Film Fun Folio #22 - Zeiss Ikonta 521 and Cross Processed Agfa CR 200

Periodically, I'll be posting scans of some complete rolls of film on here, showing both the good and the bad, and giving some basic information as well a little write up of the shoot as well as the reasons why I selected each camera and film.  Enjoy the trip! 

Feature #22:

Camera: ca. 1946 Zeiss Ikonta 521 with Novar f/3.5 lens.

Film: Agfa CR 200 (Cross Processed in C41)

Locale: Central Maryland.

Amid a very busy shooting session in the Fall of 2015 in Frederick County, Maryland, I ran through my rolls a bit more rapidly than originally anticipated.  I'd brought along a few spare rolls as insurance, and I hastily elected to use this roll of CR200 to get a few more exposures.  In hindsight, I'd have more likely elected to use one of the many rolls of Velvia 100F I had on hand rather than my only roll of CR200, but this allowed a good chance to get another look at this unique film.  The frugal part of me would have felt better eeking out 12 or 16 exposures from this roll rather than the 8 possible using a 6x9 camera, but this allowed me a fun chance to see the capabilities of this film in a range of daylight situations.

When it came time to process the film, I elected to cross-process it, mainly because I had read good things about cross processing this film compared to more disparaging things about developing it in E-6.  I guess it was time for me to see what the fuss was about.  

1 - Braddock Heights, MD - f/11, 1/250 - The first shot is sharp enough, but man is it golden in hue.  I don't hate it, but it didn't quite have the fun vibe from the offset that my first cross processed roll had going for it.

The Varied Commute

A few months ago, I made a pretty significant change in my life, moving from my environs in Columbia MD out to Frederick, further to the west.  There are any number of reasons for this, but in doing so, I certainly weighed out the pros and cons.  One of the biggest cons was an increase in my commuting time to work in Washington DC.  However, I fancy myself one who likes exploring, and have always tried to "make lemonade from lemons."  In the process of settling in, I would try a number of different commuting options that involved various combinations of driving, bus riding, commuter trains and the DC Metro.  And each of these new views also brought with it a chance for some new photographic fun that I did not have on my previous commute.  Have a look at some shots taken on the Exakta, of my new and often varied commute.

Believe it or not, this image on Fomapan 200 was actually taken from the MTA commuter bus #515, and depicts a retention pond in the middle of the exit from Interstate 270 to Urbana.  

Same Scene - Four Cameras, Four Films

On my (now not too) recent trip westward to Oregon, I made it a point that I would ensure that I would aim to have one scene that I would shoot with every color film camera at my disposal at the time.  As it was, I wound up holding off using my last shot on two of these cameras to ensure that I could perform such an experiment.

Finally, on the afternoon of June 20, at a stop called Corbett's View, overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, I took the opportunity to snap away to get results that I could compare.  The samples, already featured in several of the Film Folio features, are shown below

Zeiss Ikonta A 521, Agfa Rollei Crossbird 200 Film

Agfa Billy Record I, Expired Kodak Ektachrome 200 scanned with Color Restoration. 

Welta/Rodenstock Citonette, Provia 100F.

Balda Lisette, Velvia 50.

Overall, light leaks aside, there is a lot of differences in how this same scene was rendered on four different cameras and films.  I thought I'd have a clear "winner" in the batch, but I can't say that I do.  Nor can I say that one of these completely fails in its rendering.  It is a very interesting example of how the same scene can be given a remarkably differing appearance based largely on the film.  

And as we head into colder weather, I'm certainly glad to have these vestiges of a trip west in warmer temperatures! 

Film Fun Folio #4: Zeiss Ikonta A 521 and Agfa Crossbird 200

Periodically, I'll be posting scans of some complete rolls of film on here, showing both the good and the bad, and giving some basic information as well a little write up of the shoot as well as the reasons why I selected each camera and film.  Enjoy the trip! 

