Argus C3

Week 52 - Argus C3 purchased from ebay last year that I've used once before. The camera originally came in a leather case with a strap and I was carrying it around using the strap and the strap broke, causing the camera to crash to a concrete floor. Of course the camera being very sturdy, was not damaged but the film advance became jammed and while trying to unjam it, the sprockets on the film roll were torn. Thus, it was not possible to spool the film onto a Paterson reel and the roll was ruined. I thought I would give it another go, and use the camera to finish up my 2016 Film Camera Project.

The choice of film for this final roll was Film Photography Project's FPP EDU 200, I wanted to stick with a black and white film, since I have a fresh batch of Kodak D-76 mixed up, and I chose the 200 speed film because some of the slower shutter speeds were sticky on the camera. I thought if I shot on a partly sunny to sunny day, I could shoot Sunny 16 and stick with the faster shutter speeds. I ventured out and about town with my camera bag and two other instant cameras on an unseasonably warm winter day this week, excited that I was going to finish this project before the end of the year.

First I drove into downtown and parked, then walked around a couple of blocks near Merlin's Coffee shop, but I was just not inspired by too much there, so I drove out to Codorus State Park's Lake Marburg area. The water is really low right now, exposing some nice textured landscapes that are normally under water. I love shooting at Lake Marburg, especially with black and white films this time of the year. I had also packed my Lomo'Instant camera (the original, not the Wide or the Automat) loaded with the new Fuji Instax MIni Monochrome. The monochrome instant photos came out super and I was excited to see what was going to come out of the Argus C3 after developing. I was mindful of the film advancing on the Argus, so that I didn't have a repeat of the last roll of film with the torn sprockets.

I really enjoyed those couple of hours, I think this time of the year is actually my favorite to shoot, I like the contrasty photos that can be achieved with barren landscapes before the winter snows start falling. There also are not a lot of people around the local parks this time of year, not that I don't want them in my photos, I just prefer the solitude of composing photos surrounded by quiet.

I promptly unloaded the Argus when returning home to get the film developed and scanned for the final blog post on this project before the end of the year. After spending the past year shooting lots of different cameras and films, I'm ready to narrow it down to a few that I really like. For the coming year, I want to focus more on shooting with my instant cameras and getting into to my as yet unused darkroom and make prints. Experimenting with caffenol printing and making cyanotypes is on my list as well. I want to buy less crappy cameras and add just a few higher quality ones that I've had my eye on for a while. I have another year long project lined up that is a bit different than 2016 - look for an upcoming post for the details.

Kodak Brownie Fiesta

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Week 51 - Kodak Brownie Fiesta Camera in original box with exposed roll of film found by a friend in a Goodwill Store in West Virginia. I successfully developed the roll of film and posted about it previously in "A Visit To Summersville Dam". 

The Kodak Brownie Fiesta is a simple point and shoot plastic camera using 127 roll film that was made in the early 1960's. I had another roll of Triple Print Film that I had purchased in a lot from ebay to use in the Fiesta camera. The last roll turned out pretty well and I was hopeful this one would as well. 

Nearing the end of my year long 2016 film camera project, I've found it difficult to find the time to finish it up with the hustle and bustle of the holidays. I started the roll in the beginning of last week by stopping on my way to work at the MICA campus on Mount Royal Avenue in Baltimore. I grabbed a few shots there and then in my hometown to finish up the roll. The camera is very easy, just frame up the shot and press the button. The camera makes a sort of springy sound when the shutter fires, seeming like the photo would come out blurry. 

The photos seemed to come out in focus, but the quality of the shots was not as good as the previous roll. I had some difficulty removing the tape at the end of the roll of film in the changing bag and ripped the corner off one of the frames. I developed the roll in Kodak D-76 stock solution and scanned the negatives with Epson V500 Photo.

Spartus 35

Week 50 - Spartus 35 with leather case purchased at the Black Rose Antique Mall in Hanover, PA for $12. I was drawn to this simple camera with the sans serif font spelling out the name around the lens, on a day that I was hankering to buy another camera. I didn't want to spend much money but wanted to find a nice little usable one to wind down my 2016 film camera project. The Spartus 35 is well, a 35 mm camera, made by the Herold Company of Chicago. It has a lens with focusing from 4 feet to infinity, time and instant lever, and aperture settings of Bright, Hazy, Cloudy, and Dull, with a tripod mount on the bottom.

