Worthy of Redundancy

Ultrafine Xtreme! It seems a little silly to brand something with "Ultra" and "Extreme" in the title. In Latin, the prefix 'ultra' means 'extremely' or 'beyond'. So they are trying to send a message here. They want us to know that this film is fine grained. Now if you've shot enough film, you know that these claims are largely created by the marketing department of the film company and don't always hold true in real life. Especially with black and white film, grain is affected by so many variables from EI (exposure index or apparent iso) to the plethora of developers, dilutions, temperatures, agitation schemes... The list goes on. So I'll be forgiven if I approach "Ultrafine Xtreme" film with a touch of skepticism. This is compounded by the very (not Xtremely) reasonable price, which in Western culture means lower quality. I bought 10 rolls of 120 Ultrafine Xtreme 100 for around $5 per roll. For comparison, Ilford Delta 100 and Kodak T-Max 100 are both over the $6 mark (what? no more Acros 100?? BOOOOO! to Fuji!!!). So let's see what my $1 per roll savings is going to cost me.

I loaded my roll up in my 'chrome-tastic' Bronica S2a (read more about that camera here) with the always pleasant and reliable Nikkor-O-C 50mm f/2.8 lens. This is the sharpest medium format option I have and a great camera to use, so why not? I shot the film at iso 100 because that's what the box says on it. Can I push it? Can I pull it? What are it's reciprocity characteristics? None of these questions mattered. I just wanted to shoot it straight and see what the baseline is. And that's what I did.

Before I get to the shots, I'll describe my development scheme briefly for the home developers out there that nerd out on this kind of stuff. I used two DIY developers mixed together. First was My-tol (Kodak X-tol look-alike). I mixed that up at 2:1. Then I added some Parodinal at 1:100. I developed the film for 11 minutes at around 70F using the usual agitation scheme (constant for the first minute and then 4 inversions every 30 seconds). Fixer was Ilford Rapid Fix 1:4. There, how's that for brief?

One of the tough subjects when it comes to fine grain and sharp lenses is animal fur. I scanned this shot at 1200 dpi and I think I am running out of pixels before I run into grain.

Here is a 100% crop of that shot.

I have to say I was impressed. At least with this developurr combination (sorry), this film does indeed show very very fine grain. Is it "Ultrafine"? Well, we are dealing with sort of subjective, qualitative terminology here, so I'm going to say YES! It is Ultrafine! Put this film behind your sharpest lens, develop it with a high accutance developer, and be confident that you are going to get some Xtremely good results. "But James", you say. "Doesn't high accutance and sharpness mean that the low contrast areas are going to look grainy?" Let's see. Here is a 100% crop of the blank out of focus wall behind the subject.

The answer is "yes, there is some visible grain." Is it distracting? Is it "golf ball grain"? No. It is what I would characterize as "filmy" grain. It's the grain that lets you know that you are shooting film. I personally like grainy film (usually). The exception to that rule was Fuji Acros in Caffenol-CL. That was so smooth and creamy and lovely. I could just stare at the blurry backgrounds. But usually I like to have some grain in the image just as a creative device, sort of like the way I left the S2a film mask in this image as a border. It's a layer of abstraction that adds interest.

Now we come to the 'caveat emptor'. Here we see what saving $1 cost me. There were two shots on the roll of 12 that had artifacts. These looked like perfectly round clear spots on the film. I don't think that they were air bubbles that didn't get developed since that is not ever a problem with my agitation and there were only two of them on the whole roll. I think these are actually flaws in the emulsion. Take a look near the bottom of the gate. I'll keep an eye out for more of these in future rolls. I hope this is a Xtremely rare slip up by the QA department. If it is truly a "feature" of this film, I'll probably spend the extra $1 per roll and use T-max. But if not, if it turns out that Ultrafine Xtreme 100 is a good reliable fine grained film, then I will certainly buy more.

This Argus is Super

Thanks to Madmen, midcentury modern is the bee's knees. Generally people are looking for furniture and design elements for their homes. Me? I love 50's cameras. Give me bakelite over titanium any day. The classic "faux TLR" is the Brownie Hawkeye Flash. I have two of those and they are genuinely fun to shoot. Taking a (small) step up in control brings me to another favorite, the Argus Super Seventy-five.

