Ramblings About Photography and A Kodak Retina

Me With a Kodak Retina Ib

So taking a somewhat winding road to get here, and shooting everything between small format film (Minox and 110) and large format (6×9 120 and 4×5”), I am back to shooting 35mm b&w film in a big way. I’ve always contended that 35mm wasn’t the best film format, but that it probably was the best compromise format optimized for practicality, size, and quality. While I was concentrating on my Leica IIIf and Red Scale Elmar, this camera developed a capping issue (even though I recently had new curtains installed in it). After I sent the camera in for further adjustment, a pushed ad from usedphotopro.com (highly recommend!) popped up hawking a Kodak Retina Ia for $37 with free shipping. Since I’ve also been getting back into biking, a quality small inexpensive pocket camera seemed like a good thing to add to my collection, so I ordered it.

When You Keep Passing the Same Place, It Either Means You Are Completely Lost Or You’re Already There. Kodak Retina Ia, f11

It’s not perfect, but after cleaning the lens and viewfinder it’s been a mostly reliable camera. Quality of the photos are easily on par with the Leica–no surprise since both are products of fine German engineering and optics. Unlike my Kodak Retina IIa, the Ia has no rangefinder, but instead is only scale focusing (guess), but stopped down, I haven’t spoiled a photo yet because of bad focusing. Also, I am finding the simple viewfinder without integrated rangefinder lends itself to concentrating more on composition. This made me realize that one of the first things I was taught when I started studying photography–that you needed an SLR for serious work–was definitely wrong. The reason given (aside from no parallax issues) was that you were looking through the taking lens. Unfortunately, as a young student, composing through a wide open lens with shallow depth of field made everything basically look better and almost magical while composing, but in ways that didn’t automatically transfer to the prints you were going to make in the end. The distracting bits that were hidden in the blur were often way more evident in the print, or on the other end, important details were less sharp than you expected. All of this works itself out with experience, but the same can be said for a rangefinder camera.

A Lonesome Déjà Vu. Somewhere in NM. Kodak Retina Ia, f11

There are many different types of shooting, and when I was shooting more portraits back then, I would use long lenses with fairly wide apertures for a classic shallow DoF look, but for maybe the last 10 years, I’ve shifted much more toward deep focus landscape/scenic photography, so a simple Galilean viewfinder gives me a much better view to compose from than that of a shallow DoF SLR with a fast lens. Parallax is only an issue with close focus, so rangefinder/viewfinder cameras really are not an ideal choice if this is what you need to do, but I find this limitation, more often than not, forces me to take better photos because I retain context.

The old adage (attributed to Robert Capa), “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” can be taken to extremes and when you put a nice macro lens on my camera, I often end up getting closer and closer and ending up with mostly (interesting?) abstracts. Nothing wrong with this, but personally, I’m looking to build my abstractions and art on top of and from contextual reality. Kind of similar to my personal philosophy for getting by in life—don’t deny reality, but find the magic within it and in spite of all the imperfections.

Study in Grays. Kodak Retina Ia, f11

One thing I noticed getting back into film work is how much film prices have increased over the last ten years that I have shot (color!!!) digital exclusively. Tri-X is now nearly $10 a roll for a short roll and this is starting to seem prohibitive to me so I started looking for alternatives. In medium format, I had been primarily shooting Fomapan 100 (mostly because it is the only film I can read the numbers through a ruby window) and I was getting fine results. Fomapan is a fine film, but for the speeds, it is a bit grainy from what I’ve seen. Then I read about Kentmere Pan 100 which is made by Ilford (really!) and decided to give it a go. It took a few tweaks from what is published in The Massive Developer Chart before I was happy with the results, but now I am consistently getting stunning results using it in Tmax Developer 1:9. I’m finding Kentmere Pan 100 for around $75 per 100’ roll, which ends up being less than $4 per roll when I bulk load. With my quality Russian made steel re loadable cartridges, the added effort is minimal. The new plastic ones from Adorama and B&H are garbage.

This Path Doesn’t Lead Anywhere. Kodak Retina Ib, f11

When I was younger, I always shot 400 speed film, “just in case” I needed those two extra stops for handheld shooting, but now, I feel the much finer grain that can be had when shooting 100 speed film is much preferable. It doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the aesthetics of Tri-X in D-76, it just means that what I’m shooting now benefits from the finer grain and smoother tonal gradients from a finer grain film. I also shoot much less candid “people shots” and prefer stopping down and using a tripod for my low light work instead of trying to get away with a 1/15th or 1/30th low light handheld shots. For most people, even 1/60th handheld, while “acceptable,” is really not ideal for image quality. I believe Ansel Adams once said something like, “If your lens isn’t sharp enough, buy a tripod.”

