Not far from where I live, there is a modern, wooden church called Seegård. It was built in 1997, following the tragic fire in the old church during easter in 1994. The new church was raised in the same spot as the old one, and in an attempt to keep the cross structure of the old church and modernizing it, but at the same time make something that would suit its area. Not easy demands for an architect to meet, but I find that the architect Arne Thorsrud has pulled it off really well.
I have worked with this church on multiple occasions, mainly digital, but the other day, I decided to bring out my Bronica ETR, and make some black and white images of the church in winter time. I fitted the Bronica with the 50mm Zenzanon lens and a yellow filter to help balance the contrasts a bit.
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To get the smooth results I wanted for this shoot, I decided to go with Ilford FP4 plus and combining it with Ilfotec Perceptol extremely fine grain developer. This is a combination I have found to work very well with winter conditions where snow and whites are prominent. However, you lose some film speed. In this instance, I shot the FP4 plus at ISO 50, and went for f11 which I find to be the sweet-spot of this lens. With a still standing subject like this church, which does not tend to move a lot, slower shutter speed is no real issue, and my shutter speeds were around 1/4th and 1/8th of a second with the correction for the yellow filter.
Seegård Church under the winter carpet. Zenza Bronica ETR w Zenzanon 50mm f2,8 and yellow filter. Ilford FP4 plus at 50 ISO – Ilfotec Perceptol 1+1
I did a few different angles and compositions, and a little bit of bracketing on a few of the compositions. After all, I ended with two images that I am very happy with, and they are the two I will share.
Seegård Church under the winter carpet. Zenza Bronica ETR w Zenzanon 50mm f2,8 and yellow filter. Ilford FP4 plus at 50 ISO – Ilfotec Perceptol 1+1
Sometimes my interest is sparked in some way when I watch Youtube videos. A few weeks ago, I watched a video called «Konica Autoreflex TC – The poor mans OM-1». To me, this title did not really make much sense. In my opinion, the Olympus OM-1 is extensive value for money and indeed very affordable both when it comes to lenses and camera bodies. They are also accurate like clockwork, and relatively hassle-free to service and maintain. I have shot a large number of rolls through my OM-1 and it has never given me any problems even in very cold winter days. So if there would be a cheaper camera that reliable, that had to be a gem for this blog indeed.
My lovely Konica Autoreflex TC with its marvelous Konica Hexanon AR 50mm f1,8 lens
I searched briefly online, and I actually found one incredibly cheap on a local Facebook sales page, and I got it for about 200 Norwegian Kroner (about 20 GBP) with shipping included. A real bargain there indeed. For the first tryout, I loaded it with a roll of Ilford FP4 plus that I shot at ISO50 and developed with Ilford Ilfotec Perceptol. I find that Perceptol really helps me get the winter tones I want for my shots, as well as a very fine grain.
The Konica turned out to be a lovely camera to work with. It is indeed a bit heavier and more bulky than the OM-1 but it fits my hand very well and everything is where you expect it to be, and it all seems to work rather well. I did not try the Aperture priority setting on the camera, but shot it on a variety of shutter speeds and aperture settings with a wide range of filters I found to be helpful for me at this location, which is an old museum. However, I do not see this camera and the Olympus OM-1 to be comparable as equipment.
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The Olympus OM-1 is a far more accurate camera with a broader selection of shutter speeds, all the way from a whole second to 1/1000th of a second plus BULB-mode. On the Konica, there is nothing between 1/8th and B, and the longer shutter speeds on my one «drags» a little bit. This could be the particular camera.
Also in the perceived build quality, the Konica is clearly a cheaper and less sophisticated camera than the OM-1. But if you forget about the irrelevant comparison to a clearly better camera, the little Konica is a very pleasant camera to work with, and the 50mm Hexanon Lens, is just outstanding. It gives a really nice sharpness, even at wide apertures and it is easy to focus.
Through my about 60 minutes photo-walk today, the Konica performed rather well for the first 20 minutes. After that, it coughed up a nice selection of issues and creative problems that I guess is it reacting with the cold weather. The temperature was about -12 degrees and some if these issues might be due to that.
Nr 1. Sticky shutter: After some shots the shutter started sticking every now and then. It did not matter which shutter speed the camera was set to. The only thing to do, was to tap the camera slightly so that the shutter would go off, and then shoot another frame to get one without immense camera shake.
