Ondu MKII 6x6 Pinhole Camera - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 24 Camera - Ondu MKII 6x6 PInhole Camera received as a reward for backing the Ondu MKII Pinhole Camera Kickstarter campaign. I love pinhole photography - the wide angles, the slightly distorted views, and the occasional sun flare. I truly admire the pinhole photographers that can achieve these otherworldly images. I can't decide if I like black and white pinhole photos with smooth tones or the sometimes wildly colorful sun aberrations achieved in color pinhole photos. 

The Ondu MKII 6x6 Pinhole is a beautifully made wooden camera with a new design where magnets hold the camera back in place as well as the film advance knobs and film spool holders. Their Kickstarter campaign had a few setbacks causing a delay in shipping the rewards, but I must say the camera was well worth the wait. Everything was light tight and the first roll of film through the camera worked great.

I chose to load my Ondu MKII 6x6 with expired Kodak Portra 160NC and I went pinholing on my lunch break on a beautiful day last week. I walked to one of my usual places for lunch, the Mount Vernon area, with the Washington Monument and the Gothically styled architecture of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. I prefer when the skies are partly sunny with puffy clouds, they look awesome in pinhole photos. It was very bright outside, without a cloud in the sky, but I did achieve aberrations in a couple of photos, not intentionally, but that was a bonus. I also shot a few photos in the backyard and of course, a front porch portrait of Brenda.

The film roll was developed with the Unicolor C41 kit from Film Photography Project and scanned on Epson V500 Photo flatbed scanner.

Kodak Brownie Flash 20 - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 17 Camera - Kodak Brownie Flash 20 purchased at one of the local antique malls in Hanover. This week's post is a little late as I didn't finish shooting with this camera until yesterday. I was not feeling well last weekend, then it rained for a few days, but I managed to get this week's roll finished.

The film I used was from my batch of expired Kodak Portra 160NC given to me by a friend who found it in an old unused darkroom. The first photo on this roll was of course, one of our house, a frequent subject when trying out a newly acquired camera. I was not up to going out last Sunday though it was gorgeous out (and also Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day!). When Saturday of this week came I was excited to get back out there and decided to hop in my car and drive to a few spots that I had been wanting to photograph. First stop was our lovely Mt. Olivet Cemetery but seeing that there was a funeral about to take place, I quickly drove away. I then remembered that I hadn't seen my son's Eagle Scout project in a while and thought that would make a nice photo. For his project six years ago, he coordinated the efforts to replace the roof and repair an old historic spring house at the retirement village. It looked really nice with fresh landscaping and blooming shrubs, it made nice photos.

I then drove south of Hanover and darted into the parking lot of a pit beef joint and shot a photo of an enormous painted metal chicken that I've driven past many times, hoping the owner wouldn't come chase me away. Whew! I made it. Further south I turned on a country road to see a church and barn. While taking those photos, I noticed a small prayer garden, lush with greenery and dogwood blooms in the background.

I headed back home for a lunch break, then the sun came out! I drove back to Mt. Olivet cemetery and made a few photos and the roll was finished. Now I can concentrate on this week's camera!

Film was developed with Unicolor C-41 kit and scanned with Epson V500 photo.

Kodak Six-20 Brownie Junior - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 13 - The Kodak Six-20 Brownie Junior with respooled, expired Ilford FP4. I picked up this camera for $4.00 at the Maryland Steam Show flea market back in September. The skin was peeling off of the back a little, but the shutter appeared to be functional, plus the faceplate of the camera had a nice Art Deco Design. 

it's a simple box camera that was made in the late 1930's to early 1940's. It has two aperture settings, f22 and f11 and two shutter speeds - instant and bulb. I found the f22 setting in bright sun to be quite sharp besides the massive light leaks on either side of the frame. I had taken the camera out on a lunch time walk in Baltimore on a cool sunny day. I was able to take a few candid street shots with it as it's not as conspicuous when shooting this camera while looking down into the viewfinder. I did have one woman ask if I was shooting with "that old camera" and could I still get film developed. I told her that yes, I was shooting photos with it and that I develop my own film, though film developing is still available from online labs. I was disappointed that I could only get 5 photos out of the 8, the winder jammed partially through the roll. I took the camera home and to my changing bag to retrieve the jammed film. It took some prying, but I managed to get the film out of the camera and successfully developed this morning. 

The roll was developed in Caffenol and scanned on Epson V500 Photo.

Imperial Mark XII Flash - 52 Cameras

For week six of 52 Cameras - 52 Weeks, I have a camera that's been on my shelf for a very long time, the Imperial Mark XII 620 film camera. It is a plastic camera made in the 1950's by the Herbert-George Co. in Chicago and was made in various colors. It makes 6x6 photographs using a fixed-focus, single shutter speed, single aperture lens. I respooled Lomography Redscale 100 film as, according to a blog post I read on the Film Photography Project website, February is Redscale Film month. I found that shooting with redscale film with this camera requires lots of light, best to shoot with plentiful sunshine to get the best photos. I shot a few of the photos of favorite subjects on my daily commute home from my job in Baltimore, MD. The Prettyboy Dam is not too far off my journey home, I've made a quick side trip there on many occasions to snap photos with other cameras. The daylight was running out on the day I was there, and the photos I shot didn't turn out as well as they could have. I also have a favorite cemetery angel that is along the roadway at a country church that I pass each day, she has been the subject of many camera and film tests over the years.

