I seem to have bought 19 cameras...

/

For reasons that I can’t fully explain I’ve become mildly obsessed with owning a Canon Dial 35 camera. This is a clockwork half-frame camera which dates from the 1960’s. Above you can see my first attempt at purchasing such a camera. It doesn’t look too bad does it? This is how it looked on the ebay listing that I eagerly perused.

..and this is the picture of the back. Needless to say, this picture was not on ebay. It turns out that it is best if your purchasers don’t know that the camera they are thinking of buying has been used to knock in tent pegs.

The camera doesn’t work. In fact it is actually one solid block of stuff. Nothing inside it moves. All the gears have rusted solid. It turns out that knocking in tent pegs might actually be a good use for it. So today, rather than question why I want one of these cameras, I’ve upped the anti a bit by ordering a lot of 19 broken cameras which include a Canon Dial 25 among their number. Most of them are plastic point and shoot devices of little interest but one or two of them might be gems. We shall see.

A chum for the Chaika

/

Differently broken

What do you do when you’ve just bought a broken Russian camera? You buy another one of course. While I love the artistic potential of having one picture taken on top of another, it makes the camera much less useful for reportage (i.e. taking pictures of things that look like the things). So last week I waded back into the auction fray and managed to pick up another identical camera (for less than the original and with a case and wrist strap thrown in). From the images of the camera, this one has a complete takeup gear, so it bound to be OK. Right?

Wrong. The takeup gear is fine, the camera loads and takes pictures, the shutter works. But the film counter stays stuck at zero. Bearing in mind you can fit 72 pictures on a single roll of film, a way of knowing how many you’ve taken is kind of important. Wah. So I take the camera to pieces for a look-see.

I love the way that the clear plastic that covers the displays on the camera is actually made from old film.

Turns out there is a tiny cork clutch between the indicator dial and the gear that moves with the shutter advance. I stuck a couple of pieces of insulating tape on top of the cork to make it thicker and more grippy and we are in business. So now I have an “art Chaika” and a “business Chaika”.

Tower Block Development

/

Hornsea Mere

Another purchase that I made last Thursday was of a rather special film developing tank which can develop three films at once.

It contains three spirals into which you wind the films before putting the whole thing in the light tight tank and pouring in the chemicals.

This is a good idea because if you use large format film with only a few shots per roll you find yourself coming home with multiple films to be developed. Also, you can save up a bunch of films and then do them all at once. I was going to put three films in the tank but it occurred to me that this would be a bad idea if the tank was faulty. So I found an old film which had some pictures on it but had been slightly spoiled when I opened the camera back by mistake. I wasn’t expecting there to be much on this film, so if it didn’t work I’d be quite relaxed about it. However, it worked just fine and I even had some pictures turn out OK, which was nice.

Accidental Art

/

I was at Hull University again today so I snapped a bunch of pictures with my new (to me) half frame Russian camera. It is now one of my favourite devices. But not because it works. The drive mechanism for the film is faulty. Some of the pins on the film advance sprockets are worn down a bit, probably by a previous owner rewinding the film without disengaging the drive. A lot can happen to a camera over fifty years. This means that the film doesn’t always wind on properly. So you get one frame overlaid on top of another. And you get pictures like these:

the lens is very sharp and the exposure seems to work fine

No two pictures the same…

Close to working properly…

I had a lot of good times here..

The things you get right are interesting. But sometimes the things that you get wrong are even more interesting. I liked the idea of making images that had two pictures in the frame, but what I’ve ended up with is even more than this. I’ve kind of figured out how to make the film move properly most of the time, but I think every now and then I’ll get this camera out just to see what kind of pictures it creates for me.

The Photography and Video Show

/

I don’t have any pictures because I need to get the film developed….

Today finds us at the Photography and Video Show in the National Exhibition Centre (NEC). I’ve not been before. It’s awesome. Loads of familiar brands plus a whole bunch of other interesting stuff. My favourite stand was the Disabled Photographers Society. They collect donations over the year and then put them all up for sale at the show. So there were lots of old cameras to root through.

A little dusty but otherwise perfect

I found the Pentax ProgramA you can see above. This dates from around 1980. I’ve no idea if it works. It was one of the first “battery only” cameras and it won’t do anything until you give it a couple of LR44 cells. I’ll find out when I get home whether or not it works.

Next year the show will be in London rather than Birmingham. I’m definitely going to try to get there though, it was great fun.

Update: I got the camera home, popped in a couple of batteries and everything seems to do what it should. So the next step is to pop a film in it.

TTArtisan APS-C 25mm F2 is silly good

/

Really must replace that bulb

I’ve bought another camera. It’s ten years old and wonderful. I had to buy a lens to go with it and I happened across the TTArtisan APS-C 25mm F2. You can get this for the frankly silly price of 69.00 pounds.