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Nr 2. Slowed focusing. After a while out in the cold, the focusing ring got very slow, almost as if the lubrication thickened and became a gooey syrup.
Nr 3. Camera refused to rewind the film back into the cassette and ripped it instead. When I manually retrieved the film, it actually broke on another place as well. Luckily, I did not lose more than four shots, and all of them were bad. (happy days)
All these issues aside, I like the Konica Autoreflex and the Hexanon lens. A ripped film could very well be my mistake and the other issues could be weather related. My next test out of this camera will be with a colour film, trying to capture some lovely, bleak winter colours.
Playing with the Christmas decorations is not an activity reserved for cats. When I tested the Petri 7s for the first time in the beginning of December, I noticed how good the lens seemed to be. Even though my test then showed that the camera had seen better days, the f1,8 lens turned out to give very nice, details and I decided to shoot some frames to test it out. I decided to go with the Christmas, or actually Advent, decorations. I lit a candle in a glass candle holder, and let that work as a foreground, and I placed the rest of the decoration approximately 80cm away from the lens, which would be the closest focus length for this camera.
My setup. Petri 7s on a black glass plate with the decorations. I have taped the camera because the back has a tendency to «pop open» at any point.
I went with shots at f1,8, f4 and f16 to see how much difference there would be in sharpness and how they would turn out. I did not change the lighting conditions, but I adjusted my shutter speeds to compensate for the smaller aperture. for the f16 image, that was two and ha half minutes with compensation for the Schwarzschild effect.
Petri 7s – Ilford FP4 plus Xtol Stock. f1,8 1/8 seconds – f16 180 seconds – f4 1/2 seconds
All in all I think the lens gave me the results I anticipated. The f1,8 gives me a very nice bokeh, but the focus is a little bit off, so maybe the focus ring isn’t as accurate as I would hope for. The f4 image gives more sharpness and retains the nice bokeh feel, and the f16 gives a very sharp image.
The mood changes a lot between the images, and I am not sure which one is my favorite. You can make a judgement yourself, and I hope the images are to your liking.
The market for film cameras has changed substantially over the last two-three decades. In the 90s there were a range of very simple easy cameras that you could use to get some pictures without knowing anything about photography nor wanting to learn about it. They were simple, fully automatic and would give you acceptable images with minimum effort. These were the fully automatic point and shoot cameras. They’d set the film speed through DX coding on the cassette, they would set the aperture and shutter speed accordingly. The small catch, you had to press the shutter release button yourself. The bigger catch, you had no idea what the images would look like.
This morning, I played around with one of these cameras. I haven’t used one of them for a long time, and I was curious about what it would «bring to the table» of images and quality. The camera was bought cheaply online and arrived by Norwegian snail mail two weeks after it was posted from a town reasonably nearby. Well done Snail Mail. After this wait, I was the confused owner of a Chinon Pocket Zoom AF.
The Chinon Pocket-Zoom AF – 38-60mm lens (probably f8 or something like that as widest aperture)
I was eager to test it out, and I gave it a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. The electronic and automatic wind-on mechanism did its job and rolled on a few frames that could have been used, and the display on the back showed «1». The Chinon was ready. I went out in very dull weather and the Chinon did not seem to be too fond of dull and «boring» light. It constantly set off the flash, and I had to manually reset it to «flash off» every time I changed compositions, as it would have reverted to flash mode automatically. It is a bit like an overbearing parent, the security net is always there.
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Shooting the Chinon was like shooting with your phone. You aim vaguely in the direction of what you want to photograph, you press the shutter button and wait for a while while the small elves inside the camera gets to work setting up your exposure. This takes a while, and you would probably not use this camera to photograph running animals or people in action. If you used it to photograph someone playing football, they would be done with their game and home for dinner before the camera takes a shot. After a while, when you hear the reassuring sound of the shutter and the winding mechanism, you are ready for your next shot.
When looking at the final images, they are not that sharp and crisp as you would hope. But since I have not had any control in the making of there images other than pressing the shutter release button, I don’t really feel it is my fault.
