Univexed! A Camera Named Iris

I have come to realize that I am a stubborn King of Forgotten Formats.  Either that or I am a Clown Prince of the Arcane.  Either way, I'm happy, so it is what it is.

And just when I thought that my foray to finally delve into the world of 127 film would constitute my final quirky deviation from the safe place of 120 and 135, I find yet another slice of obsolescence to try out my hand in.  This one constitutes not just one but TWO goose eggs: namely, the fabled "00" format. It's entry into my photographic world would oddly prove to be a perfectly timed and profound blessing to move me into new but necessary territory.  Read on!

My super-length roll of 127 that proved to be too much an undertaking for the photo lab, and which proved to be the push I needed to get into the world of black and white film development, was only part of that impetus.  Just as I got the news that this odd roll of film wouldn't load into the reels, I was finishing up my first roll of 00 sized film, an oddly sized film that is about 2-3 millimeters narrower than 35mm stock.  If my lean roll of 127 wasn't fitting the lab's spools, certainly a roll of film that is deliberately narrower than 35/828 was not going to fare any better in a commercial lab. Thus, my entry into the 00 format only validated the need to develop film myself.

The oddest aspect to my entry into the world of "00" film is that I can't even recall the reason WHY I elected to adopt this camera and its flaky format into my cadre of equipment. Perhaps it was a flaky outburst of "GAS" or perhaps I was just enchanted with the retro look of the camera I was picking up.  Either way, the camera was quite cheap, so I had no real regrets about picking it up.

The Univex Iris gleams with a rich elegant black body, a shiny metallic faceplate, and just enough embellishments of art deco striping to present a stylish look indicative of the era.

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."