Medium Format Snapshooter

My early 1950's Agfa Isolette II with f4.5 Apotar and Prontor-S

I’ve had this Agfa Isolette 6x6 folder for nearly a year. But to be honest, I haven’t been getting on with it. As a medium format camera, I’ve been trying to make it do what my Rollei TLR does, and it doesn’t do that well. With no focusing aids and just the 3 element Apotar lens, crisp and sharp is quite a challenge. The viewfinder is pretty crude and framing is a little vague. Add to that the the old style shutter speeds of 1 1/2 1/5 1/10 1/25 1/50 1/100 1/300 and the metering gets hard to fathom. My meter tells me I need 1/60 or 1/125 and I’m struggling to work out which way to go.

Who'd believe thought this is in Plymouth. I Need to work on my leveling!

But I’ve decided these problems are all in my head.  After all lots of people are getting on just fine with their Holgas and Dianas. Sure they have vignetting and ultra soft plastic lens to give that arty look to everything thet're pointed at. Embrace the camera’s shortcomings and just get on and shoot. So what if I use the old Agfa like a Holga instead of like a Rollei. What happens then? I know I won’t get Holgaeque pics, but I don’t want that. I could have had a top end Holga for half the price of this. The Isolette is a real grownup’s camera with a proper lens so should surely blow the ‘toys’ out of the pram on image quality. So I'm in Plymouth with half an hour to kill and give it a go. I loaded up a roll of HP5, set the shutter to 1/100 and the aperture at f8 shot it like it was a Holga. I wandered around town shooting whatever caught my eye, using just the 3m and 10m focus settings which are helpfully marked in red on the dial. No meter. If all I’m after is a bunch of 4”x4” or 5”x5” prints from the black & white film, why get all stressed out about focus. HP5 takes a little exposure inaccuracy in it's stride. 12 snaps later, the Agfa back in my pocket, I’ve I roll of film to develop.

Part of the forces memorial on Plymouth Hoe

I’d planned to develop in Rodinal, 1+100 for an hour and see what happens. Developing like this gives huge tolerance to bad exposure. But just to prove that nothing ever goes quite to plan, while typing this post, I realise that the negs had been gently cooking in 1:50 with 45 minutes on the clock. Twice the intended strength. Eeeek, panic! Dump the dev, rinse, fix and hope. Despite my stupidity, negs came out looking pretty good. Maybe a touch dense, but nice and contrasty. Easy enough to scan.

Cobbled street, barely wide enough for a car

Scanning was done quickly. Just 1500x1500 pixels, scanner pretty much on automatic. No more than a quick levels adjustment in good old photoshop and that's what you see here, downsized for web. I want to print them 5x5 from my scans and see how they look, so 1500x1500 is all I need. Not much more than a 2x enlargement once on the print at 300ppi. Anyway, here's the whole film, all of which came out just fine, if a little lacking in artistic qualities!

'Contact' sheet

The Isolette's a nice little camera. Medium format that fits in a pocket and easy to use. Just don't go thinking it's a Rollei!

Project: Foth 6x9 Pinhole Part 4

Clamping the bellows while the adhesive dries

If I'm honest, my original conversion of the Foth 6x9 was a bit of a crude lash up. A somewhat half-arsed cardboard and tape hack. A quick "I wonder if this'll work" job. So I decided to do it properly this time. Gluing the bellows back in place was the first task. Unibond "Repair Extreme Power Glue" seemed to have the qualities I was looking for. Sticks amongst other things leather and metal. According to the pack it's "A super flexible multi purpose adhesive with new FLEXTEC™ patented technology" . "Transparent and odourless" too. Ideal. Glued and clamped in place with a few colourful crocodile clips I left it overnight.