I loaded the camera with Film Photography Project's FPP EDU 200, but when I turned the film advance knob, it kept turning, so I wasn't sure how many frames had been advanced until I noticed the film counter dial rotating as I was advancing. The film is supposed to advance one frame at time with a sprocket release button being pressed to advance to the next frame. This one apparently was not working, but I correctly observed that the film dial turned one full rotation between frames but unfortunately I had wasted a half a roll of film or so by then. I managed to get 10 frames out of this roll on a nice lunch time walk around my office in Baltimore.

It's getting increasingly difficult to find fresh material to photograph within a lunchtime walking distance around my office, and its too dark by the time I get home in the evenings to go out and shoot. I do still enjoy photography with the various cameras that I've been using this year, but as the year is winding down to a close, I feel that my project will also be closing at the end of the year as well.

I developed the roll in Kodak D-76 stock solution for 9 minutes and scanned the negatives with Epson V500 Photo. I think the photos came out nicely exposed with sharp focus where I correctly guessed the focusing distance.

Rollei Prego 90

Week 39 - Rollei Prego 90 that Brenda purchased for $20 on one of her antique shopping stops a few weeks ago. The camera is a kind of clunky point and shoot with a Schneider-Kreuznach AF-Variogon f=28-90mm HFT Makro lens. There is a panorama setting, various modes - macro/closeup, bulb, zone focus, portrait zoom, fuzzy zoom, step zoom, multiple exposure, continuous shooting, and also exposure compensation, red eye reduction, remote control and self timer. I would like to fully explore all the options on this camera and try it with different films.

I used RetroChrome 160 from my stash in the fridge, and I'm not sure what happened when I developed it, except maybe my E6 kit is expired. It was only the fourth roll that I've used with the kit, but I did mix it up a couple of months ago. Otherwise, the photos appear sharp and crisp aside from the wild colors in them. The problem with shooting a new camera each week is that I'm not able to fully explore the features of each one and give each a thorough workout. But the purpose of this personal film project is to try out each camera to see if they are functional and revisit the ones that I find interesting at a later date. The potential of this camera's features looks very good, though it's a bit larger for the pocket than say, the Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 80 in my collection, which is much more compact and sleek.

I was behind a week on my film camera project due the amount of time that I was spending at my mother's place, but on Sunday, Brenda and I took a morning drive over to Gettysburg. It's one of my favorite places for a quick drive from Hanover, and great for landscape photos. I tried to carefully compose shots for this camera and the previous week's camera, but as you can see, they don't look as nice as they could with the botched E6 processing. Perhaps a nice black and white film would be better. The Rollei was easy to use, it has auto focus and of course the 28-90 zoom lens, with a LCD screen on top for the various settings and modes. It does require two CR123A batteries, which were a bit tricky to find locally, but Brenda found them at the Rite Aid Pharmacy.

Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 531A

Week 38 - Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 531A received as a gift from my sister-in-law. She gave it to me stating that her father had given it to her years ago, but she knew that I would get more joy out of owning it than she would. It's a very nice piece to add to my collection, but I was more excited that it was still in working condition and that I could put a few rolls through it. I've had the camera for several years and this week is not the first time that I have used it, but it really is a nice little camera so I took it off the shelf.

I loaded the Super Ikonta 531A with expired Kodak Portra 160NC (I know I said I wasn't going to use any more expired film for this project, but this batch of film has been tested). The camera has a Compur Rapid shutter with speeds of 1 to 500, a Carl Zeiss Tessar Jena f3.5 lens. The shutter release has a lock which will not allow a double exposure. There are 16 6x4.5mm frames on a roll of 120 size film. The shutter must be cocked before pressing the button and sometimes I forget to do that, thinking the camera is jammed. As best as I can determine from my web search, it is a prewar model made in the late 1930's.

My mother is under home hospice care, so I have been spending a lot time at her house, but this past weekend Brenda and I had a break for the day. It was a beautiful fall-feeling morning as we drove out to Gettsyburg and went on some of our favorite parts of the auto tour. I had to catch up on my camera project so I was shooting with this camera and the following week's camera, a Rollei Prego 90. Look for those photos later this week. I tried to capture some interesting landscape photos with a few cannons thrown in and of course, a couple of photos of the always lovely, Brenda. We happened upon a cannon firing demonstration by Confederate Reenactors and I was able to snap a photo of a Union Reenacting couple.

The roll was developed at home with the FPP C-41 Home Kit and scanned on Epson V500 Photo.