These were made in the mid to late 50's in Ann Arbor, Michigan and man were they well-made! Of course they are pretty simple, but the overall quality of build is just very good. The apertures range from 8 to 16 and the leaf shutter hits in the 1/30th to 1/50th range. Fortunately, the heft of the camera (about 1.2 lb (530g)) and the neck strap make it pretty easy to hold steady. The lens is a simple 65mm "Coated Lumar" meniscus, so don't expect anything tessar-like, but for those of us who enjoy the nostalgic feel of the photos taken with a simple lens, this performs quite well. I have flipped the lens backward in mine, so I get a characteristic radical blur around a reasonably sharp center. Focusing is by range, lining up your subject distance (in ft.) with a pointer next to the lens. At f/8 or higher, you don't have to be extremely accurate with your estimation. It will focus down to 3.5 ft. There was originally a slip-on closeup lens, but I don't have that accessory and probably wouldn't use it if I did. Correcting for parallax with a camera like this is going to take practice and I have too many cameras in the rotation to remember the quirks of each one. In the picture here, you can see the red indicator in the taking lens that says that the shutter is cocked. The shutter button is pretty stiff on this camera, so the chances of accidentally tripping it are practically nil. The real highlight of this camera is the viewfinder. It is so big and so bright that composition is a true pleasure. It is a reflex, so the image is backward, but not upside down. Remembering to focus the lens is the only down-side of having such a nice viewfinder, but get the process locked into your brain before you go out and you shouldn't have a problem (focus, compose, focus, shoot, wind). Lastly, it is worth mentioning that this camera takes 620 film. So get on the google and either clip off the outer edges of your plastic 120 spool or rewind the film onto a 620 spool and you are good to go. New plastic 620 spools can be purchased from the Film Photography Project store, or buy some cheap expired 620 film from Etsy or Ebay and get some classic metal spools with it. However you go about it, these mid-century beauties are well worth the effort to get out and shoot.

These shots were taken on Ektachrome that expired in 1981 and were developed in my own DIY C-41 soup. First up are shots from a cloudy day at the beach.

These next shots were from a sunny walk near the beach in La Jolla. I was surprised at the vast difference in color saturation with just a few more stops of light.

An Unexpected Leak

That's like a chapter title from a bad spy novel (or maybe a bad plumber's manual). Anyway, I just thought I would make a brief post to show the dangers of using thin base films. Generally we think of film as just emulsion layered onto a sheet of flexible thin plastic that is then cut, perforated (optionally) and rolled. I realized when I started developing my own film that the 'base' support is quite different for different films. Certainly color films are different than black and white. The support material on most color films is some shade of orange, while on black and white films it is either clear or a neutral grey. But what I hadn't really thought about was that the support material is different thickness depending on the film and it's intended purpose. Movie film needs to be thick and strong enough to stand up to the forces that are pulling it through a movie camera. Still camera film can be thinner so that more exposures can fit into a standard roll. Then you have specialty films like Kodak Plus-X Aerecon II. I have written about this film before, but I don't think I have mentioned much about the consequences of rolling it into standard 35mm cartridges. Standard cartridges have a little fuzzy piece of fabric around the inside of the opening where the film leader comes out. That serves dual purposes. First, it keeps the metal edges of the canister from scratching the film. Second, it acts as a light seal so that light does not enter the canister through the slit and fog the film. Well that's all fine if your film has a thick base support layer and it takes up all of the space between the two light seals on either side of the slit. However, Aerecon II was intended for aerial reconnaissance photography. When flying long distances, it is important to economize on weight so that your fuel will last for the entire mission. So the film was made with a very thin base so that a big roll of a few hundred or a thousand feet would weigh significantly less than it's consumer counterparts. This means that the film does not fill up the space between the light seals in a standard 35mm cartridge and if you are not careful, the light will come in and make nice stripes on your beautiful pictures. So let this be a warning to all of you shooting thin base films. Load and unload in the DARK! Not the shade, and not 'subdued light'... the DARK. Cautionary photos to follow.