Waiting On the Wrecking Ball. Kodak Retina Ib, f11

Another reason I am loving these little Retina cameras, other than size, absolute quality, and low cost, is because they are one of the few pocket 35mms that are fitted with a 50mm lens. By the end of the 60’s, pretty much every quality fixed lens small camera had a 35mm lens (Contax, Minox, Olympus, etc.)! This is fine, and I know many people prefer them, maybe more than those of us who like a 50mm field of view, but for me, I find a 50mm lens ideal for a one focal length solution. 35mm lenses always feel awkward and sloppy to me.

Aside from the rangefinder versions of the Retinas (II, IIa, IIIc, and IIIC) which have an f2.0 taking lens and an integrated rangefinder, all the “lessor” models have some form of a Tessar lens (Kodak Ektar 50/2.8 or 50/2.8 or 50/3.5 Schneider Kreuznach Zenar lens are the most common). Tessar lenses are known to give very good results when stopped down a bit and by f/8, I cannot see any corner lack of sharpness or vignetting at all on images from any of my Retinas.

Grain Elevators – Conway, TX. Kodak Retina Ia, f8

Tessar lenses just have a wonderful classic look to them. They aren’t magic, but instead just look right to most people. Perhaps it’s the fact that many many famous photos have been taken with Tessar lenses. Many early press corps used Rolleiflexs or Speed Graphics fitted with a Tessar lens and while most people don’t look for lens signatures, they do seem to subconsciously notice them. We see something enough and it becomes something we expect to see. For 60-70 year old lenses, these are quite fine performers.

Aside from the Kodak Retinas, other pocket 35’s with a 50mm lens include the Barnack Leicas when fitted with a collapsible Elmar lens, and other folding cameras like the Balda Baldinette, Welta Welti, and Voigtlander VITO series of cameras. There are others as well, but somehow, the German made Kodaks excite me the most, and except for some of the rarer ones, all are basically the cheapest. The Retina Ia that I have represents about the cheapest Retina you can get, rarely going for much more than $50 for a fully working and near mint copy.

Every Sunrise is Followed by a Sunset as Every Happiness is Followed by Its Own Hangover. Kodak Retina Ia, f11

Regarding pocketability, life changes when you have a real camera with you at all times. I don’t like walking around with a heavy full sized camera slung around my neck at all times. It gets in the way and it actually starts hurting my back after a couple hours, but shoved in a pocket, my Retina never gets in the way and is always ready to capture something that strikes me as remarkable. Someone in one of the forums I often post my photos to commented that they liked how I “document the things everyone passes by everyday, but doesn’t notice.” I don’t really think I’m a documentarian, but more an artist creating something from what I see, but since photography is rooted in (trapped by?) reality, I think it is more seeing something that offers potential to convey an emotional message and capturing it in the best possible way. You don’t have to travel around the world to do this, you can even find things to shoot in your own back yard. The biggest challenge is translating the emotional content onto the film while managing all the imperfections and awkwardness of reality.

Sometimes It’s Hard to See Past the Moment. Kodak Retina Ia, f11

Depending on how you look at it, all Retina cameras are fully manual, even if it is one of the newer models with a builtin selenium meter, which is good, because it is always a crapshoot whether an old selenium meter will still be functional. It also avoids the problems associated with specialty or impossible to find batteries. I could say I was a purist and won’t shoot auto exposure (only) cameras, but I’m not. If someone like Minox had made a camera like a GL with a 50mm lens, I would love to shoot it. Even though you dream up situations where the focal length limitation would impact what you’re able to shoot, one of my fundamental thoughts regarding photography is, “There are infinite photos to take, so don’t worry about the ones you can’t take.” Focus on what you can create with the gear at hand.

That Boat You Stashed in the Bushes, Many Years Ago, Thinking It Would Be Your Way Out of Here, Isn’t Taking You Anywhere Today. Kodak Retina Ib

For those that have noticed that I haven’t been keeping up on my blog here very well, part of that is because I have gotten much more active on Instagram. If you are over there much, check me out and follow at http://www.instagram.com/markhahn_art_music/. I am very actively posting there (almost everyday).