Some issues I see. The lens is probably not that bright and certainly not very sharp, and the images seem all slightly under exposed. They have a strange vignetting, much like the one you get while shooting a Holga camera, and the lens perfomance isn’t that much better on this Chinon. Also, you get these imprinted numbers on all your frames, and I was not aware that it would be printing numbers on my frames. I have left them here in all their atrociousness.
My conclusion. I will sell this camera to someone who will use it. I will certainly not use this camera again and if anyone wants it, please contact me.
I like this image because of the mood, and that it is evenly blurry all the way over. Chinon Pocket Zoom AF – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol Stock
When I drove home from work today, I noticed that the contrast between the December darkness and the artificial light from lamp-posts, lit buildings and petrol stations actually would make very nice images indeed. I thought about going for long exposures with either Tri-X or HP5 plus, and I composed some nice images in my head. My chosen subject, Skibladnerhuset.
Skibladner is an old paddle steamer the people who lives around the lake Mjøsa are very proud of. It is currently the oldest paddle steamer in scheduled traffic, and it will sail on the lake in the summer months. When the winter comes, it will be parked on display in its own, specifically designed house. A special building with I find to look incredible with its triangles and diagonal pillars and poles. The house was drawn by the architects at Kontur in Gjøvik and was built in 2001. It has become a landmark for Gjøvik and is visible from RV4 as you drive through the town.
I chose to roll up the Zenza Bronica ETR with a roll of JCH Streetpan 400, and test out how an extremely contrasty film would deal with the lighting conditions in a Norwegian December afternoon. In retrospect, this might have been the wrong film for this outing, I should have gone for Tri-X og HP5 plus.
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First of all, I could not find any information about the reciprocity features and long exposure compensation anywhere. Therefore, I went for combining the information from the Ilford HP5 plus and Kodak Tri-X. This means compensation from 1 second and more. My logic became – If the meter gives me 1 second, I’ll shoot 2 seconds, if it gives me 2s, I’ll go for 4. It could seem; however, that this was not anywhere near enough compensation.
Marina light – Zenza Bronica ETR w 50mm Zenzanon f2,8 – JCH Streetpan 400@400 1 second at f8
My negatives got very thin, so thin, that I wouldn’t imagine printing them in the darkroom. Three negatives came out reasonably OK, and showed the contrast level I was aiming for, however, the other 12, not so much.
I developed the film in Xtol stock, both because I have a batch of Xtol that is about to go out and I want to use it, and because I just did not «love» the prospect of doing development for 17 minutes with 30s agitation frequency. Call me lazy, but this is who I am.
I also considered using Rodinal 1+100 and do Semi-Stand development, but I wanted a more specific development cycle that I knew would give me the correct film-speed. And with Rodinal at that dilution and development times of an hour plus, I don’t really get that level of control.
Skibladnerhuset – Exposure times 4 and 8 seconds.
This was just an experiment and a shot in the dark (pun intended), but I learnt quite a bit about the Streetpan 400, and when not to use it. I might do a reshoot of this outing with a roll of Tri-X at some point, to pay the amazing architecture the respect it deserves.
In my last entry, and video, I tried out the very slow Rollei RPX25 film. I shot it with my Olympus OM-1 and I used a yellow filter because of the lightning conditions that I found to be ideal for yellow filter. Also, I must say that I got images that I am very pleased with. I only shot half a roll of the film, and cut it out of the camera, much because I was not sure what to expect in terms of contrast and metering.
Today, I rolled up the rest of the RPX25 in the OM-1, and went for a little outing to shoot the rest of the roll. The weather was absolutely horrendously nasty, with snow/rain blend and temperatures around 0. A typical nasty early winter day in Norway, and I went to a location I know very well. A little lake close to where I live, Skumsjøen, and looked for something that would allow me to shoot wide-open, at f1,8 with the 50mm Zuiko lens.
Tree root abstraction – Olympus OM-1 w Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1,8. Shot wide open f1,8 with Rollei RPX25. Semi-stand development Rodinal 1+100 70 minutes, agitated beginning and midle of cycle.
I went for some very abstract close-ups of tree roots near the frozen water. I even took the risk of walking on the newly formed ice, as it felt safe, to get the best angles. Luckily I did not fall through.
From my last outing with this film, I remembered that I got very hard contrasts in the negatives, and I gave it a whole stop of over exposure to retain more grey-tones in the details. Another measure I chose to reduce some of the contrast while retaining the sharpness, was a cycle of stand-development with Rodnial 1+100. This is not a type of process I often use, but for slower films, I have found it to work well with my style. It also gives a certain «character» to the shots, that I find to suit my eye.