Gone Microfiche-ing

Using expired film can be a bit of a challenge. There is usually some loss in speed, so the apparent iso (or the effective EI, if you like) is lower and it is up to you as the film adventurer to determine by how much. The rule of thumb says one stop for each decade past its expiration date. So assuming you know the expiration date and didn't just come across a random roll of film, you can use that as a starting point. Keep in mind though that 'fast' films (to me that means iso 100 and higher) will lose speed 'faster' than slow films. So if you have a roll of Ektar 25 that expired in 1997, that's 20 years (two stops lost), but since it was slow film to begin with, it probably didn't lose a full two stops. Maybe 1½ or 1 stop would be a better starting point. "So what's your point here Jimbo?", you may be asking. First, I don't really like "Jimbo", people called me "Jim" in college, but generally, it's just "James" and has been since Mr. Salyers' 4^th grade class. Secondly, I'm getting there!

Periodically, I search for Kodak Dacomatic Recordak film to buy. I have some in the fridge and I really like it. So I just keep an eye out for a spool. I never find any. But then one day the search popped a result on the big auction site. It was "Recordak", but didn't say "Dacomatic". Additionally, it was 500 ft of 105 mm stock! Well, that seemed odd, so I did some more digging on the specific emulsion number (4462) and it turned out to be a completely different film (seems obvious now). This one was used for microfiche production. So it was copy film like the Dacomatic, but a different type. The price was right, so I went and bought it, hoping against hope that I could get pictures from it. It originally (expired 12/1979) was rated at iso 2.1! So, figuring that this stuff is really not very sensitive to light to begin with, I figured it probably hasn't lost that much speed even in almost 40 years, but I'll give it a stop anyway. That puts it right about iso 1. Okay, so I have an exposure starting point. How am I going to develop this stuff? It was designed with an automated proprietary development scheme in mind, so all I could find in the VERY sparse documentation was "Microfilm DEVELOPER and Replenisher". That's it. So I figured I would hit up the old stand by, Rodinal 1:100 and do a strip test to see if it would even change color. In fact it did! In about 15 seconds, it was fully developed!! So much for 60 minutes of stand development. Well, I cut a few sheets and took some of what I am certain were the best photos of my entire life and dunked them in what I had on hand, which was some homemade Parodinal 1:100 for 4 minutes. That is what I use for x-ray film and it works just fine. This microfilm however, was completely dark. Hmm... Maybe I over-exposed it? I tried again, taking more absolutely stunning photos at higher and higher speeds. Again, completely dark. So over-exposure was not the problem. It must be over-development. I cut the time in half. Still totally dark. I mean just a dark sheet of film... No image whatsoever. The strip test I did showed that the film cleared completely in the fixer, so it wasn't that the fixer was bad or the film was totally fogged.

I was just about to give up and call it a total loss, but I thought I would just try a different developer for grins. Rodinal variants have always developed anything I threw at them, including a roll of Ansco Plenachrome expired in 1949. But desperate times, you know. I had some X-tol powder laying about and that is a phenidone based developer, so I figured one last try. And this time, I would take a high contrast shot with lots of bright San Diego sky AND I would develop under red safelight by inspection. Did I mention that this film is orthochromatic? No? Well, now I have.

BAM!!!

I got an image! That was in X-tol 1:3 for 10 minutes. Now to see if I could get something with a few more grays in there. So I took a shot in the shade. I gave it a little more exposure because I had the bellows extended a bit, but I forgot about the reciprocity failure that was mentioned in the tech doc. The negative was very thin, but still there was a photo and it had much more scale to it. It is still quite fine grained and in 4x5 sheets that means some super fine detail can be had.

Now I've got about 490 feet left of this to see what I can do with this flavor of copy film. I'm looking forward to making some photos with this oddball microfilm.

