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 #11: Balda Lisette and Velvia 50

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 #11:

Camera: ca. 1938 Balda Lisette 645 120 folding camera

Film: Fuji Velvia 50

Locale: Oregon and Central Maryland

Velvia is a truly lovely medium with which to work, as it yields intensely saturated colors and excellent grain for landscapes and scenics.  However, it does not come at a particularly cheap price.  Thus, when armed with just a single roll of the stuff and a number of potential hosts, it is not always easy to pick a camera in which to shoot it.  However, as my Oregon trip was in its final day, I had to make just such a decision.  Since I'd just run a roll of Velvia 50 through the Lisette and was optimistic about the results, I elected to stay the course and give the Trioplan lens another chance to team up with Velvia and provide some outstanding color images.  Besides, shooting images on the 645 format allows for twice as many shots as with the 6x9 cameras, an important consideration when keeping within a budget.  

1 - Portland, OR - f/9 1/50 - A bit of atmospheric haze made capturing distant Mount Hood something of a challenge, one that Velvia was up for, and in managed to put just enough contrast in the scene to make the peak discernible in the distance.

Film Fun Folio #8: Balda Lisette and Velvia 50

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 #8:
Camera: ca. 1938 Balda Lisette 645 120 folding camera
Film: Fuji Velvia 50
Locale: Oregon

My first roll of film though my newly acquired Balda Lisette was a pleasant surprise in many respects, particularly when it came to color rendition.  The Trioplan lens combined with Fuji Velvia film gave off a rich and pleasing color palette that was pretty much unbeatable.  The main issues of note however were mainly centered on the sharpness of the lens at wider apertures, a problem that seemed to largely vanish at f/8 or better.  Armed with these lessons, I elected to give the Lisette another go with Fuji's flagship film product on my trip west to Oregon, hopeful to see some of the same color magic evident on the first roll, but with the sharpness issues mitigated by using smaller apertures.  

1 - Portland, OR - f/16 1/50 - A classic car lot that I stumbled across on my March trip was something that I definitely wanted to deliberately revisit.  Here a sunny afternoon provides a nice retro setting for Velvia to strut its colorful stuff. 

Film Fun Folio #1: Agfa Billy Compur and Fuji Velvia 50

Regularly, 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 #1:
Camera: ca. 1949 AGFA Billy Compur 6x9 120 folding camera
Film: Fuji Velvia 50
Locale: Central Maryland
May and June of 2015

It had been a while since I'd shot anything on the Billy Compur, a gleaming Art Deco styled camera that was among the very first folding cameras I picked up.  I'd felt a little guilty about leaving Billy on the shelf for so long, but as the landscapes about turned from a dreary shade of straw into a more lush green, I wanted to give this camera another shot, as my previous results were a bit hit and miss, and I was not sure if this was more a by-product of my inexperience with folding cameras when I first shot it back in the Fall, or if it was an issue with the camera itself.  I loaded it up with a fresh dated roll of Velvia to see how it would perform for its first roll of 2015.

1 - Washington DC - f/4.5 1/50 - I elected to test the sharpness of the Solinar lens wide open for my first image, and got this generally successful result.

Baby Balda: A Camera named Lisette

Camera people tend to be a particular batch.  They like to stick with names with which they are comfortable.  Witness any number of people who stick to certain lines in their modern day digital repertoire. There are any number of photographers who swear by Nikon or Canon and who will not shoot with anything else. 

Film photographers may be willing to experiment around a bit more with now "vintage" equipment being more affordable, but there is still bias.  Contax, Zeiss, Leica, and Schneider are a few of the names that come to mind as being among the preferred names to see on a lens of a film camera, and with these names comes a certain appeal.

I've got a few film products with both Zeiss and Schnieder glass, and they are exceptional. However, personally, there is one specific name that evokes a certain bit of love when it comes to color rendition in my film images... "Trioplan."  

This adoration of mine sprung forward in an almost accidental way, from a camera I didn't expect to like a lot, but which floored me with its image quality: the Balda Pontina.  This late 1930's gem has a special place in my collection, the majority of which results from the lens it bears: a simple triplet lens made by Meyer Gorlitz called the Trioplan. 

Lenses with the Trioplan name carry a bit of a following among folks using adapted lenses on digital bodies, as they can produce almost ethereal images filled with lovely bokeh. However, these Trioplan badged lenses are ones designed for use on (usually) Exakta SLR bodies.  