Bench. Kodak Retina Ib, f11

Kodak Retina Ib Viewfinder Servicing

Kodak Retina Ib – Front View

When my Leica IIIf developed a shutter problem and needed to be sent in for adjustment, I needed a new small pocket camera I needed something to quickly replace it with. Since most modern pocket P&S cameras come with a 35mm lens and my preference is a 50mm lens, it means I pretty much have to go back farther in time to get one. While I have a beautiful Retina IIa, it seems too nice to bang around when I’m out on my bike (something I also realized about my Leica!), so while I was deciding what to do, facebook’s wonderful AI pushed an ad for a nice user grade Retina Ia. Very much like my IIa, but smaller and with a slower lens, and for $37 shipped, hard to turn down. Then an hour or so later, I get another pushed ad, this time for Ib that looked pretty much close to Mint- to my eyes, and even though I was never a fan of the larger later series Retinas with a rangefinder, the Ib just looked cleaner to my eye, so I reluctantly ordered this camera as well! Both came from usedphotopro.com where I’ve gotten good deals in the past (so yes, no connection, but giving a recommendation for a business I’ve been satisfied with!).

Other than a few dust speck in the otherwise pristine lens, and a crisp shutter working at all speeds, the only issue the camera had was a very fogged viewfinder. I went online to get some instructions how to tear it down and clean it, but couldn’t find anything, so I’m putting this up for the community in case someone else needs to do this.

You can see from the screw heads that someone has had this camera open sometime in the past. Everything is probably working much too smoothly to expect it was not touched in the 60+ years since it was first manufactured anyway.

First step in getting to the viewfinder is removing the top cover. You start by removing the rewind knob.

Remove the Rewind Knob

Use a nonmarring object to hold the film pin and unscrew the knob. It just comes off.

Next, remove the two cover screws that are under the rewind knob.

Remove Cover Screws

Next, remove the last cover screw from the end of the cover.

Final Cover Screw

The cover simply lifts off at this point. You can clean the viewfinder lenses in the cover without removing them.

The brightline pack is in the middle of the camera top. The elements are held in place with a slide on cover.

Brightline Cover

This cover just slides off when you push it forward.

Brightline Elements

You simply slide the front and rear packs out of the frame, noting the stacking order.

Forward Brightline Stack

Rear Brightline Stack

There are two glass slides with mirrored bright lines and a forward lens element. Mine had so much haze it took two tries with lots of Windex to get them all clear. I think it came from the grease on the wind mechanism that is under the same cover outgassing over the years.

After you get all your optical surfaces clean, you simply restack the pieces and slide back into place. It took a few tries for me on the forward stack and they went flying onto my work surface at least once, but once they are in place, all is good. Slide the cover on and insure you didn’t get a finger print on any surface while reassembling.

Putting the cover on is just the reverse of how you took it off.

While the bright lines aren’t a bad thing, they aren’t really that useful since they are basically right at the edges of the viewfinder anyway, but I guess it is a step up from the simple viewfinder in the Ia.

In general, the camera is a nice step up in most ways from the Ia, with many subtle refinements, but a little bigger camera overall. The only annoyance is the locked coupled EV system which makes it difficult to change settings for varying lighting situation. I guess they thought in constant light, you might want to shift your shutter speed or aperture while holding the same exposure, but with the limited settings, this is practically useless. Since you can’t select a shutter speed of 1/500th if the camera has already been advanced and I prefer to avoid handheld shots at or below 1/60th, it leaves me two shutter speeds and apertures to shift between, and the difference between shooting at f8 and f11 isn’t a big enough deal to warrant locking up my whole camera for! In reality, you basically just get used to having to set the shutter speed first and then twiddle the aperture lever so it doesn’t drag the shutter speed with it while changing it.

All in all, this is a very refined and beautiful camera to hold and to use, and apparently the hipsters haven’t gotten hip to them yet and the prices are still very reasonable. Consider picking one up.

Adjusting Kodak pocket Instamatic 60 and Trimlite 48 Rangefinders

When Kodak released their new 110 pocket Instamatic film they produced a wide range of cameras to support the format. They ranged from the simple inexpensive fixed everything snap shot cameras to the high end cameras with fast f2.7 sharp lenses which were very expensive for the time (over $700 in today’s dollars!). The highest end ones had an integrated rangefinder. In ’72, this was the pocket Instamatic 60 which was replaced a few years later with the Trimlite 48 (shown above).

After 50 years, it is common for these rangefinders to have gone out of adjustment. This may potentially be from stress relaxation of the all bent parts that the camera uses, but doing deep searches on the internet, I was unable to find any reference on how to adjust them.

