Isolette III Overhaul part 3

In the last post, I left off after assembling the aperture. The shutter leaves go together in a similar fashion only they are all identical and there are only 5. If you took pictures before (I document almost every step with my phone) it should be easy to put it back together like it was. Now the trick is to put the two 'halves' back together. It took me a couple of tries since the shutter leaves tend to move out of position, but I got it back together without too much hassle. One thing I didn't check before putting the screws in was the self timer. It turns out that it doesn't stay cocked. These are notoriously fickle on many old shutters and I don't plan on taking any 'selfies' with this camera, so for now I'm going to leave it. I might change my mind later and take it apart again, but that will take a little more disassebly of gears and whatnot.

I had some trouble getting the front lens element screwed in to the middle element assembly. It just wouldn't start on the threads. The threads are VERY fine and the metal is a little on the soft side, so forcing it is going to end only in sorrow. I sent an email to Jurgen over at Certo6.com and he was very kind and gracious enough to give me this advice.

Hmmmm, happens often with Zeiss front lens units... almost never with Agfas.... hmmmm. Well, when I do run across this annoyance, I make sure I really really clean the threads, first with q-tips and a solvent. Then use a dremel wire brush ( without glass in the brass holders ) to really make sure its clean... this is for both the front lens unit and the middle one that the front screws into. In both cases having removed the glass. If it is still tight or "can't find the thread", then I have to use a very fine polish compound on the front lens unit and work it till it goes in and smoothly. This is really tough on the hands and must be done with the glass in the holders and having the correct size clamp tool on the middle unit ( which is being screwed into ).

A little extra time cleaning the threads with solvent and q-tips and adding a tiny bit of lithium grease did the trick. I got the front element on and screwed all the way down. Notice that the focusing ring isn't on yet. That will be the last step, recollimating the infinity position.

Next I needed to reassemble the top. Before that, I needed to loosen up the rangefinder wheel. It was frozen with the same green grease that tends to freeze the focusing helicoid. I carefully dripped a little bit of Ronsonol lighter fluid being extra super careful that none got anywhere near the mirrors. The coatings on the mirrors are delicate and if you mess them up, your rangefinder is toast. The rest of the top assembly is pretty straight forward. My model has the focusing range reminder on the left, so those small screws took a little finesse to get into their tiny holes.

Now the shutter and the body are assembled. On to the bellows!!

Fist I had to get the old bellows out. There is a roller bar on either side of the film mask. These are just held in by the tension of the metal at the top and bottom on the pins at the ends of the rollers. Push up at the top and down at the bottom near the roller and it will drop out. The rollers are unique, so note which one goes where. Next the film mask needs to come out. There are two screws on either side in the film roll wells. Remove those. Now there is a bit of glue holding the bellows between the mask and the frame of the camera. Start wiggling the mask around gently until you hear the glue start to crack. Then pry gently with a screwdriver or a butter knife. Eventually, the mask will come off. Now pry the bellows out and away from the frame of the body. It will probably tear a little, but we are throwing it away, so no biggie. Use fingernail polish remover to clean the dry glue off of the frame and the mask. It probably doesn't need to be perfectly clean since it is just going to be glued again.

There is a brass plate glued to the front of the bellows that you will need. Get it out and clean off any dry glue or other remnants of the old bellows. You will now need an Isolette III bellows. There are sources to buy them pre-made on the interwebz, but if you have come this far, you may as well make your own, right? There are patterns for free download. I used these from the Most excellent resource RolandAndCaroline.co.uk:
Agfa Isolette Replacement Bellows L&C.pdf
Agfa Isolette Replacement Bellows Ribs.pdf
The first template is for the inner and outer fabric coverings. The second is for the paper stiffeners and for the gluing tower. Download and print two of each.