New aluminium focus stop

Next job, a better lens stop. The first attempt from cardboard didn't work too well. (And while I'm about it, a new name for that part as this is a pinhole camera. I'm going to call it the "focus stop".) I made the new focus stop from from a small piece of aluminium right angle section, cut down and shaped to lock the lens pinhole standard in place. I attached it with a small dab hot-glue. Strong enough, but removable if necessary. Now the lens pinhole standard locks into place with a satisfying precise click. Perfect.

What else? I'd used a piece of black card inside the bellows for the shutter retaining screw to tighten down onto. Hmmm, I'm not sure what that's piece is called, so I'm naming it the "shutter backing plate". I wasn't happy with the card one. I wanted a proper steel shutter backing plate in there. Would you believe it, a fan belt pulley shim for a vintage VW is exactly the right size to fit over the shutter. And of course I had one handy! Cut down to fit inside the bellows and spray painted matt black. While I had the paint out I also blacked out the back of the shutter mounting and the inside of the camera back that had a lot of paint missing. It's all matt black in there now. Proper job.

So that's it, the Foth 6x9 f250 Pinhole Evo 2 is ready for a test run. Watch out for the results in part 5!

Trip to the City

I love Olympus compacts. It started with a second hand Trip 35 bought in a Cardiff junk shop in 1987. Cost me a fiver. Here's some recent pics from that same camera, now 40 years old. Ilford PanF dev'd in Rodinal.

Why Make it so Complicated?

Developing B&W at the kitchen sink is easy. I did it when I was 12, taught by my Dad. But some people seem to want to make it so complicated with developers that are mixed from powder, chemical stop baths and all sorts of nonsense. The stop bath in particular, what a total waste of time. Just another chemical to mix, store, bring to temperature and ultimately flush down the sink. The argument is that it instantly arrests development, but come on, think about it. There's what, 1ml of working strength developer on the film once you drain the tank? Then you add 300ml of water as a rinse and give it a shake. How long will it take for that dilution of developer to make any noticeable difference to your negs. An hour? A day? A week? Right. So here's the Agitated Dog top three tips for keeping it simple.


1. Don't do a pre-soak. No need. I've never done it. I've never seen anyone with any evidence that it helps anything. On top of that Ilford specifically say not to pre-soak. Don't do it, waste of time. Waste of water.
2. Don't use powdered developers. Yes I'm talking about the much loved D-76 and the slightly less loved !D-11. Why waste time with all the mixing from powder and storing the stock solution. There are plenty of liquid one shot developers that do exactly the same thing without all that messing about. Paterson Aculux 3, Ilfosol 3, HC-110, Ilfotec HC etc etc.
3. Don't bother with a chemical stop. Use water. After draining the tank, fill with water, five rapid inversions, drain, repeat, then in with the fix. Probably worth making sure the water temperature is close to the dev temperature. Do it the same every time and you'll have repeatable results. Same every time. Just like the chemical stop guys. Simple huh?

And that's it. Hey I don't even use a wetting agent most of the time. Heresy I know. But that's just me, as the oh-so-cute TV ad goes.

Film is Forever

Issue 1 in your newsagents long ago!

Way back in May 1979, I bought issue 1 of Street Machine magazine. I was only 14, but it changed my life. The cover car, Henry Hirise was a ‘62 Ford Consul with a supercharged 427 Chevy V8. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I soon learned. I read the magazine from cover to cover. No more Hillman Avengers with spotlights and rally stickers for me, this was something new. This is how they do it in America! Drag racing, cruising, hot rods, flame paint jobs, tyres with raised white letters. Cooool! Inside that first issue was the introduction to the their project Rover. A low rider built from a Rover P5 coupe. I just loved Steve Kirk's concept sketches. I started drawing cars that day and haven’t stopped since. Five years later in 1984, Street Machine covered the build of Colin Burnham’s legendary Cal Look Beetle. A car so simple, so beautiful, so inspiring, I had a virtual copy built some five years later. (Oh, and because of that car I met the girl I later married.) I told you it changed my life...