Feature #4:
Camera: ca. 1946 Zeiss Ikonta A 521 645 120 folding camera
Film: Agfa Crossbird 200 (processed in traditional E6)
Locale: Oregon
June of 2015

I had one more trip to Oregon to make following my trip there in mid-March.  This time, I would be likely to journey farther afield than Portland, and I would have much more of an opportunity to shoot during daylight hours.  Thus, I could focus on far more than simply the lovely scenes of Neon present in my Portland After Dark feature.  One thing I knew for certain was that in a retro-savvy town like Portland as well as its neighboring environs, I wanted to bring a roll of Agfa's CR-200, also marketed as Agfa Crossbird.  I figured that the warmly nostalgic hues of this film would be ideal to have at my disposal for some scenes on this trip, and elected to use the smaller Zeiss folder for this purpose so as to enable more images to be captured.  My last experiences with this camera were underwhelming at wider apertures, but I figured that most of the scenes I would shoot would be done at f/8 or smaller.  

1 - Camas, WA - f/8 1/50 - I made one small diversion just to be able to say I walked in Washington State, and these few photos serve as my proof.  While the mill in the small town of Camas gives it an odor, the downtown and Liberty Theater look quite nice, and made a fitting retro subject for this film.

Portland (OR) After Dark: A Film Photo Project

Learning is an interesting animal.  There are times when one spends considerable time learning new things in bits and pieces over the course of many months.  Then, there comes the time when one must draw from what they've learned to achieve a desired result in a far shorter period of time.

In the past several months, I've been able to learn a lot about film photography at a leisurely pace, and to apply bits of this newly found knowledge at an incremental rate.  Usually, as I've taken photos in the region, I've been able to experiment on my own time and pace, knowing that if I made a technical error in my photos, I could return to the same site at a later date without too much in the way of inconvenience.  Unique or rare lighting and weather conditions were about the only factors that created much of a sense of urgency to "get the shot right," but even then, there was always some possibility of a return visit to get a better photo if needed.

In the world away from my home in the mid-Atlantic, those same rules of forgiveness do not readily apply.  So when I had to book a trip to Portland, Oregon to assist with some family business, I realized I could (and should) take along some film to shoot as a means of decompressing from the business at hand.  If I had any free time, it would be in the evenings, and since I remembered some cool old neon signs that I loved in the City of Roses, it seemed this would make the ideal setting for some classic film photos.

Given that I've worked with several kinds of film as well as numerous cameras over the past few months, the possibilities of what cameras to take, what film to shoot, as well as what combinations of film and camera would work most ideally seemed pretty daunting.  I was looking at two evenings at most with which to do this, with no idea when I might be returning, so it was time to pull all I'd learned together to achieve the most of this opportunity.

First, I had to do a little reconnaissance with Google Image searches and Street View to map out photo opportunities.  I'd remembered a few signs from previous visits to the Rose City, but as I looked deeper, I discovered many more worthy photo subjects awaited me.  Some were spectacular, some were quite nice, and a few were a bit more basic, but still worthy of my time.  I took to Excel to list these sites, their locations in the area, and try to prioritize them by interest level.


Given that, I then had to make the decision of the cameras I would take as well as the films I'd use. This proved to offer some challenge, but as I had managed to get a good degree of experience with each, the choices I ultimately made gave me no heartburn.  I got obsessive to the point of looking at each possible visit site to determine if there was any special film or camera that I'd specifically want to use for any of them.

Ultimately, I took along about a dozen rolls of film of at least 6 varieties, as well as cameras to capture results in a range of formats.  Though I'd hoped to give all the cameras use for this project, some, such as the Franka Solida, were never loaded with film at all during my stay, while others were also used at other parts of the journey back.

Ultimately, the lit neon photos were captured on Velvia 50, Provia 100, and Agfa Crossbird 200 using the Balda Pontina, Zeiss Ikonta 521/2, Zeiss Super Ikonta 531/2, and the Kodak Autographic 1A 116 format camera.  I began adhering to a pre-planned regimen of taking specific scenes with specific cameras and film, but had to abandon this notion as the whole process of unmounting and remounting various cameras on my single cheesy tripod proved to be extremely infuriating in the limited amount of time I had at my disposal, and the increasingly limited patience.  I had expected to be recording exposures on my exposure notes, but that too went by the wayside quickly, as I interacted with my brother during our ride along through the streets of Portland.

