and I had to resort to some careful photoshopping to get something acceptable.

Kentmere

The best part of Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta for me is actually not the balloons, but the Flamenco dance performances in the Old Town Plaza Vieja which are staged by the National Institute of Flamenco.  I believe the small woman in the picture is Eva Encinias who founded the Institute as well as the unique Flamenco dance program at UNM.  The tall woman beside her is the head teacher at the Institute.

I shot a roll of Kentmere 100 and another of Kentmere 400 this time around.  Since I had two rolls of film to process I decided to try them both together using semi-stand processing in HC110 at 1:100 for an hour.  I was very pleased with the results which this choice yielded for the Kentmere 400.  The tonal qualities were very good and the grain was nearly undetectable.  I have mostly used PMK Pyro as a developer for Kentmere in the past with good results, but I thought the quality of the HC110 pictures made with my Nikon FE were just as good if not better.

The Kentmere 100 shot in my FED 1g rangefinder responded less well to the HC110 stand development, so I'll likely stick with PMK Pyro processing for that film which seems better able to handle the higher contrast of the slower speed film.

The Ricoh 500 Returns !

I bought my Ricoh 500 about fifteen years ago.  Nine years ago I finally got around to shooting a roll of film in the camera.  Another roll went through the Ricoh a year later.  The day before yesterday I retrieved the camera from the back of a drawer and decided it was time to use it again.  A brief inspection showed me that some issues would need to be resolved before I could make more pictures with the Ricoh.

The shutter was sticky below 1/200, apparently because of some congealed grease and dirt on the shutter blades.   Fortunately, it is pretty easy to get at the front of the shutter blades by removing the forward aluminum ring on the lens.  There are three little screws that just need to be loosened, giving access to the front lens group.  Unscrewing the front lens reveals the surface of the shutter blades.

I gently scrubbed the shutter blades with a q-tip soaked in electrical contact cleaner until I could see no more black stains on the surface.  It would have been nice to get at the back of the shutter blades as well, but that would require disassembling the whole lens and shutter.  So, after checking the infinity focus I reassembled everything and, after letting the shutter dry over night,  it seemed to be working fine at all speeds the next morning.

I loaded some film in the camera and discovered that there was one more problem to be resolved.  When I worked the advance lever on the bottom of the camera, the film advanced properly to the next frame, but a second small crank on the lever was needed to get the shutter to cock.  I then removed the back of the camera to examine the advance mechanism to see if there was some way to adjust it so that the film advance and shutter cocking could be accomplished with a single throw of the advance lever.

When the advance lever is cranked, the spring washer in the center of the picture rotates with the raised edge engaging the gear train in the camera body to advance the film by one frame and cock the shutter at the end of the process.  Removing the large screw in the middle of the washer allows removal of the washer which is connected to a toothed gear which rotates as the lever is cranked.  Since it was clear that the gear was just not traveling far enough to complete the process, the obvious thing to try was to reposition the gear slightly.  I did that by very slightly advancing the lever which moved the gear one or two teeth, and I then replaced the washer and gear and tightened down the screw.  That did get the advance working properly with a single throw.

So, time for the real test.  Thanks to the gift of a pile of old film from a friend I had a roll of ten-year-expired Agfa APX 100 to serve as my camera-testing guinea pig.  I managed to expose all 36 frames on a walk into Albuquerque's Old Town, shooting at two stops below box speed to compensate for the film's age.  Back home with the completed roll of film I mixed up a batch of Rodinal at 1:100 dilution and developed the APX 100 semi-stand for forty-five minutes.  I was pleased to see that the camera had worked nearly perfectly, with just a small bit of variation in frame spacing, possibly due to worn teeth on the brass gears.

I cannot make any judgments about the quality of the old APX 100 due to the film's age when I got it; I was just pleased it helped accomplish the job I gave it.  I'm curious, however, about how a fresh roll of the new APX 100 might perform, so maybe I'll try that for my next roll through the Ricoh 500.

I mentioned in my last two posts about the Ricoh 500 that the reason it took me so long to get started using the camera was that I had bought into some allegations about the quality of the Ricomat 4.5cm/f2.8 lens that I had seen on the net.  In fact, it is a very sharp 5-element design, and the Seikosha shutter is accurate and reliable, and one of the quietest leaf shutters I have in my collection.  The design, construction and materials throughout the camera are all first-rate.