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I am not in anyway competent to comment on the performance of this film, nor its abilities. I have not used it enough to know how to handle it properly yet, and I am no film expert. However, I find it rather enjoyable to play with this filming trying to rethink my exposures to get the results I want. Also, I have only shot the film in dull, overcast weather, but I find that the Rollei RPX25 gives me a fun challenge to work with. In short, this film is fun to work with.
Olympus OM-1 w Olympus Zuiko 50mm f1,8. Shot wide open f1,8 with Rollei RPX25. Semi-stand development Rodinal 1+100 70 minutes, agitated beginning and midle of cycle.
A video will be available on Youtube soon. Search for Ccadventures.
If you have followed this blog for a while, or read some of my posts, you may know that I have a Petri Racer that I really love shooting. I find the little Petri to be very reliable, accurate, light and handy as well as giving the images some character. I can’t really put my finger on why I like that particular camera so much, it is just a camera I enjoy shooting. A few weeks ago, I came across a Petri 7s on an auction online, and I won it on a very low bid.
The reason I was interested in this particular 7s was that it had the f1,8 lens, which some sources claim to be a six element lens with an interesting bokeh-pattern. Whether it is six element or four, as the f2,8 version, does not necessarily mean that much to me, but I do love nice bokeh and sharpness. For the very low price that I payed, it was worth the gamble at any rate.
The Petri 7s f1,8 Rangefinder camera w. amber coated lens
A gamble it surely was as this camera has a few personality traits that is very specific to this particular one. First of all. The Rewind-knob is loose, and you cannot turn the camera on its head without risking the film to lose tension as the rewind knob disengages. Another interesting «asset» this camera has, is a dodgy lock on the back. This means you will get the luxury of using electrical tape to secure it from opening mid-roll. In addition to this, the camera invites to a creative approach to focussing, with a rangefinder (although rather dim and dodgy) that jumps in and out of «sanity» a few times pr shot. I ended up guesstimating my focus because I trusted my own eyes more than the rangefinder unit.
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These faults aside though, the aperture settings and shutter speeds are fairly accurate. When I took it to Lillehammer to try it out on the newly fallen snow, I got very good negatives. My test was done with half a roll of Fomapan 200, which I because of the lighting conditions shot at 100. I shaved 20% off the development time compared to box-speed, and ended up at 6 minutes with Xtol Stock.
Petri 7s f1,8 – Fomapan 200@100 Xtol 1-0 6 minutes.
As you can see, in some of my images, my lens fogged over. However, this is not lens-haze, but rather an issue of a swift temperature change and a forgetful photographer who didn’t remember to wipe the lens before shooting against the sun.
Today as I was relaxing, enjoying a cup of coffee, I looked out the window. The first fall of snow has just blessed us with its arrival, and this always brings new objects to my attention. Things that I maybe haven’t noticed because it is hidden in the November-browns.
Today my attention was drawn towards some wilted plants. Their very dark brownish colors made a nice, almost minimalistic, tone towards the snowy background. I immediately ran to put a roll of Ilford Delta 100 into my Bronica ETR. I also fitted it with a lens I just bought. a Zenzanon 150mm f3,5. Equivalent to around 90mm at a 35mm camera, and used a yellow filter to get the minimalistic contrast that I was looking for.
I aimed to keep the snowy areas around zone 8-9, to not completely blow it out, and my dark areas around zone 3-4 to retain some shadow detail. I got fairly good negatives, but I would have loved to have retained some more detail, especially in the most contrasty images.
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Once again I chose to develop Delta 100 in DD-X developer, and this time as well, it gave me fabulous negatives. I am really looking forward to working with some of these images in the darkroom, and I expect to use lower grade filters, or maybe some split grading to get the most out of the negatives. A spot on my wall is already prepared for one of these images.
A few says ago, I wrote about my new camera. A 1947 Condor I. Mine was sold without the Ferrania logo, and from my research online, I see that these cameras were sold like this in 1947. This means that the camera is 73 years old, and was sold two years after WWII ended in Europe. In the early stages of the European healing time. In Italy, this is two years after Mussolini died, and Germany was still referred to as «Handelsschiffe» and completely divided into four sections by the allies. From Germany came the Leica IIc, a camera that is way above my budget, even today. And from Italy came Officine Galileo with their Condor I.