The Return of the Slide Dupe

Almost a year ago, I posted "The Last of the Dupe" as I shot, developed and scanned the last roll of my beloved Ektachrome Slide Duplicating Film. What is so lovable? I suppose it is really subjective, but I just like the way the grain and colors combine. Note: I always cross-process this film in Unicolor C-41 and scan. I do the normal things for scanning film like make sure my stupid scanner (Epson V600) isn't cutting off half of the histogram. But I don't do anything really in the "color correction" realm. So recently, I was looking around the interwebz for some more. I do this periodically, but not usually with any success. Either it is just a single roll, or it is so over-priced, I won't buy it, or both. So when I came across two 100' rolls of Ektachrome, I stopped for a closer look. The were unopened, expired in '80 and '81. One roll was regular Ektachrome 64D and the other was SLIDE DUPE!! I got very excited until I saw the price. $120 plus s/h put this expired film at ~$0.66/foot. That is about 3x what I usually set my limit at for expired film especially with no guarantee, returns, etc. So I put a watch on it to see if it would sell, just out of curiosity and I also wanted to keep track of it if it didn't sell. The film didn't sell and was subsequently relisted as an auction starting at $0.99. Now that's a starting point I can get on board with! I would usually wait until the end and try to snipe the auction, but I really didn't think this was going to stay reasonably priced. So I threw a bid on it for $30 ($0.15/foot). Who knows how, but I won the auction with a winning bid of $10.50! Including s/h the film came out to be $0.12/foot!! If the film was any good, I got a really great bargain. If the film was trashed, I was out $23, which I could live with.

So here are the results of the first few shots. Taken with my trusty Pentax K1000 equipped with the SMC 50/1.7 lens. I set the meter at iso 32 and then I took one shot on center, the next shot was one stop slower (iso 16) and the next shot was one stop faster (iso 64). The roll was developed at regular temps and times for Unicolor C-41.

I did not adjust any levels or anything to make one shot look better than the others. I just set the histogram limits for black and white. At first glance, the iso 16 shots look best. But if you look at the last shot of the rose bud, you will see that the highlights blew. That is the only one taken in full sun, midday. So maybe 16 would be a good number if you are shooting this in diffuse or dim light (golden hour), but I think the iso 32 and 64 shots are more usable as far as the highlights and shadows go.

Here are the 32 and 64 shots from the middle set. I have adjusted these individually in order to compare on level ground.

It is easy to see that the shot at iso 64 has more grain and is a little cooler in tone. That is good to keep in mind in case that is a look I want. I might try another short roll like this and shoot at 64 and 125 and then push the development one stop. That might bring the warmth back to the colors and help with the grain a bit. If I decide to do that, I'll link it here. Until then I am just going to enjoy shooting my favorite film again.

Strange New Development

I am unafraid of getting chemicals on my hands (figuratively) and mixing up concoctions. I have spent my share of time in the lab and have even blown a couple of things up, so mixing up photochemistry is not a problem. Additionally, I am comfortable with a certain amount of uncertainty in my photographic outcomes. I don't shoot weddings anymore, so no world is going to end if I totally screw up what I am doing. So when I recently became aware that X-tol and Rodinal could be mixed and that the results might encapsulate the best of both of those developers, I was on it. I had some X-tol powder that I weigh into 1L portions and I had some Parodinal, so I figured I would shoot some 4x5 Kodak CSG and some Arista Ortho Litho and see what came out of it. Normally, I would develop CSG shot at iso 80 in parodinal diluted 1:100 for 4.5 minutes, so I used that as a starting point and at the last minute decided to cut it in half. I shot the Arista at iso 3, but I haven't worked much with this film, so I don't have a standard development for it. My standard dilution for X-tol is 1+3. So 250 mL of X-tol, 5 mL of parodinal and top off to 1L. Nothing exploded, so I figured I was good to go. I chose 5 minutes with 4 inversions every minute. The temp was probably around 68F. Stop was with tap water, changed 4 times. Fix was 2 minutes in Ilford Rapid Fix. Both of these films have extremely thin emulsion layers and actually fix in about 15 seconds.

The Ortho Litho turned out with VERY high contrast as might be expected. Here are a couple of the shots.

The CSG was much more tame and the negs looked 'normal' as far as exposure and density goes. I think the grain might be a bit smoother with this X-tol based developer. Hard to say without some sort of side by side with the same exposure of the same subject, but my gut says it is smoother. I know, not very scientific, but this is my hobby not my job. I don't have to be quantitative if I don't want to.

