Film Fun Folio #23 - Balda HaPo 10 and (LONG!) Expired Verichrome Pan

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 #23:

Camera: ca. 1938 Balda Hapo 10 with 105mm Steinheil Munchen f/3.8 lens.

Film: Kodak Verichrome Pan (Expired 1962)

Locale: Central Maryland and Washington DC.

It's always the ones you have the highest hopes for that let you down.  When I pulled the trigger on the Hapo 10, enamored with its looks, I hoped this would be a great addition to my 6x9 cameras.  I ultimately was underwhelmed after three rolls of film through this camera failed to really give much in the way of good results.

However, after experiments using old Verichrome Pan gave me surprisingly good, if somewhat vintage looking results, I thought it might be time to give the old Hapo one more try.  It's slow performing shutter seemed a good fit for a long expired film that needed over exposure.  I hoped I could get at least a suitable result or two from this old camera that had been sitting for nearly a year, or at least I could play on the seeming flaws of the Hapo and create a roll of very distressed shots done just for fun.  

The first two shots were immediately blown, to no fault of the Hapo.  When I loaded up the film, I should have done an initial re-taping of this 50 year old film to its backing paper in the dark prior to loading. Sure enough the tightly curled film separated from the backing and as a result, I lost the first exposures.  I could only hope the remaining six chances were enough to get something good from this pretty, but pretty disappointing camera.  Note: Keep in mind the "settings" here are what was on the camera, but this camera is known to have a slow shutter, so they are likely to be about half as fast as what is indicated for these images.  

A---------------------------------------B--------------------------------------------C---------------D

3 - Monrovia, MD - f/4.5, 1/100 -  Interestingly, what would pretty much turn out to be the most disappointing shot on the roll would also serve as the most informative,  I should have really backed further up to get this ramshackle old house along the road, for a better result, but looking at the image, something is apparent: the area between B and C above is fairly sharp, while the areas outside of this tend to be blurred.  I had never noticed this tendency before on previous rolls, and by sheer coincidence, the rest of the roll would tend to have its subjects in this area of the frame.  

Film Rewind - A second take on some Film Cameras

If a look through the chronology of my posts is to be believed, I'm a "camera whore."  I get a camera, shoot a roll or two through it, and then stow it away as my fascination turns to the next novel project or acquisition in my repertoire.  

I am very proud to say that is not the case.

The story and interest in the machines does not end with the publishing of the article.  In fact, the article often sets about to be the springboard for even more new and novel fun with the camera once I have gotten a taste of its strengths and limitations.  As such, I thought it would be a nice idea to publish this follow up as a sort of "where are they now" feature. Enjoy! 

Seagull 4A-103

It's the very camera that got me interested in film photography once again, and after a little bit of trial and error, I got it working once again.  Since discovering the portability and fun of the folding cameras, I've used the Seagull less, but it is still a wonderful camera to use, though often maligned by "serious" photographers. Ironically, it is the medium format camera I've had the longest, and yet it is the newest in my collection, as every other 120 camera I own was somewhere in the world on the day I was born.  Below is a Provia 100F image taken with the Seagull.  I had to secure the camera on the rear of my car, causing the light bleed in the lower corner. 

Deja Vu: A Prewar Photographic Pair of Balda Folders

They say fortune comes in three's, but it seems to really come in two's for me, at least photographically.

This trend started in February when I got an Olympus PEN E-PL2 off of Craigslist, and not too long afterwards realized that the the Line Art mode offered on the E-PM2 would be much easier for the focusing of old adapted manual focus adapted lenses, so I took the hit to add a companion.  As I've gotten into film however, this has gotten much worse, as my reactivation of my Seagull 4A-103 prompted me to add a second TLR to my repository with the Yashica 12.  When I first got into folding cameras, I bid on two different Agfa Billy cameras, and wound up winning both.  And when I snagged a good deal on a Zeiss Ikonta 521/2, I couldn't help but to be tempted to pick up an attractively priced 645 version as well just days later.  Yikes. 

And that was supposed to be it, as I now had at my disposal a collection of medium format film cameras that could shoot 6x9, 6x6, and 6x4.5.  I had both folders and TLR's, cameras that had coated lenses and non, cameras with triplets lenses and sharper 4 element lenses opening up as far as f/3.5, as well as cameras capable of shutter speeds as short as 1/500 of a second.  I now had six film cameras that I could load simultaneously with films ranging from slow to fast, color and black and white, and both positive and negative films.  I really had no reason in the world to be looking about.

And then I was bitten with a little bit of capriciousness.

Still, ever eager to learn more about the cameras made decades ago, and using the dangerous tool of ebay as my learning tool, I spotted a terribly attractive deal.  Unlike my last two Zeiss acquisitions, whose "Ikonta" names sound surprisingly "attractive" for German, this camera sported a name that was not nearly as appealing: "The Balda Hapo 10."