The first thing you have to do is remove the top cover. To do this, you need to take your jeweler’s screw driver and find somewhere along the edge of the cover to start lifting it off. The cover has positioning tabs on both ends and some glue to keep it on. The glue will probably have gone brittle so won’t cause much problems, but once you find a point where you can start lifting the cover off, just slide it along to loosen the cover until it comes off (without marring or bending it!).

Once the cover is off, you can see the top of the camera workings. Deep in the access hole (shown) is a flathead screw that adjusts the lateral movement of the rangefinder.

While the first photos shown are of the Trimlite 48, you can see below that the pocket Instamatic 60 is essentially the same camera. Same hole and same adjustment.

What I do then is to measure out 15′ from a small light source, set the distance scale to 15′ and adjust the rangefinder to show 15′. After adjusting to 15′, I then confirm that the rangefinder is good for 4′ and 30′. Everything else is fine at that point (within the tolerance of the scale anyway). For small formats, precise focus isn’t as important as it is for larger formats.

The only problem left is that (I cannot find) there isn’t a vertical adjustment for the rangefinder, so even once it is setup for accuracy, there will likely be a vertical offset. If anyone finds a way to adjust that, please let me know and I will update this page!

Regarding the rangefinders, I think they are very bright, but others want brighter, so they darken the center of the viewfinder to make them appear brighter. I already find the brightness a little distracting for composing images (preferring separate VF and RFs ala. Leica Barnack), so I might consider going the other way and covering up the rangefinder window with a small piece of black tape so it went away until I really needed it. Really, I’ve got a pocket Instamatic 50 in my pocket which is exactly like the 60 without a rangefinder at all.

Aside from the Trimlite 48 being pretty ugly (IMO), the benefit it has over the 60 is that it reads 400 speed film. The 60 only works with “slow speed” films. This could be a big deal depending on what you want to shoot. I mostly shoot in good light. But since you never get something for nothing, what you lose with the 48 is a cable release socket, so if you want to do tripod work, the 60 is by far the better choice.

Me Showing Off My Burke and James Orbit Camera – Short Video

My film student son had to do a quick demo video using reflected light, so he chose me with my large format camera on the spectacular vintage Tilt-All tripod for the subject matter. I think it’s really well done. All handheld with a manual focus lens.

The Omicron Set – Or How I Ended Up Falling In Love With a Kodak Tele-Ektra One 110 Camera

It began on a Saturday, even though I was unaware of what was happening to me, but I went to a favorite thrift store and started feeling peculiarly detached. I ended up digging out this very plain and common Kodak 110 camera. Even though I have shot the higher end 110’s in the past like the adorable Pentax A110 SLR and the stellar Rollei A110, I never bothered with the bargain bin 110 cameras like this one. So why was I fixated on this homely and low-spec camera? I really couldn’t tell you, but here I was snapping the shutter and playing with the film sensor to see if I thought I could get it to work with some reloaded film.

For those unfamiliar with the way 110 film works, frames are pre-burned into the film and small notches are cut out for the film advance sensor to feel when the film is aligned in the filmgate. While it presents the reloader with some difficulties, as a simple system meant for easy to use and cheap film cameras, it really is fairly ingenious. Because of this feature, many 110 cameras cannot easily be used with reloaded cartridges because the film lack lacks these notches. But playing with the film sensor, I was reasonably sure I could get the camera to work without the notches.

I suppose part of the allure this camera had was that there was absolutely nothing special about it in anyway and it didn’t even have the pretension of being a crappy “toy camera,” (letting me pretend that I was relying on the “so bad it’s good,” shtick). While no photo enthusiast would consider this camera a serious tool, probably many millions of consumers bought the camera for capturing important personal events with. A quick internet search tells me that the camera sold for $32.50 when it was released in 1980—that means it cost around $117 in today’s dollars! And here I was wondering if the camera was worth the princely sum of $3 which is what it was marked as. I was thinking it should have been priced at $1!

In my fixation with this camera, I estimated that the aperture was around f11 and the camera was fixed at somewhere around 12’ to nail the hyperfocal distance. I also guessed that the shutter speed would have been optimized for ISO 100 film and good light. Thinking of the shots I am mostly concentrating on, this seemed like it would cover maybe 90% of what I am shooting, so I took the camera home with me. While technical details are somewhat sketchy for this camera, one site lists the aperture as f9.5 with a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second. This is close enough for ISO 100 film and Sunny-16 conditions and gives a little leeway for shadows. I’m guessing the focus is closer to 10’ as subjects at infinity are pretty blurry, even if only intended for a 4×5” print size.