Apples and Oranges... and a Sunflower

I have wanted to write a little comparison article about these two films I have for a while, but you know... life... I finally got around to developing some sheets I had exposed months ago and I was happy to see that I had taken the same photo with each of these films. So, let's get to it.
First, let's get the variables out of the way. Both are 4x5 sheets taken within minutes of each other with my trusty Graflex Speed Graphic with the nice Graflex Optar 135/4.7 lens mounted. This was in early summer in the full mid-day sun. Film #1 is Kodak Vericolor II expired in 1997. This film is tungsten balanced, so shooting it in sunlight gives a blue cast. This can be corrected either by putting an 85 color correction (warming) filter on the lens or applying it in post. I do the latter. The problem with this particular box of film is that I don't think it was stored well and the base is fogged. Also, the edges drop off suddenly. I think the original box speed was around 80, but I shoot it at iso 25 to try compensating for the base fog. However, with all of these flaws, it can make some interesting and dramatic photos. Please excuse the dust on this, I hadn't really planned to share this, so I didn't dust spot.

You can obviously see the blue shadows and the high contrast. I could let the shadows drop out, but then I would just have some orange flower petals floating in space. I would rather let the film's character shine through and appreciate the uniqueness.
Next is Kodak Internegative Film. This was intended to make a positive duplicate from a negative which would then be used to make more negatives. Alternately, it could be used to make negatives from slides which would then be used to make prints. So it wasn't really intended to be a 'pictorial' film used in the camera. It was meant to be used in a commercial enlarger. With that in mind, I am shocked at the quality of this film. I don't think there was a set iso. The technician would have to test and adjust exposure depending on the original and any filtration they were using in the enlarger. I shot this at iso 5.

The colors are beautiful and the grain is nice and smooth. As I discovered when I scanned these and as I said in the title, these two films are not 'comparable'. So in that respect this little experiment failed. But that is not to say I didn't learn something. I found that the internegative film will produce nice smooth, accurate photos at iso 5. With a moderate scan resolution, this makes a 90 megapixel image that can be enlarged to any size you like. On the other hand, the Vericolor II makes a more unconventional/challenging image that brings a layer of abstraction to the subject. This definitely has its place in most film photographers' repertoire.
Here is another example of each film just for good measure. Enjoy.

Film Mini Review - K-Mart Focal Slide Film

I belong to a pretty vibrant and active community of film photographers online. No, not APUG, not Photo.net, not Rangefinderforum. Those are all great places, but I have found a home over at Filmwasters.com. It is a very relaxed place to share photos and information about film photography in general. I enjoy running a film trading thread over there and have gotten a number of interesting films from other members. This film in particular wasn't part of that thread, but just came along in a box of film that one of the other members there sent to me. Yeah, people are still generous like that.

I had never heard of the film. Of course growing up and living in the US, I have always known about the K-Mart stores, but I wasn't aware that they made film. Actually, it was pretty common for drug stores and other corporate entities to rebrand films from the major manufacturers and this is one of those cases. The film is actually Scotch Chrome 640T probably from the Ferrania factory in Italy. To note, this was different than the 3M Scotch Chrome and also different than the new films being produced (hopefully soon) by the revived Film Ferrania.

So this film was produced for iso 640, and I generally follow the guideline to add a stop for every decade past expiration, but there was no expiration marked on this film. I didn't get the original boxes, just the 35mm cartridges, so now what? Well, I had a roll of 36 exposures and another of 20 (?) exposures, so I figured I would start with the short roll and see if I could gain any information about it. I figured it was at least 20 years past expiration, so that would mean 2 stops slower. That puts it at around iso 160. I threw it into my trusty Nikkormat FTn with a new-to-me Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens and set my handheld meter to 160. The lens I bought came with a 27.5mm extension tube, so I went a little crazy with the macro shots. I should have looked up the required exposure compensation for that tube, but I didn't and subsequently, a lot of the macro shots were under-exposed.

I developed the film in Unicolor C-41 chems at room temperature for 20 minutes with a 10 minute blix. Agitation was 1 minute initial and 4 inversions each minute thereafter. I did the RT development because I was developing some old 126 print film at the same time and wanted to be gentle with that. Unfortunately, there were no visible images on that film. So here are a few of the photos from this old film. The grain on the under-exposed shots is formidable, but on the brighter ones, not so bad. I have the 36 exposure roll left, so I will probably expose that with an EI of 80 and try to stay out in the sun without any extension tubes connected.

