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.

I have not ever used a 110 film camera so for this week's installment of 52 Cameras, 52 Weeks I loaded up the Minolta 110 Zoom SLR camera in my collection to take it for a spin. I acquired this camera in an ebay auction at the too good to pass up price of $6.35 with shipping.

I put the required batteries in and the light meter inside the viewfinder lit up and appeared to be functional with the adjustment of the unusually placed aperture settings. The camera is quite odd looking, being a flat slab typical of 110 cameras with the addition of a manual focus f4.5, 25-50mm zoom lens and the single-lens-reflex prism hump on top. The camera shoots in aperture priority with the light meter on the right of the lens with the aperture adjustment dial built in. In the viewfinder with a slight press upon the shutter button, left or right triangles light up indicating the direction to turn the aperture ring for correct exposure, which is achieved when no triangles light up. There is an exposure compensation slider of +/-1 on top of the camera above the aperture ring. The camera has a hot shoe to enable use of an external flash, though I didn't test the camera with one.

I used a roll of expired Kodak Gold film and not being equipped to develop the roll myself (I don't have a Paterson 110 film developing reel), I needed to shoot the entire roll over the weekend and get it in the mail first thing Monday morning to The Darkroom. I have seen instructions on how to make a 110 developing reel out of a regular Paterson reel, and plan to make one, but that's another project.

I started off with some shots on Friday's lunch hour at work in the Mount Vernon area then down to Westminster, Maryland on Saturday. I finished the roll on Sunday morning. The scans are back from The Darkroom, and I like the way these photos look. I would like to try this camera with Lomography Black and White Orca and the Lomography Lobster Redscale 110.