Now there are some decisions to make. First, what will you use for a light-tight layer? I had a blackout curtain panel laying around. One side is black fabric and the other is coated with white rubber making it light-tight. I used one of the 'L&C' templates to cut out the piece I need. It turns out that the template is a little bigger than I need, but it's easy enough to trim later. Next I cut the stiffener ribs out of a thin card stock. It is a little stiffer than regular paper, but not much thicker. You have to be conscious of the thickness of these layers because if they are too thick, they won't properly fold into the camera. It will still take photos, but you just won't be able to fold it and take advantage of one of the awesome features of these MF cameras. I also cut one of the stiffener panels in half so that the overlap would happen in the middle of a panel and not at a corner. That is more of an aesthetic choice than a practical one. Here you can see that the opaque cloth is going to have a lot of overlap when I go to glue it. I trimmed it down so that it only extends about 1/4 inch past the stiffeners.

Once I glued the stiffeners down to the cloth, I let the glue dry and cut the 'support' sides off of the paper stiffeners so that only the 'ribs' are left. Then I cut the cloth as described above.

Next, I needed to make a structure that would hold the flexible (I might even call it 'limp') cloth/stiffeners assembly so that I could glue the seam. I used foam core and Gorilla Tape. I cut two of the 'stiffener' panels from the pattern linked above. Then I cut two more that were narrower by the exact thickness of the foam core. It just so happened that the 'border' lines on the pattern are exactly the thickness of my foam core, so I just cut along those inner lines and it came out to be the perfect width. I also cut all of the pieces a couple of inches longer than the template. I taped them all together and then measured the dimensions of the opening at the bottom of the 'pyramid'. I cut a square of foam core to that dimension and taped it in. This gives the structure more rigidity and keeps things square.

I then put some contact cement on the edges of the cloth and wrapped my 'bellows' around the tower so that the edges of the 'half-ribs' all lined up.

Next will be to glue the outer covering on to the bellows, fold them and install them into the camera. Stay tuned to see it all come together (fingers crossed).

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

Isolette III Overhaul part 2

If you haven't read it, Part 1 is here.

I received my lens tool from Hong Kong and that made getting the shutter out of the front standard a snap.

Next step was to get the focusing ring off and see if I could get the front lens element off. I had to file down one of my smallest screwdrivers to get it into the tiny retention screws holding the focusing ring on. I could barely see them, let alone loosen them. If you are playing along at home, remember NOT to remove these. Only loosen them until the ring comes free. Here are the rear lens element, paper gasket, rear retaining ring and the front focusing ring.

For this I went to my favorite degreaser, Simple Green. A few hours' soak and the front element came right off. It turned the Simple Green a nasty black too. A quick rinse with Ronsol and I was ready to go on to the shutter/aperture. Note that the paint on the numbers of the aperture indicator will come off if you soak it, so remove that piece before you do all of this. Also note thta there are two different screws that hold this piece on. If you keep track of which goes where you won't have to figure it out later. It's not hard though. Look carefully at where they screw in and you will see that the metal is different thickness. The longer one goes into the thicker metal.

The aperture was totally frozen. After asking around, it sounds like this is an uncommon problem. If you don't absolutely have to, DO NOT DISASSEMBLE THE APERTURE!! If you do absolutely have to, be aware that there are 10 aperture blades that come in 4 different varieties. Take it apart carefully and document explicitly where each of those blades go! The blades are made of very thin metal and will tear or crease more easily than you would think.

I got mine apart (they were really stuck together good), cleaned them up and after about 4 tries, got them reassembled. I found that if I put some painter's tape on the back side where the rivets stick through, it held the blades in place a little better. You will lose your mind trying to move the blades into place and keep them in their holes. Don't use clear cello tape. It is too sticky and will be difficult to get off when you go to put the aperture back in the housing.