The Resilience of Film

I decided to visit a thrift store down in a part of town that I don't really get to very often. I had seen on CraigsList that they had some "darkroom equipment", so I thought I would go check it out. When I got there, the selection was sort of meager, but the prices were better than the 'bay', so I decided to have a closer look. There were a couple of Watson daylight film loaders and I can always use another one of those, so I picked one up. It had a typed (like on a typewriter) label on it that said "KODALITH ORTHO type 3 / 6556 film". I had a thought that there may still be film in it, so I did what any kid rummaging around under the Christmas tree would do... I shook it. It rattled a bit. It wasn't heavy like it had a full roll, so maybe there was just an empty spool in there. I decided to take a peek. What's the worst that could happen? If it was empty, no harm. If there was film in it, it wasn't very much and it was old iso 6 ortho film that had been sitting on a shelf for who knows how long and was probably fogged anyway. But I didn't just tear the lid off, I carefully cracked it a little and looked in. There was indeed film in there. Was it labeled correctly? Had someone else opened it and exposed the whole thing? How old was it? These were all unanswerable questions that really didn't matter. I needed the loader, so I bought it. The only question that mattered about the film was "Is it still any good for taking pictures?" and the only way to answer that was to stick it in a camera and shoot it. So that's what I did.

I loaded one roll of about 24 exposures and put that aside. I figured if my peek had fogged anything it would be most evident on the 'outer' parts of the roll. So I loaded another roll of about 20 exposures and put it in my trusty Pentax K1000. This was just a test roll, but I still tried to make a little effort to get something I would like to look at. I have never shot a picture of a test chart and I'm not going to start now.

I had some Kodak X-Tol developer mixed up already, so I decided just to use that at 1:1 with dH2O. I cut the leader off and did a quick test to make sure the developer was still good and to check the fixing time. I dunked the leader in developer for 5 minutes and it looked pretty opaque. Then I fixed for 4 minutes and the undeveloped area cleared in about 2 minutes, but the developed area got a bit less dense too. So I decided on a 10 minute dev time and a 5 minute fix. I don't have enough of this film to worry about figuring out 'the right' times and concentration. I probably only have enough in the loader to make 2 more 24exp rolls, so this is just for fun and for the information of anyone who might find themselves in a situation where they have to decide whether to keep some old unknown film or toss it.

So without further ado, here are some of the results... The highlights (and some of the mid-lights) are blown in all of them, and there is indeed some fogging (probably from my peek) on some frames. In fact in some (not shown here) there are only blown highlights! I think I may have over-exposed using iso 10. Next roll I will try iso 20 and see what happens. It is high contrast film by design, so a full range of tones is not to be expected. But the mere fact that I got recognizable images from this poor tormented film is really a credit to the medium. This film went out of production in 2002. Digital formats that old are already obsolete! So I'm going to enjoy my last few feet of this good found film and treat it with the respect it deserves. Thank you Kodak for making products to last decades, indeed centuries!!

For the Love of Bakelite!

Bakelite. It sounds like the heat source for one of these.

But it isn't. It's a modern miracle of materials science!! Alright, it isn't so modern, but just because it was invented in 1907 doesn't make it any less miraculous. It was the first synthetic plastic and was developed for its electrical insulation properties. So you could make a telephone casing with it and be pretty confident that when you answered, the person on the other end would hear “Hello?” and not “Gggggrraaaaaahhhhhhhhggg!!!!” It soon became popular to make lots of things with this durable moldable material. And make things they did. Everything from radios, to pipe stems, to automobile dashboards were made from Bakelite.

But you are on the Through a Glass, Darkly blog, not the “Through a Windshield Because They Haven't Invented Seatbelts Yet, Darkly” site, so best we stay on topic. Yes, they made cameras out of Bakelite. They made LOTS of them. Probably the most prolific Bakelite pusher in the photographic world was... yes, you guessed it, Kodak. They made Brownies of all types out of Bakelite and in the 1930's through the 1960's if your family didn't have one, the next door neighbors did. Early Bakelite Brownies took 127 roll film which is not as wide as modern 120 medium format film and usually produced 4x4 cm images. The Bakelite Brownies later evolved to shoot the more popular 6x6 cm format on 120 and 620 (120 film on a different spool) film.