In reviewing information about the Ricoh 500 available on the net I came across a 2002 blog post that I believe was the origin of often repeated misjudgments about the quality of the camera's lens.  The  blog author was Karen Nakamura; she was a good writer and a generally good source of information on old film cameras at the time when I was just getting started again with them.  In the case of the Ricoh 500, however, I think she was way off the mark.  Here is what she had to say about the Ricomat lens:

"Unfortunately, while the camera is nice to handle, the optics are clearly from the consumer end of the 1950s, very low in contrast. Nothing to write home about."

and

"The little known successor to the Ricoh 500 is the Ricoh 519. The same camera with a much better 45mm f/1.9 lens. I had never heard of it..."

Looking at the whole blog post, however, those damning judgments are unsupported.  There are no pictures shown from the camera.  There is no indication that the author had shot more than one roll of film before posting her opinions, nor did she apparently examine the camera closely to see if there were any correctible problems with the lens or shutter.  Furthermore, she accepted the idea that the Ricoh 519 had a "much better" lens based on the experience of someone who apparently had no basis for comparing the two cameras.

So, some lessons to take away:

• A lot of opinions one finds on the web about old film cameras are based on samples of one and are in reference to complex old machines with unknown histories.
• Ideas get propagated on the web with great ease, be they right or wrong.
• Bad information on the web has a long life.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of listings on ebay for the Ricoh 500.  Prices are all over the map, but examples of the camera can often be found going for as little as $20.  Take it from me; it's a bargain.

The Long View

The Hektor 135/4.5 lens that came with my Leica IIIc looks new and is very smooth in operation.  It has a fifteen-blade aperture which ensures velvety backgrounds.  The lens has a reputation for good central sharpness with less sharp outer margins.  I shot a roll of Kentmere 400 with the lens on the IIIc to get an idea of how it would perform for me.  The shots that were properly focused and framed looked ok to me, but that represented only about a quarter of the pictures on the roll.

The problem that was immediately obvious when I took the camera and lens out into the real world was that the not-very-bright rangefinder was not up to the job of achieving the degree of precision focus which the 135mm lens demands.  The other issue which only became clear after scanning my images was that a lot more care needs to be given to adjusting the parallax correction on the accessory viewfinder than I had imagined.  I managed to cut the legs off quite a few of my subjects.  Also complicating the process of using the camera and lens was the fact that the diopter adjustment for the rangefinder magnified window has to adjusted for nearly every shot to provide a clear view of the subject.

A technique which is sometimes useful with any long lens is to prefocus on a spot and then wait for the subject to move into position.  I stationed myself at an intersection in the Old Town Plaza and focused on a spot on the road in anticipation of catching a motorcycle I saw circling the Plaza.  As it turned out, the driver turned right instead of left, so I waited for the next opportunity at that location which turned out to be this dismounted couple of Harley enthusiasts.

The beam splitter mirror on the IIIc is actually ok for using with my normal and wide-angle lenses, but it will have to be replaced to make using the Hektor with the IIIc worthwhile.  I may try the lens on my Leica IIIa or my two Barnack-style Soviet cameras which all have rangefinders with better contrast.

Getting the proper performance from the Tewe accessory viewfinder needed for the Hektor will require some concentrated, disciplined practice.  The focal distance selected in each instance has to be replicated very precisely in adjusting the parallax setting of the viewfinder.  That challenge is further complicated by the facts that the scale on the lens is in feet, while that of the accessory finder is in meters, and the scale on the finder is not finely graduated.

Given the unblemished condition of my Hector lens I think it likely the original owner did not spend a lot of time mastering the juggling act required to get well-focused and well-framed images from the Hektor on the IIIc.  I also don't see a lot of images on line with Hektor tags.

Leica did offer alternatives to the challenge of using long lenses on the screw-mount rangefinder cameras.  The PLOOT system of the 1930s and the Visoflex of the 1950s were accessory reflex housings which provided a through-the-lens view when matched with special lenses. In the mid-1950s the Leica M rangefinder cameras. along with bayonet style lens mounts, offered auto-parallax compensation and framelines in the viewfinder for 28-135mm focal lengths.

Testing the 3C

I shot a roll of Kentmere 400 in the newly arrived Leica IIIc.  My main objective was to determine if there were any pinholes in the shutter curtains that needed mending.  There were no streaks or blotches on the negatives, and the shutter seemed smooth and accurate in operation.

All but one of my exposures were with the Elmar 3.5/50.  The lens has a blue tint, so it is likely that it is a post-war model that came along with the camera in 1946 or 1947.  Besides being a competent performer, the collapsible Elmar contributes significantly to the compactness of the camera.  The camera with the lens pushed in fits easily into a small zippered belt bag which makes it easy to carry when I'm out on the bicycle.