My standard test shot came out pretty well too

The lens is metal bodied, immaculately presented and has a metal screw-on lens cap for extra class (although it makes it a bit harder to use). It’s manual focus and aperture, so you’ll have to adjust the settings yourself, but the quality of the output is wonderful. You would have to spend a lot of money to better it.

Cheap Photography with the Canon 650

/

I think this camera works

Ages ago I bought a cheap old camera, just to get the lenses that came with it. Then I put a film in the camera just to see if it would work. It didn’t. The the pictures through the viewfinder looked sharp but the finished prints were full of blur. Now that I’m back into photography (in what seems like a big way) I thought I’d see about replacing the dodgy camera; a Canon 650, with another, less dodgy one. So I did. The replacement cost me ten pounds and came with a smart little case. I took it out for a walk today and shot a bunch of pictures.

Can you guess what time this picture was taken

This camera works a treat. It is fully automatic. It focusses, works out the exposure and even winds the film on after each shot. And it seems to be getting it all right too. I was using a “nifty fifty” (a prime lens with a 50mm focal length) that I happened to have lying around for these shots and they came out lovely and sharp. It allows full manual control too, if you want to make your pictures the hard way.

The whole thing brought home just how cheaply you can get into analogue photography. There is nothing wrong with the Canon 650 except hat it is out of fashion. It is very plasticky and a bit of an ugly lump. But that was the fashion in 1987 when it was released. As a first camera I think it would be hard to beat. You’ll have to find a lens for it (search for “canon ef 50mm”) and you will find that they tend to cost a bit more than the camera. However, you should be able to get started for less than the price of a modern video game. And there is always the chance that if you ask around the family someone might confess to having an old camera like this in the back of a wardrobe somewhere.

I’m certainly going to use my 650 quite a bit. While I quite like the process of working out the exposure and getting the focus right, it is rather nice to have a camera just do all that stuff for you every now and then.

Taking a Pentax 67 out and about

/

The light was really nice this morning

One of the things about old cameras is that they like a bit of exercise. And, with the weight of some of them they give you a bit of exercise too. Ho ho. (With the increasing use of ChatGPT in these hallowed pages I feel I must make it clear that I personally came up with that line). Anyhoo, I loaded the Pentax 67 up with a roll of film and took it round the block today. The good news is that the camera made all the right clunking noises when I pressed the button. I processed the film and the pictures are all in the right place too which is nice (and not guaranteed with this model of camera). You get an awful lot of detail with a big negative, and the perspective of the lens is really nice.

More of these are coming to our area thanks to the wonders of de-regulation…

Old School Lumix Lives

/

Not bad for a 20 year old camera

Took the Lumix DMC-LC5 camera for a walk earlier in the week and I’ve only just got round to getting the pictures out of it. The camera was created by Leica and Panasonic, has an amazing lens and a tiny (by modern standards) sensor. However it is particularly good with some colours, particularly red.

The water levels are quite high at the moment

I must get into the habit of taking these old devices out every now and then. They are quite fun.

Phoenix Film in York

/

The film certainly has that seventies vibe..

Phoenix film is quite something. It’s an entirely new colour film launched by Harman Labs, who also make Ilford films. I got myself a roll of it for Christmas. I loaded the roll into my newest old camera, the venerable Pentax ME Super and we headed off for York. It’s sold as an experimental colour film. It’s an experimental film all right.

My biggest problem turned out to be that Phoenix film likes plenty of light. But the Pentax ME quite likes to under expose a little for moody dark shots. So I ended up with a whole bunch of muddy underexposed pictures that were lacking in much colour. The picture above was of a vibrant shop front full of colourful cakes. The sharpness is fine and the shot is not without merit, but the above was only achieved after considerable tweakage to bring up the light levels.

I’m going to have another go with it later (assuming I can get my hands on another roll). And when I do I’ll expose it at around half its speed. And I’ll make sure that I’ve got something very big and colourful right in the middle of the frame.

Bulk Loading Film

/

I could show you the inside where the film is stored, but it wouldn’t end well

The device above is called a “bulk loader”. The big round bit at the back is where you put a big spool of film (best to do this in the dark). You then close off the film storage area and open the light-tight hatch to load an empty 35mm cassette. Then you close the hatch and wind 24 shots of hopefully unexposed film into the cassette.

It’s a way of recycling old film cassettes and saving money on film, as film in bulk is a bit cheaper to buy. I’ll let you know whether or not it works when I’ve run a film through the camera and developed it….

Boxing Day Developments

/

I did say “don’t move” as I took the picture. Not everybody heard me.

With family members heading home I thought I’d get out the pictures that I took with the 3D printed camera at the Rather Useful Seminar I did in November and do some Boxing Day development. One picture seems to have suffered with a light leak (I need to be very careful not to pull the film holder away from the camera when the dark slide isn’t in place). But the other is quite good. At least the people there will be able to recognise themselves.