That brings us to one of the most abundant of the Bakelite Brownies, the Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model.

Aside from maybe the Nikon F, this is probably the most thoroughly covered camera on the web. Partly because they last forever and there are still piles of them available in like new condition for practically the cost of shipping, and partly because they are so much fun to use. It took me a while to warm up to the idea of getting one of these little black boxes. I had read enough and seen enough pictures from them to know that they were capable little cameras, but the point and shoot nature sort of turned up my snob dial and I resisted the urge to drop $5 on such a common piece of equipment. One day however, I was perusing an auction site (not the one you are thinking of… yes, the other one) and there was one listed for $5 with local pick up available. Okay, a fiver and no tax or shipping... What's the worst that could happen? So I won the “auction”. Really there isn't much in the way of actual bidding on these, so that was just a waiting game. I went downtown and picked up my first BHF (that's short for Brownie Hawkeye Flash among BHF owners – yes that's a thing) and the first thing that happened was the clerk dropped it on the concrete floor. I fully expected to be picking up little bits of BHF but the thing bounced a little and there was one small chip that I didn't even notice until days later. I decided to do a thorough cleaning and prepared my tools and rags and pointy things for tiny crevices, but all I needed was a Philips head screwdriver. That's it. I didn't even have to consult the Googlz. It is so simple to take it down to a reasonable number of components and clean them. So there I was. I had a BHF that looked and worked like the day it rolled off the production line, which thanks to the CAMEROSITY code (YSRM), I know was in July of 1953.

Now what is it about this camera that would inspire so many to devote their time and creative juju to it? Well, I can't speak for others, but have I mentioned it's made of Bakelite? That puts it pretty firmly into the “cool junk” category and I've heard that chicks dig that. The simple meniscus lens keeps it sharp in the center from about 5 – 15 feet and just slightly softer around the corners.

Obviously, if you live and die on Mount Hassy, this may not be for you, but if you want to go even deeper into the soft corner abyss, you can simply take the lens out and flip it around. That gives a sharp center circle but the outer parts of the image quickly fly apart into a nightmarish spectacle that you will never want to wake up from.

This is a fixed focus, fixed aperture, fixed shutter speed camera, so "point and shoot" in every sense of the word except that you have to remember to wind the film. There is no protection against double, triple or tredecuple (it's a word, look it up) exposures, so wind first or wind last, but do it every time. There is a bulb setting for long exposures, but there is no tripod socket, so good luck with that (keep reading if you want to know what the "bulb" setting is really for). Not having control over aperture or shutter speed makes the choice of film important. These cameras were made before fast emulsions, so iso 100 is about right for daylight shooting or indoors with a flash. That's right, many of these have working flash units attached. They take regular #5 flash bulbs which can still be had if you look. They aren't cheap, but if you are going to oh, say your company Christmas party and want to impress that girl from the steno pool that you've been admiring from afar, load up on #5's and crack one off casually when she is reaching for the cheeseball. If the blinding flash doesn't get her attention, the smell of the bulb's plastic coating melting away will. The flash diffuser combined with the size of the bulb itself creates a more pleasant light than does the harsh point of an electronic flash. Plus, if your subjects are cold, it throws a blast of radiant heat that washes over them, warding off those winter chills. Obviously, if you are in a really dark place, you can use the "b" or "bulb" setting by pulling up on the button opposite the shutter release. This keeps the shutter open as long as you hold the shutter button down, but it also fires the flash. The most common type are M bulbs or Medium fast bulbs, offering time to peak of 18-20 ms and generally 8-12 ms flash duration. That is much faster than the regular shutter speed, but it has to be dark or you will get weird dim blurs around your sharp flash image.