For the remainder of the photos, Brenda and I packed a backpack picnic and headed out to Codorus State Park on Sunday with the intention of hiking the La Ho Trail around Lake Marburg, but upon arriving we thought the better of it with the muddy conditions from the recent snow melt. We ate our backpack picnic  by the lake and then drove out to Glen Rock, PA to grab some photos of the town. There is also a place called Ruins Hall with lots of graffiti that I saw previously when we rode through Glen Rock on the Steam Into History train from New Freedom, PA. 

The film was processed using a Unicolor C-41 kit from the Film Photography Project store and scanned with Epson V500 Photo.

No. 1A Autographic Kodak Jr - 52 Cameras

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

I dug out a nifty old No. 1A Autographic Kodak Jr. 116 film camera from my collection for this week's featured camera. The model I have is one that was manufactured in the 1920's and features an f7.9 lens with Time, Bulb, 25 and 50 shutter speeds. The focusing range is from 6 feet to 100 feet with a maximum f-stop of 45. The camera is in great condition and I checked it over fully before researching what I might need to do to get it to work with 120 film. I found several postings online and a youtube video of a hack using zip ties positioned at one end of the 116 spools to better fit the 120 film. This creates five photos from one roll of film, though I made a mistake when counting the frames which caused the first two shots to overlap. I also experienced light leaks in the last two frames, probably because the film was not wound tightly enough at the end of the spool. 

I thought it would be neat to get a few photos of the aftermath of the huge snowstorm we had last weekend, but I didn't really see any interesting photo opportunities when we walked around town last Sunday. I wound up shooting a couple of portrait photos of Brenda in my studio for the last few shots on the roll. I developed the film in Caffenol C - I've had good results from the recipe that I found on the Photojojo website a couple of years ago when I first started developing my own film. The process is to mix 4 3/4 teaspoons of super washing soda in 9 ounces of room temperature water and combine it with 7 1/2 teaspoons of instant coffee and 3/4 teaspoon of vitamin C powder mixed with 9 ounces of water. I develop for 9 minutes, use a water stop bath, and fix for 5 minutes. I use the cheapest instant coffee I can get, usually at the Dollar Tree. It seems to work really well with the Shanghai GP3 100 pan film that I buy from ebay to test out the cameras in my collection. Scanning was done on Epson V500 photo.

1938 Agfa Karat Oppar f4.5

At this year's family Thanksgiving celebration, I received a camera gift from a relative that was quite a surprise. My sister-in-law gave me her uncle's camera that he used in World War II as a reporter, a 1938 Agfa Karat 35mm camera. The camera has an Oppar f4.5 lens with bellows and uses two rapid film cassettes that can shoot just 12 photos. It was stored in a leather 1943 Eastman Kodak camera case and appears to be in working order. The focusing ring seemed to be stuck, so I took out a few screws and and loosened it and put a drop or two of household oil in it and is seems to be turning a little better now. It only had one empty film cassette, so I found a second one on ebay along with a few expired 12 exposure rolls of film to give it a try. I will need to transfer the film to the empty cassette and load it into the camera to feed into the second cassette. Fortunately there's a video on how to load the camera on YouTube. My sister-in-law gifted me with the camera as she knew that I would truly appreciate and care for it and it would probably have wound up in the donation bin at the Salvation Army otherwise. I'm still waiting for the second film cassette, but I should be able to get out and shoot with it on my upcoming vacation. I have several cameras coming my way, hopefully in time for my Christmas vacation. I backed a Kickstarter for the new Ondu pinhole line of cameras, pre-ordered a Lomo'Instant Wide camera from Lomography and ordered a neon green Holga camera from B&H when I heard the Holga factory had shut down last week. And this week, a good friend gifted me with a stash of expired Kodak Portra 160NC from an old dark room, both 120 and 35.

Enchanted Forest through a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Camera

This past Saturday, my friend Elaine and I attended the 60th Birthday Celebration of Enchanted Forest at Clark's Elioak Farm in Howard County, Maryland. The farm is geared toward young children with activities such as a petting zoo, pony rides, and hay rides. I was only mildly disappointed that I was over the weight limit to ride the ponies, but the goats in the petting zoo were amusing and just way too cute. The main reason I was there was to see the restored nursery rhyme structures from the long closed Enchanted Forest Theme Park. I have a too distant but fond memory of going to the Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City on my very first field trip in elementary school way back in first grade. I have vague memories of that trip with the more vivid ones being of the giant slide on an island and my visit to the souvenir shop to buy a giant pair of Enchanted Forest sunglasses. My friend and I enjoyed looking at the brightly painted structures throughout the farm, but it was really hot outside! I brought along my Pentax Q10 mirrorless camera and my modified Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash box camera with a flipped lens. The modification is done by removing the film carrier inside the camera and popping out the lens and putting it in backwards. This creates photos that have blurred edges with a sharp center with a somewhat dreamy effect. I thought this would be perfect for the brightly colored nursery rhyme characters and buildings that have been restored. I developed the photos with the Unicolor C-41 kit from the Film Photography Project Store and the resulting images are above.