Jiffy Kodak V. P. - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 21 - Jiffy Kodak V. P. (Vest Pocket) camera purchased at the Westminster Antique Mall. I used my last roll of Rera Pan 100, getting poor images. This roll and the previous roll of Rera Pan did not produce the quality of negatives that I have gotten in the past. It could be the limitations of the two Vest Pocket style cameras, or maybe I need to get back to using Kodak D-76 developer instead of Caffenol. 

The Jiffy Kodak V. P. was made from the mid 1930's to the early 1940's. I fell in love with this camera when I saw it in the antique mall, with it's art deco design and the pop out bellows with the push of a button. It's quite compact when folded, being able to easily fit in a pocket, just as the name implies. It has very few settings - a fixed focus lens with instant and time, with a large and small aperture slider. The viewfinder is simply a fold out metal one, which worked fine in framing up my photos.

I shot the entire roll of film on my lunch hour in Baltimore one day last week. I wish the photos had turned out better, I went on different route than usual and would have liked to have better quality photos. Nonetheless, I like the grungy, antique look - I might be able to use them in a collage or mixed-media project.

I developed the roll in caffenol and scanned with Epson V500 photo using a nifty 127 film adapter that I purchased from ebay. I've been using it for a while now and it's so much easier to scan 127 negatives.

Kodak Instamatic 500 - 52 Cameres, 52 Weeks

Week 12 - Kodak Instamatic 500, the rolls royce of Instamatic cameras. A metal, solid camera made in Germany, with a button triggered pop out Schneider-Kreuznach f:2.8/38mm lens. A rangefinder camera with bulb to 500 shutter speeds with a built in light meter, though it was  suggested to use a light meter for correct exposure. Most Instamatic cameras feature only fixed focus and shutter speeds.

The Instamatic 500 uses 126 cartridge film with is no longer available, but if you have an empty 126 cartridge, you can refill it with the film of your choice. I watched a youtube video on how to refill the cartridge as well as looking at several websites with instructions. I chose to refill my cartridge with Kodak BW400CN, one of my favorite C-41 films, producing great black and white photographs that can be processed wherever C-41 is still done. In this case, in my kitchen with a Unicolor C-41 kit from Film Photography Project. I gathered my supplies for refilling the cartridge, sat down with my film changing bag and patiently followed the steps to get the film into the camera.

The instructions for shooting with the Instamatic 500 were to take a shot then advance two strokes of the film advance lever and a partial one to get the correct spacing of the frames. After developing the film, I think maybe I should have done just two strokes as there were large gaps between the frames. I think that you could get away with just taking a photo with each stroke as I accidentally shot two frames that way and they came out fine. One cool feature of the cartridge on the negatives is that there are sprockets on the top edge of the negatives. One video I saw, showed the bottom plastic removed from the film frame to produce sprockets on the bottom as well. 

Even though a light meter was suggested, I shot sunny 16 and most of the photos came out properly exposed. For the most part, the photos turned out the way I had framed them in the viewfinder. Focusing is measured in feet on the front of the lens with zone focusing on the bottom of the lens as well. I was on vacation this week, so I was able to take a walk around Hanover on a sunny, warm Wednesday to complete the roll of film. The negatives were scanned on Epson V500 Photo and levels adjusted in Photoshop.

Nikon Pronea S - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 9 camera is the Nikon Pronea S that I recently acquired from Ebay. It's an advanced photo system (APS) camera that uses APS film in cartridges that typically come in 25 exposures and sometimes 40 exposures. I used a cartridge of Kodak Advantix black and white 400 from a box of film that I've used previously and find to have a nice grain and contrast. I've tried this film in several different APS cameras and it's come out great in each of them. 

The Nikon Pronea S uses two 3 volt lithium ion batteries and automatically advances the film after each frame. It rewinds the film when reaching the end of the roll. The camera has an autofocus 30-60mm f1:4-5.6 lens and can use other nikon lenses.

It was a slightly rainy Sunday afternoon when I took the Nikon Pronea S out to shoot photos. I thought the 400 speed film would work on interior shots at the Civil War Museum in Gettysburg, but the shutter was too slow for hand-held shots in the low light of the museum. After visiting the museum, I drove over to the Evergreen Cemetery close by with the intention of getting photos of the monuments there. The Evergreen Cemetery is notable for being the burial place for Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. I took a quick walk around the cemetery road as it was starting to drizzle, it was lightly raining by the time I got back to my car. I finished the roll with photos around the house using the flash of our pets and my son, Isaac.

Overall, the camera worked well, which was great as the Ebay listing said that it was untested. The Kodak Avantix film was developed and scanned by The Darkroom.