So by the next day, I was feeling much more sick than the day before and it was definitely something I couldn’t ignore so I took a rapid COVID test, but it came back negative. Since Delta had already ripped through my house and I didn’t get it, I figured between my vaccines and exposure that I was probably somehow immune. I stayed home in bed sick and the only thing I managed to do was to crack open the old 110 cartridge that came with the camera and reload it with some slit down Ilford FP4+ b&w film. The bigger trick was foiling the camera’s film sensor. I was able to accomplish this by simply jamming the sensor in and to the side and forcing it into place using a flat toothpick (then snapping it off as pictured below). The only real subtlety was that with a single advance, the camera cocks the shutter and locks the advance, but has only actually advanced the film a little more than half a frame. My workaround is to advance once, cover the lens, fire the shutter, and then advance again for the actual picture taking shot. You lose some frames doing this because of the spacing, but it works.

Modifying the Kodak Tele-Ektra One Camera For Shooting Reloaded Cartridges

Aside from having the normal 22mm lens, the biggest feature for this camera is that it has a builtin 2X tel-converter (hence the “Tele” in the name). I haven’t tried it since I’m not using the camera for portraits, but I’ve seen some examples online that look fairly charming using it.

Waking up Day 3, I was as bad as the day before so I decided to go to Sprouts, our reasonably priced natural foods market, for some herbal remedies. I always joke I spend too much money on their curatives just for the placebo effect that I get from them (whatever works, right?). But being in an altered state and still being fixated on nothing but this camera, I decided to take it out and try to shoot a test roll. I knew of a block or two that I pass all the time that looked like it would offer some photogenic opportunities, so I parked and slowly stumbled around in my near delirium shooting photos here and there wherever the light seemed interesting. The camera performed flawlessly! Below is a selection of the first roll taken with this camera. I love the edge effects and the overall feeling the photos have.

By the nighttime, it turned out that one of the two people I gave this disease to tested positive for COVID. Then I took a second test myself and I also was positive. Crap! I followed CDC guidelines from then on, but I felt pretty bad for giving it to at least two people, and maybe more. The good news is that we are all doing fine now and have all mostly recovered. The only real thing I’m holding onto after getting this disease is this set of photos and this oddball little camera. Not too bad a price to pay for something that has pretty much impacted every aspect of all our lives for the last two years.

Having no control over any settings seems like a limitation, but if you are like me and are shooting in good light (and when isn’t it good light in AZ?), a fixed focus camera setup for 12’ and Sunny-16 conditions can let you do almost anything. The simplicity can be very liberating. Also, the simple design makes this camera very reliable. I bet you could drop it off a cliff and when you pulled it out of the dirt at the bottom that it would still work. Also, no batteries to worry about! Back in the 70’s and 80’s, Kodak and other manufacturers used some now impossible to find batteries (have a source for 4v K batteries anyone?) or require the dreaded mercury cells to work properly.

The one secret way to get a little adjustment out of the camera is to trick it into thinking it has a Flip-Flash attached to it. There is a little pin in the flash attachment socket that drops the shutter speed to 1/60th when pushed, so if you cut down a piece of wood or something to push this pin down, you could get an extra stop for shooting in lower light or shadows. I haven’t tried this yet because I haven’t needed to so far since the camera already over exposes by around 1.5 stops from Sunny-16, but for full shadow though, the lower shutter speed would probably be helpful.

I was showing my film student son some of these photos and asked what he thought (worth pursuing or just a waste of time) and he mentioned Gabriel Figueroa’s contention that deep focus was inherently a “more democratic” representational strategy than one reliant on montage or selective focus because it gave the viewer a choice. While I had rejected selective focus (bokeh driven) images some years ago, I had never thought of it this way (and am embarrassingly unaware of Figueroa’s work!). Seems like an interesting way to view this. Regarding being worthwhile, my son thought the images definitely worthy of pursuing as a side project, so now I’m in the middle of a whole series of photos based on this camera.

Alley Shots – Leica IIIf, Elmar RS, on Tri-X

These images were all shot with my Leica IIIf and a Red Scale Elmar lens. Both are approx. 70 years old. While the Elmar has a real following, I don’t find it to be magical or even that special, but it is quite capable (giving an antiquated rendering) and most importantly, makes the IIIf so compact that when the lens is collapsed, that it is truly a pocketable camera. The film is Tri-X developed in Tmax and scanned with a Plustek scanner.

And just to illustrate how compact the IIIf with Elmar package is, here is a snap shot of it in my back pocket:

One Camera – The Leica Way?

