CalArti

Several weeks ago I was wandering around eBay, looking for bargains in 120 roll film. I didn’t find any, but the search led me to look at cameras, and of course that led to trouble…

A particular type of camera really caught my fancy – antique (or classic) folding medium format rangefinders. A couple of years ago a friend gave me an old Kodak Retina-A folding rangefinder, and I really fell in love with it. The only interesting shot that I’ve managed to take with it is this one from Chicago’s Millennium Park:

The idea of packing a medium format camera that, once folded up, was only a little larger than the Retina A was just too compelling. Thanks to the Retina A I’m accustomed to zone focusing, so even working with that constraint is acceptable.

After a few weeks of searching and researching, a great camera came along on eBay – an Agfa Isolette III.

The specimen I bought looked like a beauty. The bellows looked to be pristine (turns out they aren’t) and the lens and camera overall looked very clean (which they are.) The lens focusing mechanism works perfectly.

Shortly after the Isolette arrived, I hightailed it the graveyard across the way to see how it worked. The graveyard is my honored testing ground for new cameras and lenses – the square stones give a good sense of how rectilinear the lens may be, and the rolling hills and trees give abundant opportunity to test a lens under different circumstances.

A roll of Agfa APX 400 was used for this test. The first frame was sacrificed to test the bellows – I just advanced the film, opened up the camera, and held it out in the sunlight for a while. After that I just wandered around a bit, and shot whatever seemed interesting.

Getting home, I souped the APX 400 in Rodinal 1:50. Pulling the film out of the tank, I was disappointed to see that the first frame was not blank I hoped. Despite appearances, the bellows is indeed fraught with pinhole leaks. I later examined the bellows in a dark closet with a very bright flashlight, and confirmed this myself – the leaks are pinholes, but definitely there.

Despite the light leaks, the images I took were not ruined. In fact, the ones where the film was quickly advanced shoe very little impact from the pinhole leaks. Studying these shots reveals a very sharp and contrasty 6 x 6 cm negative – which works for me.

So, the camera will have to go off to get re-bellowed. But when it’s refurbished it will be a great addition to my digital camera bag. I’ve tried carrying TLR’s with me, but they take up too much space in the camera bag. The folding rangefinder and a couple of rolls of film will fit comfortably into my digital camera bag, and it will be great to be able to switch over to MF film at any time.

Here’s one shot from the cemetery – yah, I played around with the curves to give it a bit of a solarized feel:

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately. I spent the first week of this month in Chicago, enjoying the urban life. It was great trip. Pam and I staying at the Congress Plaza Hotel, right on Michigan Avenue. Highlights included visits to the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Field Museum, and, of course, The Dark Knight at the Imax.

Since vacations are supposed to be an opportunity to get away from old habits, I decided to bring a film camera. I finally used up the last of my Ilford XP2 Super – which was considerably out of date. I also shot over a dozen rolls of Fuji Neopan 400 and Adox CHM 400 film.

The Adox film is re-badged Ilford HP 5+, and used to be sold through J and C Photo. The expiration date on the box was 7/2008 – so shooting it in the first week of August, 2008, was right on time. Remarkably, aside from the XP2 Super and a couple of rolls of Plus-X, all the film I shot on this trip was fresh. I guess I’m still using up 35mm ISO 400 B&W film.

I shot 15 rolls of film during the trip, and have been slowly working my way through developing them. The film workflow is certainly a lot slower than the digital workflow, especially when you are developing it yourself.

For development, I mixed up one of my last bags of Micrdol-X, which I’ve been using at the 1:3 dilution. The development time for the Adox CHM 400 is easy to remember – 22 minutes at 22C. For the Fuji Neopan, I’ve been working with the 15.5 minutes at 22C.

So far, 12 of the 15 rolls shot have been developed, but only a handful of those have been scanned. Did I mention that the film workflow is pretty slow?

At home, other projects have been keeping me away from blogging. First and foremost, I’m trying hard to re-do this entire website. Really – it’s time for a new look and a structure that makes a little sense. So, I’m trying to hold off on adding to the current site while the new one is in process – so no new images in the Image Stream at this point.