The Condor I is a relatively simple camera in many ways. 100% manual with shutter-speeds on a wheel around the lens, aperture settings on a lever and a coupled rangefinder with two viewfinders, one for sharp focussing with some magnification, and one for a preview of the whole Image. On mine, alas, the range finder is too dim to be of any help when focussing on my particular camera.
The beautiful Officine Gallileo Condor I
Operating the camera is a little fiddly, especially because of the very hard mechanics. It does not seem to have been used and looked after for some time, and it would not object to a little lubrication and a little clean. Other than that, it seems to work pretty well.
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Walking around with a camera like this, makes you think more than if you walk around with a fully automatic digital camera, where you know that what you see is what you get. An old, vintage, piece of equipment seems also to put a smile on people’s faces. When shooting this today, I was asked by several elderly people about the film I used, what camera it was, and what I knew about it. I also had to tip some of them about my blog, where some of the images would be posted.
Another interesting thing with this camera is that it gives med 40 images on a 36-roll of film. This is because you stick the leader properly in place, and can close the back before you start advancing it. The lens is relatively sharp, sharper than I would expect from a camera this age, and way sharper than my Argus camera. On the down side, I am limited by having to «guess-focus» and I can’t really see its potential before I have some kind of rangefinder to help me. It also seems like the lens has a little hazing on it. Not that it is a dealbreaker for me, but it is something to consider then using it, as it gives very hazy results when there is some backlighting in the image.
Officine Gallileo Condir I, Ilford FP4 Plus, Kodak Xtol 1+1
Even so, the camera is fun to shoot, and I will probably use it for a few outings in the future. After all, it cost me close to nothing, and It is fun being so bound to your own skills.
Testing old, cheap cameras is always exciting. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but in mist cases, you get something. In this test, I got something, but I managed to damage the film when winding it out. More of that to come.
Some weeks ago, I found an interesting camera on eBay, that I had never heard of before. The camera is called «Condor I» and was produced in Italy from 1947 by the Italian manufacturer of optics Officine Gallileo. After a while, Ferrania entered and most of the cameras were sold with the Ferrania logo on it. Mine, however did not. Whether this means that mine is among the earlier cameras, I don’t know, but – in mild terms – the camera does have some patina.
My dirty and somewhat tatty copy of the Condor I.
The first thing that really struck me when I played around with this camera, was the unusual selection of aperture stops. 3,5 and 4,5 are not that strange, but 6, 18 and 25 are stops I have never seen before on any manual camera. However, the aperture selector is the only part of this camera that is easy and smooth to operate. It seems to me that this camera has not been used for a long while, and that it will take some «jiggling» and maybe some sewing machine oil to get the focusing mechanism and the shutter speed dial to move with ease.
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After cleaning both the rangefinder windows (there are two of them on this camera) and the viewfinder window as well as a light wash with some glass cleaner over the whole camera, I loaded it with a roll of Rollei Retro 400s. Previously this day, I had spotted two lines of bicycle stands that I thought had an interesting look to them. I decided to shoot some frames, cut the film out of the camera and develop the film to check whether it does work.
So far so good, I shot some frames and went home ready for developing the film. I loaded everything I needed into the changing bag and cut the film out of the camera as intended. But for some weird reason, the take-up spool would not accept the «rewind setting» and roll backwards. I fiddled a bit with it, and after a little while, the film spun up into my hand, and I was able to carefully wind it off manually. It does seem, however, that I was not able to do this carefully enough. I got nasty scratches and marks on my negatives, and I can only blame myself.
Condor I – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol 1+0 9.30 at 20 degrees
The nasty scratches aside, the lens seems very sharp and the exposures fairly accurate from what I would expect with the settings. All shots are f4,5 at 1/100th and the Rollei film is shot at box speed. Also, the I love the smoothness of the grain I see in these scans.
Condor I – Rollei Retro 400s – Xtol 1+0 9.30 at 20 degrees
I do definitely have to take this camera on a new test. The images seem to be decently sharp and pleasant for a messed up shoot like this. I’ll make a video about this little quirky camera and my next time shooting it.