"Read Dial" Leica IIIf With "Red Scale/Diamond" Elmar Lens
Both From Around 1952

In conversations on social media and in real life, I’ve been discussing how I’d like to simplify my photographic life and only settle on one camera. When I started as a photography student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I only owned a basic Pentax K1000 (SLR) with the standard 50mm f1.7 lens. It was really all I felt I needed and really all I even wanted at the time. Yes, I kind of was jealous of my friends who had the much more expensive Nikon SLRs, but I didn’t really see much need for the extra features. A fast 50 and a built in match needle light meter were basically all I thought any “art photographer” needed. Sure, I could see that journalists and wedding photographers would need more, but that was never my calling and I never found the Pentax lens to be lacking either–it got the job done.

Fast forward to now and I have a lifetime of buying selling and collecting and shooting all kinds of cameras. Because, other than being an avid photographer, I am also a pathological camera collector. The two sides of this seem to be opposed to each other, but perhaps they aren’t. While shooting many different cameras can get in the way of getting to really know one well, in the big picture, all cameras have a lot in common, so there are things you can learn no matter what camera you are shooting.

But back to exploring the concept of one camera, I’m trying to push myself into concentrating on shooting the Leica IIIf (pictured above). How I ended up with this camera was kind of a stroke of fate, so if there is something to the idea of “what is meant to happen is what happens,” then maybe I should just go with it. To set about finding the one camera would be very daunting, since there are so many to choose from, having one dropped in your lap, almost as if from the Gods, makes the choice a lot easier.

Before the end of my marriage and the financial calamity that followed in its wake, I was mostly shooting Canon Pro bodies, L-lenses, and their stellar TS-E lenses, along with a small kit of Leica R gear (for manual work). But in the eight years it took me to dig my way out of this crippling financial debt, pretty much all my belongings of value were sold off… all the Canon L lenses, the Leica R, my large format gear, and a modest Leica rangefinder kit (Leica IIIc with some lenses). I wasn’t that drawn to the old Barnack rangefinders back then, especially for a user camera, even though it was hard not to appreciate their classic German design.

Even without any world class cameras left in my bag, I still managed to get by and kept going out shooting photos. I guess part of me also doesn’t mind using modest gear, even perhaps taking it on as kind of an enjoyable challenge (“I don’t need no stinkin’ Leica to take good photos!”). One night when I took my kids to Bookman’s (a local used bookstore) I spied the Leica IIIf (shown above) from across the store poking out of a completely thrashed case. Once it registered what it was, I almost broke into a run across the store to make sure I was the one who got their hands on it first! Once I saw it up close, I knew what it was and was almost afraid to turn it over to look for the the price (Bookman’s is known for sometimes being ridiculously overpriced!), but to my surprise, it was only $25! Yes, the shutter curtain was cracked and the lens pretty much frozen up, but it was all there! $25! This is almost that once in a lifetime find that all junkers and collectors dream of!

It took a number of years to get back on my feet financially, but when I did, I sent the camera in to Youxin Ye and he fixed everything for what I thought was a really fair price. Everything works perfectly now. Just a joy to hold and and shoot! Smooth and silent!

Even though I had sold my Leica IIIc during my bankruptcy fire sale, I did keep a few lenses for the camera for some reason. None of them worth that much at the time, but from the only roll of film I shot with the Voigtlander and a set of photos that I had enlarged from this roll to be included in a local group show, I had the sense that the low production Color-Skopar was somehow special.

Industar-26M, Voigtlander Color-Skopar, and Jupiter-8 LTM Lenses

Besides the Voigtlander lens, the other two are low end Russian lenses. The first, the Industar-26M is predecessor to the often praised Industar-61 L/d, both very good performing f2.8 lenses. The second, the Jupiter-8 is a Zeiss Sonar copy. I wish I could say it was a stellar bootleg of the legendary Zeiss lens, but it’s pretty soft and pretty low contrast. My son liked adapting it to his Micro Four Thirds camera for a while and shooting it wide open for the effect, but while I can be a “bokeh snob,” I’m not really a fan of razor thin depth of field anyway, so other than just having a fast prime for the camera, I doubt it will get much use.

I came on the Color-Skopar as kind of a fluke reading about it online and seeing a closeout sale price of around $239. It seemed like an interesting LTM lens at a bargain price. While my Leica IIIf sat in my camera case unusable, the Voigtlander sat in a drawer completely orphaned by the lack of body to use it on. During this time I watched used prices of the lens soar, now somewhere between $500-600!

