Kodak Jr. Six-16 Series III

November 2, 2016

Week 43 - Kodak Jr. Six-16 Series III folding 616 film camera. I'm not quite sure where I acquired this camera, it's been on my shelf for years looking rather grand with it's folding bellows and lens. Speaking of the lens, I mistakenly thought this was a Kodak Kodex No. 1 camera as labeled on the lens, but on further inspection found the tiny nameplate under the lens (had to get my magnifying glass for these aging eyes!) The f8.8 Lens focuses from 4 ft to infinity with shutter speeds of Time, Bulb, 25, 50, and 100. There doesn't appear to be a cable release thread or tripod socket so I'm not sure about using it in bulb mode.

The camera uses 616 film which I didn't have, so I respooled 120 film onto the 616 spool with two zip ties at one end to fill in the empty space on the spool. I've attached a photo showing the size difference between the 616 and 120 spools, and where I placed the zip ties. This places the numbers for 16 frames in the frame counting window and I used 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 for 5 perfectly spaced photos on the roll. The resulting negatives are quite large, very sharp, but there appeared to be a white glare in a small area of the some of the photos.

I took the Kodak Jr. Six-16 on a drive around town to some of the areas that I haven't been to in a while. The focusing was pretty accurate with the focusing ring on the lens. Framing was a little off due to the smaller size of the film, I should have aimed a little higher to get more of the sky in the photos.

Developing was done in caffenol for 9 minutes and scanned on Epson V500 Photo.

Argus Minca 28 - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

May 24, 2016

Week 20 - Argus Minca 28, purchased at the Black Rose Antique Mall in Hanover, PA for $8.00. The Argus Minca 28 uses 828 film which is essentially roll film the same size as 35 mm film but with fewer frames on the roll and without sprockets. The roll I purchased online was pricey - $18, and was respooled Tri-X 400 with previously used backing paper and spool. I decided to purchase the roll with the intention of reusing the backing paper and spool in future experiments with 828 film. The Argus Minca 28 was produced 1947-48ish and was made under several other badges - the Delco 828 and Camro 28.

I brought the camera along on our vacation to Rehoboth Beach, DE and also took it on a trip to Berlin, MD. I missed the first photo on the roll, sometimes those number 1's are hard to distinguish from the arrow markings at the beginning of a roll of film. The film was very difficult to wind through the camera, I'm not sure if it was the design of the camera or something with the roll of film itself. I thought I might break the film but I finally got through the roll and finished taking it off the spool in a changing bag.

I developed the film in Caffenol, but perhaps I should mix up a new batch of D-76 for future black and white developing. Negatives were scanned with Epson V500 Photo.

No. 1A Autographic Kodak Jr - 52 Cameras

January 28, 2016

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.