With all that was going on, I began to realize that I might be overexposing the shots by the end of the first evening of shooting, and had generally corrected this by the second night, though both the Pontina and Super Ikonta had some quirk of their own regarding the shutter closing after bulb exposures that I had to continually catch and correct.  Upon returning home and sending off the four rolls of film for processing, my initially high expectations started to wane a bit with worry between exposure issues, and some of the equipment quirks.

Quite fortunately, most of those worries proved to be unfounded, and the results that arrived just a week later from Old School Photo Lab were quite nicely done.  Even one of the flub shots turned out to give a very interesting, and usable result.  Though framing issues hindered the results I got from the Autographic 1A, I was elated to find that the Super Ikonta 531, a camera which had previously provided me some very disappointing results on its initial test roll, delivered some very good shots this time.  Perhaps some of this had to do with me foregoing the use of the rangefinder, and relying instead on my distance estimates.

Results from the Trioplan equipped Pontina were generally wonderful, though some of my favorites came from the more humble Ikonta 521, into which I fed a roll of Crossbird 200, processed simply in E6 chemistry.  But enough with my jabbering already.  It's time to let the photos do the talking.  Enjoy! 

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Among my first sign captures were images of one of the best of the batch, the Palms Motor Hotel on Interstate Avenue.  While my first shot, above, shows some tripod movement, that while not bad, is a little odd, the second capture seen below manages to render this lovely classic sign in its best light, both literally and figuratively. 

Fun with Film: Agfa Crossbird 200 / Digibase CR200

Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Anscochrome, Agfachrome, Scotchchrome, Astia.

Each of these is a line of color transparency films that is no longer manufactured.  Kodak is out of the business, and Ilford is strictly manufacturing only Black and White Films. Ferrania is actively working to get into the production of transparency films, but production of the initial Kickstarter batch has yet to begin. As such, only Fuji remains to produce Velvia in 50 and 100 speed versions, as well as Provia 100F.

But there is one other option in medium format at the moment - Rollei Agfa.

Typically a seller of a varied line of black and white films of various lineages, the European supplier actually offers one pseudo-slide film among its range of offerings.  I say "pseudo" because they apparently offer the same film packaged and marketed in two different ways. On one hand is the Rollei Digibase CR 200, a traditionally marketed color transparency film based upon the old Agfachrome 200 formulation.  On the other hand is a film called "Crossbird 200," a color reversal film marketed towards being "cross processed," that is, processed in the chemistry for color negative film instead, so as to yield unpredictable colors.  From all appearances, both are the same exact film.

On my return to shooting on film, I was naturally pretty dismayed to see that the selection of color transparency (slide) films had dwindled as much as they had.  Amid my digital shooting days, I recall seeing the news that Kodachrome had passed on, but had no idea that the Ektachrome line had passed as well.  As I began to explore the offerings at B&H Photo, only the trio of remaining Fuji films remained as options, along with both iterations of the Rollei Agfa 200.  The straight "Digibase CR200" version was only available in a five pack, and I certainly wasn't ready to commit that kind of money to an unknown yet. However, the "Crossbird" version was available in single rolls, and I gladly pulled the trigger to try to a test roll, so as to be able to compare it to the remaining Fuji films.

Reading up on whatever I could find regarding others uses of these films left me a little worried, and admittedly rather unenthusiastic about using the roll of film.  For one, the film is on a polyester base instead of acetate, which reportedly leaves it susceptible to "light piping" if any of the film sees the light of day, thus inciting recommendations to load it under subdued light or darkness if possible.  Other reviews however stated that the finished results when processed using E6 chemistry, left an unpleasant and overwhelming yellow cast in the image.  As such, it took several months before I finally took the plunge and loaded the film into my Yashica 12 on Christmas Day, 2014, so as to begin to snap off a roll of test photos.