Everything I’ve read explaining the rise in prices points to a nearly cult following of the lens among Japanese photographers. If you look for examples from the lens on flickr or similar sites, they do feature a lot of (really nice) work by Japanese photographers. American photographers seem to be more drawn to the extremes in lens design–super fast apertures and biting sharp resolution. To my eye, many modern lenses are too sharp. Giving a too “clinical” look. And as I’ve already said, super narrow depth of field is not at all my thing either. I always read that the Japanese have a different sense of aesthetics than most Americans and I think I can it appreciate it as well. My shared appreciation for this Voigtlander lens fits in with this. While the character of the lens is somewhat subtle, there is something to its rendering properties that I really love, and besides that, it works really well on my IIIf! Pairing the old with the new!

Voigtlander Color-Skopar on a Leica IIIf

So between the Elmar collapsible lens both making the camera fully pocketable and giving a classic older lens rendering, the Color-Skopar giving the camera the ability for more modern, but still distinctive look, and the Jupiter-8 for more “artsy” wide aperture work, the camera can be used for many types of photography.

And what’s really the point of this all? For me it’s to have fun, so in that vein, below is a photo of me goofing around with the camera!

Me With My Leica IIIf

Some New Model 150 Polaroid Land Camera Shots From Around Town

I’ve been taking the Model 150 Polaroid Land Camera out with me when I’ve been shopping and doing errands. You never know when you will find an interesting environmental emotional study that needs to be captured. Once thing I like about shooting sheet film cameras with paper is that you can shoot a single image and then quickly develop just that one image without much effort. Here are a few recent shots taken with my modified Polaroid Camera on Fomaspeed Variant 311 RC paper and developed in Tmax 1:9. Many people claim this paper is super fast (for paper) and can be exposed as ISO 25 or 50. I’m finding that the best I can do is ISO 6 at midday and ISO 3 in the late afternoon (including a yellow filter).

Polaroid Land Camera Model 150 – A Rediscovery and Reinvention of a Classic

When Mark Zuckerberg’s AI machine did its magic, it pushed an ad for this old Polaroid Model 150 camera into my news feed. They somehow knew this was another camera priced and packaged just right for me and that I wouldn’t be able to resist buying it. I paid $30 shipped for it along with a what turned out to be a very beat up and worthless leather case and some original documents. I like having the original documentation.

In case you aren’t familiar with these cameras, it is slightly upgraded version of the original entry level Polaroid Land Camera. The main difference is that it has a built in rangefinder. Production was begun in 1957 and these were sold until 1960. These used the original and long discontinued Polaroid (Type 42) roll film.

The Model 110’s were the professional versions of this camera and while being essentially identical, they have a much better Rodenstock Ysarex f4.7 Lens in a Prontor shutter (or similar depending on the exact model). The 110 cameras can be found for under $100, but they often go for much more and they still need to be modified to be used with any film available today. Maybe if I find a deal on one, I’ll give it the same mods, but very quickly, I think I’d rather put my money toward replacing the Speed Graphic camera I was force to sell a while back.

The Model 150 is equipped with a quality f8.8 triplet lens and I suspect that stopped down it performs nearly as well as the Rodenstock on the 110A.

I first remember seeing one of these cameras in the 1970’s. It was already so retro looking that I fell in love, but even then, the film was hard to locate and really too expensive to mess around with creatively (for me).

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed people converting these cameras to either take 120 roll film or 4×5″ film holders. Neither is really ideal since the 4×5″ conversions require extensive modifications to the camera which unless you have a modest machine shop, end up looking too ragged for me. The 120 conversions require adding some kind of winding knob, and even then, if done cleanly, the native 3×4″ image size is larger than 120 film will cover. Other approaches entail using the camera as-is, but loading film or paper into the camera in complete darkness and only taking a single shot. This final approach seems much too limiting to me.

But after getting this beautiful camera into my possession, I decided I would be able to come up with perhaps a better way to modify it for actual use.

My solution was to design my own single sheet 3.5×5″ film holders. I used simple black card stock from Michael’s and since I’ve been experimenting with paper negatives, that is what I’ve been using in the camera (though there isn’t any reason I can’t load my film holders with 4×5″ sheet film cut down to 3.5×5″).

As shown in the user manual below, you can see that there is both an inner back (with pressure plate) and an outer back (left hand side). My goal was to leave the camera looking as original as possible, at least on the outside.

To allow for a film holder to be placed in the camera, I first recognized that the inner back needed to be removed. I did this by removing the wire from the hinge and then using a pliers to snap off the raised lip on the camera where the hinge was riveted onto the it. This was easy to do very neatly because of dramatic step in the thickness coupled with the cheap alloy metal used in the camera body.