Finally, I want to talk about maybe my favorite feature of this camera. The Bakelite is good, the lens is 'special', the flash does what it does in spectacular fashion, but I just love the sound of the shutter. It is the simplest of spring loaded rotary shutters. The speed on yours may vary from mine, but between 1/30th and 1/40th is a safe bet. It doesn't really matter though. You can't change it! But that sound… I wish I could make a really good recording of it and play it for you. It goes like this “ker-SNAP!...schokkk.” Well, it sounds better than it looks phonetically, trust me. I have it on a shelf just above the computer where I am writing this and I just keep stopping to push that button, and when I am actually taking pictures with it, it's even more satisfying.

The Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model camera is really more than the sum of its parts. The experience of using one isn't about maximizing your creative potential. You probably won't realize your dream photograph with it. The BHF is about pointing, shooting, having fun and looking cool (for very specific definitions of “cool”). Bakelite is a miraculous material because it has made the preservation of thousands of these neat little box cameras possible. Pick one up, they're everywhere. Load it with your favorite medium speed film and take a walk with some friends. I guarantee you will have some fun, make some memories and take some good pictures.

Film Mini-Review - Kodak Plus X Aerecon II

A while back I was approached by an online acquaintance and asked if I would be interested in going in with him and another Filmwaster on a group buy of some odd expired film. If you have read any of my other posts, you will suspect that I am loath to turn down such an offer, regardless of the "oddness" of the film. I like grain and contrast (both low and high) and "cheap" is my second favorite price right after "free". The particular film that was being considered was 2 100' rolls of Kodak Plus X Aerecon II (expired 1998). What the heck, the more mysterious the better! At least this film was produced with pictorial photography in mind, unlike some other films. The group buy went ahead and then I didn't hear from the buyer for some time. I didn't pay up front, so it wasn't like he was holding something of 'mine', but I was curious to get the film and try it out. Time passed, and I communicated with him a couple of times and it was clear that he was busy with more important things. So I took the opportunity to practice patience and grace. I have plenty of film and the resources to buy more when I run out (that is not likely to happen any time soon). Finally, he sent the film along with some other treasures. There was two rolls of K-Mart branded slide film and an instamatic cartridge of Ektachrome HS! Awesome! Mike, if you're out there. THANK YOU!!

Any-hooo... I read the tech sheet and what little I could find online, which wasn't much. I did see that it was originally rated at iso 200 for daylight, so I figured I would start at iso 100, ignoring the "loss of 1 stop per decade" rule of thumb. I put one of the 100' rolls into my Watson daylight loader and rolled a couple of 36 exp rolls for an online trade and then a couple of 20's for myself (I don't have the patience for 36). I loaded one into my Nikon N2020 because that camera lets me shoot fast. I think that is psychological since an internal meter shouldn't make any difference unless you are really shooting from the hip to get street or action shots. I do neither of those, so the N2020 with its internal meter and auto-wind just makes me feel faster. I took some shots around my workplace and around my home. I think there is an endless supply of good photos right around us in the "mundane" surroundings we take for granted. So I tend to take a lot of photos right around the places where I spend the most time.

I didn't think that the development times from the Massive Dev Chart were going to be of much use, even though it says "Plus-X". So I decided on my old stand-by... Adonal (Rodinal) diluted 1:100 with semi stand development for 70 minutes. Semi stand, for me, means agitation for 20-30 seconds at the beginning and another 10 seconds or so half way through (35 min in this case). That does all the good things we expect from stand development, but reduces the bromide drag associated with stand development of 35mm film. The base of this film is clear (so could be reversal processed for slides), and is VERY thin. In fact when I walked by it hanging in my office to dry, the static actually started drawing it toward me. But it flattened out fine for the scanner and it didn't tear in the camera or spooling it for development, so all's good.

Over all, I was very pleased with this film. The grain is there, but not at all obtrusive. When I zoom in on the original 4800 dpi scan, I can definitely see some degradation of the grain. It has the salt & pepper look of a badly stored film, but to a much lesser degree. At normal magnifications, it is practically unnoticeable. Here is a 100% zoom on a smooth sky area of one of the photos. Remember, this is 4800 dpi, so you are looking at a piece of an image that would be over 5 feet wide.

Here are some more of the photos from this first roll. I am happy to have almost 200 feet of this film. I'm sure I will enjoy many of the images I make with it. I would be happy to hear any feedback or experiences of others who have used this film. Leave a comment.