Disderi Robot 3

Week 37 - Disderi Robot 3 action sampler plastic toy camera purchased last year from ebay for $10 including shipping. The Disderi Robot 3 has 3 plastic lenses that look like the face of a robot, available in several color combinations. The aperture is f8, shutter speed 1/100th of a second, with each of the three lenses firing sequentially on shutter release. There is no battery required. The resulting photographs have three images per frame, a larger one on top with two smaller ones underneath. The viewfinder is simply a fold up plastic frame, which is really not very accurate, just point in the direction of your subject. 

I loaded the Disderi Robot 3 with a recently expired roll of Fuji Superia 400 and shot a few photos around the house. I carried it in my bag all week, it's very light, and used the rest of the roll on a walk around Baltimore on my lunch break. Street photography looks pretty cool in the 3 frame photos, especially with urban landscape patterns. It does make a grinding mechanical noise when firing the shutter, so don't scare anyone when taking a photo! It really is just a fun little camera when you want to get some different photos from your usual routine.

I processed the film in a Film Photography Project C-41 kit, and scanned on Epson V500 Photo with spot dusting in Photoshop.

Olympus OM10 - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 33 - Olympus OM10 purchased from someone on Craigslist for $10. It came with a 70-205mm Vivitar Zoom lens, but I purchased a 50mm Olympus Zuiko f1.8 lens for it from ebay for $20 with free shipping. The camera came with 36 rolls of exposed color film that I plan to develop in the coming weeks (it could even take months). I'm not sure if the photos will turn out as the camera and film were in a storage shed for years.

The film for this week was expired Kodak Portra 160NC and the photos were shot around Baltimore, MD and Codorus State Park, Hanover, PA. My favorite photos are the sunrise over Lake Marburg and the field landscape with big puffy clouds.

I mixed a new batch of C-41 Chemicals for this roll, scanned with Epson V500 Photo and Spot Dusted and adjusted for levels in Photoshop. Adjusting for levels is simply scanning the film on automatic, opening the file in Photoshop and selecting the lightest and darkest points in the levels dialog box. This brings the colors into range with the least amount of manipulation of the file.

Kodak Brownie Special Six-16 - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 32 - Kodak Brownie Special Six-16 that's been sitting in my collection for years. I bought this box camera on an antiquing trip years ago because of it's unusual flat triangular shape. I had planned to respool a roll of expired Ilford FP4 onto a 616 spool, but I searched the interwebs first to see if there was another solution. I found a blogpost by Peter Lutz on the Brownie Camera Page about converting a 116/616 camera to shoot with 120 film. He described how you could make a new mask to get 16 photos from a roll of 120 film. I only used part of his tip, to use trimmed down wall anchors in the ends of a 120 roll of film to fit in the 116/616 spool area of the camera. It worked very well, I only should have calculated the image area better to compose my shots. The other miscalculation on my part was starting on frame 1, when I should have started on frame 3, then 6, 9, 12, and 15. My first photo was cut off but I still got 5 full frames, with an extra 1/2 frame. 

Made in the USA around 1940, the camera is basically a point and shoot box camera, with a simple viewfinder. It has two focusing settings of 6-15 feet and beyond 15 feet, with a Time and Instant shutter speed. The body is made of metal with a leatherette coating. Mine was peeling away a bit, so I tacked it down with rubber cement.

Photos were made at Gettysburg, on and near the Little Round Top and Culp's Hill areas of the battlefield. The sky was filled with puffy white clouds, which I tried to capture in the photos. I did forget to set the focusing lever in the shots that I made, sometimes I get caught up in composing a photo and forget to make sure I'm doing everything correctly. Nonetheless, there are photos, they don't seem to be out of focus, though maybe a little fogged. Again this week, I had a terrible time getting the film on the Paterson reel, as it was very humid. The film was processed in Kodak D-76 for 9 1/2 minutes, 1+1 dilution. Negatives were scanned with Lomography Digitaliza 120, which I found is better for larger size images than the stock Epson V500 120 holder. Levels were adjusted in Photoshop to capture the full tonal range of the negative.

Retro Slide Show!

Back in March of this year, I purchased an E6 (slide film) home developing kit from the Film Photography Project so that I could try making my own slides from the box of RetroChrome film in my fridge. I'll be honest here, I started developing my own film a while ago because it is much less expensive than mail order. I gradually dipped my toe in home developing when I read about caffenol developing several years ago and have progressed to other types of developing. I previously had a reliable develop-only option available at the local CVS, but they stopped in-store processing last year. The other local option is Walmart, which no longer returns your negatives, which I would scan on my Epson V500 Photo.