I then took the inner back and used a hack saw to cut off the hinged end of it. After popping out the two rollers, I was able to wire the roller flanges together and use two sided foam tape to attach the old inner back to the outer back (as seen on the left hand side above). The pressure plate is now in the correct location for holding down my slim film holders. I cut a piece of 1/8th inch hobby ply to cover the Negative Spool well and hot glued it in place (upper right hand side). This allows the existing silver spring (upper left hand end) to push down the film holder against the flat surface. After suffering light leaks in my first tests, I lined this surface with black felt as a light trap.

I also added a thin wooden strip to act as a stop for the film holders on the other side of the film gate. Below you can see how the film holders fit right into the back of the camera.

When you close the back of the camera, just a short end of the film holder and dark slide stick out the end where you would originally have pulled out the film. With these film holders, you simply pull out the darkslide and the camera is really to shoot. Shoot your image, reinsert your darkslide, open the back and put in a new film holder and you are ready for your next shot.

The camera uses an EV system for setting exposure. The user manual lets you know what aperture and f-stops are used for each EV number. If you flip the I->B switch on the front of the camera you get a single shot in “bulb” mode for long exposures. The camera takes universal cable releases.

From my first two test shots, light leaks were a big problem, but the images still looked pretty promising. The shot below was taken handheld at EV = #10. This test shot alerted me to the need for better light seals in the camera and to add an additional siding black ring to better seal my film holders. This shot was taken with a yellow cloud filter on Ilford MGIV glossy RC paper developed in Kodak Tmax developer (1:9).

After the first tests, tweaking the camera and film holders, I moved on to try a new paper that people on the internet were recommending–Fomaspeed Variant 311 glossy. Since I tend to like Foma film, I was happy to try their paper. Plus it’s cheap!

Both shots below were taken at f35 and 1 second exposure (midday), essentially rating the Fomaspeed paper at ISO 6 (including the filter factor for the yellow cloud filter). Contrast was well controlled, but the negatives were so dense that I will probably rate the paper at ISO 12 next time. With the low contrast, the paper seems to have pretty good latitude.

The camera is a total beauty and while even rather simple, it is quite capable. I tested the rangefinder and thankfully it was perfectly accurate so I didn’t have to open up the top of the camera to adjust it. The scale focus was pretty far off though, and the slots cut too short to correct, so I had to file them longer to correct this, but it was probably wasn’t necessary since the rangefinder is so large and bright that I can’t imagine myself not using it.

While the Model 150 is really too old to have had an impact on my life, I later discovered the old (newer) packfilm cameras like my Polaroid 360. Unlike shooting film (which I did a lot of when my kids were young) and shooting digital when it became affordable, there was always a magic for my kids watching me use the big packfilm camera and showing them real photos being developed right in front of their eyes. While Polaroids ushered in a new way of seeing and interacting with photographs, it is pretty much gone with the advent of digital photography.

If you are feeling nostalgic and would like to read about the history of Edwin Land, his inventions, the Polaroid cameras, and their impact on culture and society, I can’t recommend INSTANT, The Story of Polaroid, by Christopher Bonanos highly enough–a very enjoyable read.

For those wanting to do something similar, below are my notes for making the film holders. I’ve made five of them so far, they don’t take much effort, but they do need to be glued which means they take time between the steps.

A Small Office Park – Seen Through a Kodak Bausch and Lamb Rapid Rectolinear Lens

So I’ve taken out my Burke and James 4×5″ Orbit camera into the more urban setting. This time fitted with my Kodak Bausch and Lamb Rapid Rectolinear lens. It is much brighter than the Kodak meniscus lens and a bit sharper in the corners and edges, but still not exactly up to modern standards. Again, I was shooting Ilford MC RC paper rated at ISO 6 (developed in Kodak Tmax film developer). Of the four shots I took in this small office park, these three were exposed pretty perfectly. A fourth was under exposed and couldn’t really be rescued. It is quickly becoming apparent that paper negatives are very sensitive to any under exposure. I’ve been using my Sekonic Twinmate meter for all my shots to try and get more reliable exposures.

I’ve shot all these photos with the lens set to f32. Stopped down this far and shooting after 5:30 pm, gives very long exposures–these mostly around 4 secs. On a windy day, like this one, you can see a lot of motion blur in the trees and foliage. I think I like this effect.

Between the motion blur, the paper negative giving a more old fashioned orthochromatic film look (being mostly sensitive to blue light) and the hundred year old Rapid Rectolinear lens giving a less than sharp image from corner to corner, these photos have what I think is a somewhat unique (and might I add, “romantic”) look.