 

One of Steve Kirk's fabulous concept drawings

Back to the late 70‘s, I used to cycle over to Blackbushe Airport when they had drag race meetings. It was only 5 miles from home but nearly an hour by bike. And it was there on a beautiful overcast summer day in 1979 or 1980 that I saw the Street Machine project Rover in the metal.Wow, what a car! I took a picture with my trusty Kodak Instamatic 28, and here it is, in all its poorly framed and now digitally colour-corrected glory...

My pitifully framed Instamatic snap from '79 or '80

What I can’t understand is why I used the Instamatic at all. I had better cameras by then. I’ve a box of Kodachrome slides dated April 1980 taken at Blackbushe with my Chinon CS and a 200mm lens. Maybe I couldn’t afford any film that day and I found a 126 cartridge for the Instamatic. Maybe I was sick of dragging that heavy SLR kit around when I was on the bike. Who knows the mind of a 14 year old boy? Whatever, amazingly I still have the 3½“ x 3½“  print and several more from that outing. I wonder how many cameraphone snaps by today’s 14 year olds will still be around in 30+ years. But I know that film is forever!

Project: Foth 6x9 Pinhole Part 3

Yesterday I managed to find half an hour to run a film through the Foth pinhole. In fact two films. The first roll jammed and ripped the backing paper. Roll 2 was more successful, but has raised a couple of issues. Firstly, the cardboard lens stop doesn't work. The whole front standard tends to pull back into the camera with the slightest touch. A gust of wind or even the action of the cable release. I need to work on that, a new part will be made of aluminium, and will lock the lens standard in place. Secondly, having developed the film, it's clear that I have some major light leaks. I'm pretty certain the bellows are light tight, but closer examination shows they're not fixed securely to the camera! It looks as it the glue the factory used 85 years ago has failed. On the plus side, from what I can see of the image, the pinhole is a goodun. So I have a bit of work to do to on the Foth pinhole.In the meantime, here's a couple of pic from the first film:

 

50 second exposures on Ilford HP5+ with a lot of fogging due to those light leaks. Developed, 11 minutes in Rodinal 1+50 at 20°

Film, Reprocity and Pinholes

Let’s get straight to the point. What’s the best film for a pinhole camera? The answer is of course, that old classic “...it depends...” In the past, I’ve used the cheapest 5x4 medium speed black & white film I could get my hands on. It worked fine. I never used colour, the cost of developing colour sheet film is just too high. But now I can shoot roll film, there's a whole lot more choice. Including colour neg and colour slide.What should I use?

The issue that always crops up with pinhole photography is reciprocity failure. As exposure times go longer than about 1 second, you need to add more and more exposure time. Your meter tells you you need 5 seconds, but you’ll need to give it 30 sconds. Or the meter suggests 5 minutes and you’ll need 2 hours or maybe 5. It's hard to tell. With colour it can be worse as the colour balance of the film starts changing with longer exposures. It’s all a little imprecise. Trial and error becomes the standard technique.

So with a new pinhole camera to play with, I thought I’d visit the film manufacturers websites and see who advertises the best reciprocity characteristics. From their published data I've worked out a basic exposure guide for a few popular films for my f250 camera:
The yellow shaded areas are where reciprocity correction has needed to be applied. The deeper you go into the yellow, the more unpredictable the result. The grey area is beyond Ilford's published data. It's important to note that I've done no testing here, this is just from manufacturers data. Out in the real world, actual exposures might need to be completely different. You need to do your own testing.

And the winner? With no correction needed all the way down to LV8 it has to be Provia 400x. The 6x9 colour transparencies are going to look amazing! In black & white it's between Delta 3200 and TMax 400. I'm tempted to say Tmax as Delta at 3200 is already a push process. It's a just a shame Kodak don't do TMax 3200 in 120 format. That might work really well in a pinhole. Anyway, I'll be stocking up just as soon as I've made sure the camera actually works!