What is most perplexing about my love for the results on color slide film that I've gotten with my Trioplan equipped Balda is that this uncoated lens was really never designed with color film in mind.  As such, its lovely color results seem more the result of a happy accident than any engineered design.  Was this just a fluke? I had no way of knowing, but what I dod know was that the more I got results back from the Balda, the more I wanted to pick up another Trioplan equipped folding camera.

Around the same time, I was encountering continued issues with my Franka Solida. With an f/2.9 Schneider lens, it was the "fastest" medium format camera in my collection, and its images shot wide open were really nice, but it had a very undependable shutter that hung, leading to wasted time and film trying to get good results.  

So when I started to see occasional listings for some small 6x4.5 cameras by Balda, Certo, and Welta equipped with f/2.9 Trioplan lenses, my interest was certainly piqued.  It seemed like it could be perfection for me to have a camera that had a lens with the speed of the Schneider, the color rendition of the Trioplan, and the compact size and ability to shoot 16 exposures to a roll like the Ikonta A.

The coveted goal of my interests: a lens line I really liked with the fast maximum aperture I wanted.

An Autographic Experiment Part 2 - Shooting 120 Panoramics in a 122 Format Camera

The thirst continued:

The images from my initial test 120 roll in the Autographic 1-A 116 format camera had not even returned from the lab when my curiosity of the possibilities got the best of me. I looked into information on other discontinued roll film formats, and began to research which could be adapted to utilize 120 film.  

My goal was to be able to get the largest possible image on a frame of 120 film, one that approached panoramic dimensions.  After some minor research, I'd made the decision to pick up a new acquisition, none other than a Kodak Autographic 3-A camera, using the 122 format.  Whereas my existing 120 cameras could take images ranging from 6 x 4.5 to 6x9, and the Autographic 1-A could bump that up to an impressive 6x11 format on 120 film, the 3-A could trump these, producing a 6x14 size image on 120 format film.

After a little bit of searching, I snagged the actual machine itself, a Kodak 3-A dating from between 1916 and 1926, armed with a Bausch and Lomb Rapid Rectilinear lens. Report were that this lens not only could be quite sharp at f/16, but also had some surprisingly good color rendition considering its production in the midst of the panchromatic era.   

The Autographic 3A at left is somewhat larger than the 116 format 1A seen next to it.  Still, it towers over 120 format cameras such as the Super Ikonta 531/2 and the Ikonta A 521.

Sounds great! But it comes with a hitch.  Unlike the 116 camera that is only slightly wider than 120, and thus, can be fed a roll of 120 film by simply laying the supply roll in the chamber and threading the film to the native 116 roll, this 122 format is appreciably wider than 120, about an inch in fact, so using the same methods is sloppy at best, and could result in poor framing and skewed horizon lines. I had to step it up with this experiment if I was going to come away with anything usable.

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. 

A Camera named Billy

There is a very strong likelihood that at some point, someone took a picture of a streetcar named "Desire" with a camera named "Billy."

And while the now-discontinued New Orleans Desire streetcar line is pretty much well known as a result of the famous Tennessee Williams play, Billy has fallen into relative obscurity.

And yes, there really is a camera named Billy, and he comes in many variations.

I myself learned about Billy through some very roundabout means, starting with a Saturday afternoon browsing a store named Pink Cabbage in Ellicott City.  Here, I spotted a folding Kodak rollfilm camera in very good condition with a working shutter for the modest price of $34.  I was instantly intrigued, but upon opening it, discovered it took 616 film.  I did a few hasty Google searches to see how 120 film could be repurposed in a 616 camera, but the results seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.  

The Return to Film: The Seagull 4A-103 (Part 1)

It seemed the basis for the PERFECT article, if only... 

Time has a way of getting away from a person, only to make it's duration known at a later date, when a specific thought comes to mind.  For me, it was seeing some photos that made me realize that I had shot just 3 rolls of photographic film in the past 12 years!

It is pretty unnerving to look back at how quickly the world of photography changed.  In 1998, I was shooting entirely on film stock, mostly slides.  By 2002, my Casio QV-3000 3MP Digital and I were inseparable.  The ease of use, instant previews, and instant results were definitely something lacking in the world of film.  I can recall day trips in the 1990's where it was commonplace for me to shoot three rolls of film in a single day.  And then upon finding my groove in the digital revolution, an entire decade had elapsed, and there was a realization that I'd shot as much film as I'd have occasionally shot in a single day.