Notice a couple of things. I work on a sheet of white paper. White cloth might be better at capturing tiny screws that are trying to make a break for it, but the lint and fibers are the price you pay. I work in my kitchen which has a hard laminate floor. If something rolls off the table, I can generally hear what direction it went and then use a strong magnet to find the escapee. The best thing though is to not lose those things to begin with. See that I have taped the screws down to the paper I am working on. I also have a good pair of forceps with a fine point that makes handling little things easier.

So one by one, put the blades into their respective holes. There are a couple of methods to doing this. I chose to have the blades sticking outward away from the center. Then once they were all in their holes, I started rotating them clock-wise. When they start to touch, lift them lightly so that they overlap the adjacent blade. Keep moving/rotating them bit by bit, being careful that none of them leave their holes. Once you have them all overlapping so that it looks like a circle, you can put the retaining ring on top. Sorry, I don't have a pic of that, but it ends up looking like this, with the 'top' rivets sticking through the slots in the retaining ring. You will have to wiggle things a bit to get them all to the right position.

• Part 1
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6

That's probably enough for one post. I will be back to cover the rest of the assembly and making new bellows in subsequent entries.

Fail... Or Is It??

If you read my last post, you know I am shooting some instant film. Not being one to leave well enough alone, I decided to try and recover the negatives from the Fujifilm FP-100c. This is pretty simple and Google can answer any questions you have about it. I'm writing this to talk about a 'mistake' I made so that you can benefit from my experience and not make it yourself (or do, depending on what you want your scans to look like).

Instead of using strong gaffer's tape as recommended, I used cheap painter's tape. This stuff is purposely not very sticky so that it doesn't remove paint from your walls. Needless to say, the bleach I was using (not a gel type) leaked under the tape and got on the emulsion side of the film. Then I tried to wipe it off. Then I put some water on it and tried to wipe that off.

Here is the result along with the original scan of the print. I think I like what happened to this negative, though I'm not sure I could reproduce it in any consistent way. But that is part of art, right? Experimenting and adding randomness can create beautiful things.

New Life for a Square Shooter

Polaroid made lots of different cameras that used lots of different film formats. There were 2 different types of roll film, 3 types of pack film (peel apart) and 7 different types of integral film. There were also 2 different sheet films for large format cameras. Many of these cameras are still around in closets, attics, and drawers. Many of those make it to auction sites where they are sold (usually) for a fraction of their original price. A while back my father-in-law gave me an old Polaroid Land Camera - Square Shooter. This camera used Type 88 film which went out of production in 2006. So, do I toss the camera? Convert it to a single-shot or a pinhole. Of course not! There is still pack film being produced by Fuji. Unfortunately, it is for 100 series cameras and won't fit in my Square Shooter. But this thing is just made of plastic. Certainly there must be a way to mod the camera so that the Fujifilm FP-100c will fit, right? Right! And it turns out that it is super easy. There is a black plastic holder in the camera that holds the film pack. I wiggled that until it broke free. Toss that. Then there are some ridges or struts that hold the film pack. Those need to be cut, sanded or ground down. I used a rotary tool with a cut-off wheel and in about 90sec. that was done. Now the film fits. Make sure there are fresh batteries in there since the shutter is electronic. Load up the film, close the back, pull the dark slide paper and you are ready to go!! Easy Peasy! One thing to note is that the Type 88 film was iso 75 and the FP-100c is iso 100, so you might want to set the exposure dial on the front of the camera one step toward "Darken" so as not to over expose. Here is an example. Notice that the whole frame is not exposed. Remember, this is a "square" shooter, modified for rectangular film. The mask blocks part of the film so you will end up with black bars on one end of the photo. I like squares, so I am okay with this.

So dig out that old Polaroid Square Shooter or go grab one for cheap and start taking instant photos again. It's super fun!

This one was taken with the exposure compensation dialed down toward "darker".

This one was taken indoors under mostly fluorescent light with the exposure compensation dialed up one step toward "lighter".