The last picture on the roll was made with the Soviet-era f2/50 Jupiter 8.  At f4 and 1/60 there seems to be no practical difference between the Jupiter and the Elmar and I am pretty sure the same will be true with my other Soviet normal lenses.  Nevertheless, it will be nice to be able to shoot the Leica IIIa and IIIc cameras with the proper German glass.  I am also looking forward to trying the 135mm Hector, for which I have no Soviet counterpart.

Nikon F

I picked up this Nikon F recently from Craigslist at a price good enough to where I could justify the purchase just for the plain eyelevel finder which I wanted to use on my F2.

As it turns out, the camera is in mechanically perfect condition sixty years after it was made.  I never thought I would have one, so I'm thrilled at the possibility of actually putting it to use.  I ran a quick test roll of Arista.Edu through the camera to verify my initial impressions.

Margaret has always had amazing hair.

Cate has turned eleven.

More to come.

Adventures in Photography

I found myself with some free time late in the morning, so I decided to walk over to Old Town with my Leica IIIa to which I had attached the Industar 22 lens, a Soviet copy of the collapsible Elmar.  I finished up the roll of TMAX 100 that was in the camera, making some pictures on the street, at the park and at the Art Museum.  New Mexico's mid-day light is often too harsh for photography, but on this day some scattered clouds softened the light enough to get some shots.

The photographs I made were not very exciting, but it still turned out to be a great photo walk.  I ran into Marco Wikstrom who is a member of our New Mexico Film Photographers group as well as a participant in the co-op which runs a photography gallery in Old Town.  I walked with him to the gallery which he was going to open for the day.  We looked at his photos which he has on exhibit now, and we talked about a couple of his current projects which include an upcoming trip to New Zealand.

On the way home I cut through Tiguex Park and came upon our friend Lana who was a neighbor and the first friend we made when we move to Albuquerque over ten years ago.  Lana and a friend were walking their dogs.  She recalled that I had made a picture of her and her dog, Buddy, some time ago and asked if I would make some more to bring things up to date.  So I did.

Buddy

When I got home I rewound the film back into the cassette in preparation for development; the film strip got caught at the end and broke, and the shutter by its sound was clearly not working right.  I removed the lens, set the shutter to Bulb and when I released the shutter I could see that there was a folded over piece of film stuck under the shutter curtain.  I managed to fish that out with some pliers, and everything seemed to be working properly after that.

I have been getting some thin negatives from my home development, so I decided to process semi-stand in 5ml of HC-110 in 650ml of distilled water.  It is hard to mess up with that combination and the negatives looked ok, but I may abandon HC-110 even though it has been a long-time favorite.  

In looking around on the web I have found that a lot of people are reporting problems with a number of Kodak developers including TMAX, HC-110 and Xtol.  Kodak has apparently had to make changes in the chemical components of the developers which has degraded both longevity and effectiveness.  Fortunately, there are alternatives.  I have Rodinal and PMK Pyro for black and white, and I am happy enough at present with Cinestill C-41 for color work.  I may also try LegacyPro LMAX from Freestyle which is said to be identical to TMAX developer before it was altered.

More from the Patent Etui

I walked around downtown Wednesday morning and visited the Roadrunner station on 1st St.  I was carrying the KW Patent Etui plate camera with the Tessar lens and loaded with Arista Edu Ultra 400. I was pleased to see in the pictures that I had gotten a bit better in framing my shots with the camera's wire frame viewfinder.  I processed the film with semi-stand development in Rodinal for one hour at 1:100 dilution.

The Rodinal processing gave me tonalities and grain that were not a bad fit with the subject, but I liked my results with this film better with the PMK Pyro developer that I used in my last outing with my other Patent Etui.  I have one more roll of the Arista film and I think I'll try it with HC-110 to see how that compares with the Rodinal and PMK processing.

KW Patent Etui

I've been doing a little repair work on my two Patent Etui plate cameras.  Both had some pinholes in the bellows which some black fabric paint took care of. Soon after I got my first one I dropped the back and broke the ground glass.  I purchased a replacement glass panel, but did not know how to put it in place.  A couple years later I got to looking more closely at the back and realized that I just needed to take out the four little screws in the  back corners which released the glass and the two little brackets that hold it in the frame.

Both cameras seem to be working well now.  I'm going to order some 120 film which I will use with the Rollex roll film back.

These pictures were made on some expired Tri-X in my Minolta X-700.