Kodak Brownie Bull's Eye - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 34 - Kodak Brownie Bull's Eye purchased from a seller on Craigslist for $10 sometime in the past year. When I met the seller he explained that it was his parents' camera that he had found in the closet, and he wondered what I would do with it. I explained that I liked to collect old cameras and try to use them if possible.

I had recently purchased a lot of expired 620 film from ebay and planned to use what I thought was an unopened box of expired Verichrome Pan for the Brownie Bull's Eye, but when I opened the box (which was not sealed) the film had already been exposed. This was actually quite exciting and I developed the film later that night - see additional blog post with the results. I went and grabbed another one of the expired rolls of 620 film, this time Kodacolor. 

The Kodak Brownie Bull's Eye uses, of course, 620 roll film, but I have used respooled 120 Lomography 100 color film in it once before. It has a Kodak Twindar Lens that focuses from 4 feet to infinity with zones of scenes, groups, and close-ups. There are shutter speeds of instant and long exposure with an eye level viewfinder. I decided to go for a walk around Baltimore, near my office on my lunch break and proceeded to shoot the entire roll of 8 photos. After seeing the results developed in Kodak D-76, I've decided that for the rest of my photo project I will use fresh film when possible.

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.

Maryland Steam Show with Two Classic Cameras

Brenda and I went out the Maryland Steam Show in Arcadia, Maryland on Saturday to see the wonderful old steam engines and browse the flea market for halloween costume parts. I love to watch the antique steam engines being driven around the grounds of the show, it reminds of the times I went to the show when I was a kid. I brought along my thirty-plus year old Pentax K1000 loaded with Arista 400 film to try out. I'm planning to develop some prints in my newly set-up darkroom in the basement next week and I needed some good shots to experiment with. I also brought the Ansco Panda 620 camera that I bought at the Rinely Yard Sale for a whopping fifty cents filled with respooled Ilford Delta 400 film. After walking around the steam engines in awe and shooting nearly all my photos we started in on the massive flea market to search for parts for this year's halloween costumes - Steampunk. There were lots of tables filled with brass valves and fittings, old gauges and watches, odd looking hand tools and other random bobs and bits. We even picked up an old english riding helmet that Brenda plans to convert into some sort of Steampunk headgear. She has been busy down in the basement working on accessories for her costume, I need to get busy with mine. I developed the film with Arista Liquid Film Developer and scanned the negatives with my Epson V500 Photo Scanner. A few of the images are show here.