Springtime in San Diego

Here in San Diego, California we have two seasons. There is Warm Summer and Hot Summer. Right now we are still in Warm Summer as it is late April and Hot Summer doesn't really get here until late July. But I know that Hot Summer is coming because the Coral Trees are in bloom.

I took this photo with my Graflex Speed Graphic using the Optar 135, F/4.7 lens. I shot it on Kodak Clinic Select Green x-ray film and developed in 1:100 Adonal for 4.5 min standing. I hope you are enjoying the change of seasons where you are.

Landscape Details

Here are a few photos I took just around my workplace. The camera was my Yashica Electro 35 loaded with some expired Kodak Ektachrome Slide Duplicating Film. For these I used an EI of 100. These are pretty much straight off of the scanner with a little bit of dust spotting. Enjoy.

Dacomatic Recordak Film

I have been playing around with expired film recently. This is for a couple of reasons. First, it is economical and I am cheap. ;) Second, and more importantly, I like the look of grainy film. I wouldn't say that I am in the "more grain is better ad infinitum" camp, but I like photos with pronounced grain. In fact, back when I was shooting digital, I would often use grain 'filters' or plug-ins for my photos that needed that extra something. Looking back now, I am surprised that it took me so long to return to film photography, when that is what I wanted my photos to look like all along. As film ages, the ionic silver undergoes subtle chemical changes. The crystals merge and aggregate, cosmic rays and other radiation can 'expose' some crystals, etc. So the net effect is that the film speed (iso rating) gets lower, the grain gets bigger and the base fog becomes more noticeable. Some of this can be overcome when you develop your film if you are trying to get a 'cleaner' look from your expired film. I use one of two developers (Rodinal or Caffenol-CL), neither of which is very good at compensating for these side effects of elderly film. So I shoot the film and live with what I get, which is usually pretty close if not exactly the look I am going for.

Recently, I acquired a 400 foot roll of some well-expired 35mm film. It is Kodak Dacomatic A film, expired in Dec. 1973. I was only 6 years old when this expired!! I bought it on the big auction site and then started trying to figure out what iso it should be shot at and how in the world to develop it. Guess what, there's not much information out there on this film. From what I can gather it was made for use in the Kodak Recordak machine which was used for copying documents. Okay, so it's copy film. That will mean that it is probably high contrast, or at least it was in 1973. I did find one guy on Flickr that had used it and shot it at iso 6. Over on the FilmWasters forum (highly recommended) one of the guys wrote a desktop application that will calculate a reasonably accurate EI for expired film. You can download it HERE. Download those three files and run setup.exe. This application predicts an iso of 6 for film that was originally iso 100. Was that the original speed?? Who knows? Never being one for following rules, or even guidelines, I set my meter to iso 12 just to allow a little more reasonable shutter speeds. I should note that subsequently, another Filmwaster has exposed this same film at iso 80 and got very good results using Blufire HR developer from the Frugal Photographer. Anyway, I rolled some up in a reusable film canister. I had to do this in the dark since my daylight film loader will not hold a 400' roll. So I measured a piece of string as long as a 12-exposure roll of film and taped it to the counter in my darkroom (bathroom). Then I turned out the lights and measured out a piece of film as long as the string. I then taped that to the film spool and rolled it up. I threw this into my trusty old Nikkormat FTn and went out in the sun to find something to shoot. I found myself at The Scripps UCSD Medical Center where they have sculptures and fountains and buildings that might be photogenic.

Here are a couple of shots I took of a marble sculpture of a pair of robed figures looking at each other.

I developed in Caffenol-CL for 60min with no agitation after the first 30sec. You can see that the grain is 'pronounced', but not what I would call 'extreme' or distracting. This is the look I like and why I like to use expired film. Different films age in different ways and storage conditions play a big part in whether they are usable or not. If you are buying very old film (more than 5yrs past expiration) you probably want to verify with the seller that it was in cold storage. You may get an image out of film stored in a closet, but it will be pretty faint. Just experiment and have fun with these old stocks!