After having success with caffenol, Kodak D-76, and a couple of Unicolor C-41 kits, I wanted to try E6 processing at home - the cost of 1 mail order roll of slide film processing is almost as much as the kit costs, but I would be able to develop more rolls myself with the kit. I was really excited when I pulled the first rolls of slide film out of the tank to see beautiful positive images and couldn't wait to get them into slide mounts and project them. I scoured Craigslist for an inexpensive slide projector, finding a Vivitar 3000AF model with two extra trays and an extra bulb for $25. The drive to get the projector was over an hour away, but with the assurance of the owner that it was fully functional, Brenda I drove to Marysville, PA for the purchase. I was a bit annoyed that the owner wouldn't stop talking about the projector, when I had already told her that I wanted to buy it. Just take my money already and let us be on our way!

Now that we had the projector and fresh slides, I invited a friend of mine up for a home slide show and asked her to bring along some slides of her artwork that she had made years ago. Everything was great with the projector and the slides, but our makeshift screen from a large piece of foam board left a little to be desired. So, that evening, I was back on Craigslist looking for a portable projection screen and found one for $20. We picked it up along our Sunday drive around Lancaster County the next day.

The last thing I needed was more slide mounts - I bought a box of 500 Hama DSR one piece plastic mounts, which are very easy to use. I will be able to mount about 20 rolls of film with those, and I plan to be on the lookout for old slides at yard sales and flea markets for future home slide shows.

Imperial Delta 127 4x4 - 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks

Week 27 - Imperial Delta 127 4x4 camera purchased in an antique store in Berlin, MD for $5. It had a roll of film in it, one of the reasons I bought it. I didn't have much hope of recovering any photos as I had opened the camera with the roll midway and I'm sure many others had done the same. 

I had one roll of 127 film left, a July 1970 expired roll of Kodacolor X that had come in a box with another camera. Kodacolor X can no longer be processed as color film as the chemistry is no longer available, so I thought I would develop it in Kodak D-76. I had success recovering photos with D-76 on another roll of Kodacolor X from a different camera.

Brenda and I went on a Saturday morning drive last weekend to some of the places from my childhood. We drove down Falls Road with a stop at Graves Run M.E. church, a small country church that hasn't been active in my memory, but we walked by it daily on our route to and from the school bus stop. It has a small cemetery where we used to play (I know - we didn't have internet and video games then). It has an old outhouse in the back and doesn't have a parking lot as I think the last time the church had services was probably in the days of horse transportation.

After that stop, we continued on to Beckleysville and St. Abraham's where I attended church as a kid. My aunt and uncle lived in Beckleysville in what was once the local hotel, actually a smallish house that had a couple of bedrooms with a winding staircase. Beckleysville was a bustling paper mill town and quite populated in the late 1800's but was just a small intersection while I was growing up.

Brenda and I continued out to Beckleysville Bridge over the Prettyboy Reservoir where my dad used to take us fishing. We would sit on the bridge at night over the water and fish for crappies with the light of a Coleman lantern hanging close down to the surface of the water. The light seemed to draw the fish to our lines and we would have a feast of pan fried fish the next day for dinner. I find the waters of the Prettyboy Reservoir somewhat mysterious and a little creepy, I'm not sure of the reason, except maybe it's my fear of deeper waters. We continued our drive around to Prettyboy Dam further south of the Beckleysville Bridge. I was quite fascinated with the dam while I was growing up, again finding it somewhat mysterious, partly because of the stories surrounding the origin of the name. One story is that there was a farmer with a beautiful white colt named Prettyboy that was frightened by lightning and thunder from a sudden storm. The horse, seeking shelter along the banks of the Gunpowder, which forms the Prettyboy reservoir, slipped and perished in the Gunpowder stream.

We stopped by my old school, Fifth District Elementary, and snapped a photo there and then continued out Mt. Carmel Road to Hampstead, Maryland where we stopped at a farmers market to pick up fresh vegetables for the week.

I finished the roll of film with a few shots on a short walk around town and processed it in Kodak D-76 for ten minutes. I pulled out my bag of tricks and scanned the negatives as positive film and inverted them in Photoshop to recover the photographs shown here.