Russian Spy Film

 No, I don’t mean a Russian version of 007, I mean photographic film designed by the Soviets for aerial surveillance, aka spy planes. I love playing around with different film stocks and this one is now made by the Ukrainian company Svema and sold by The Film Photography Project (https://filmphotographystore.com/ ) in handy rolls of 24 frames under the name Svema 64. It’s one of a number of Svema films they offer, but it appealed to me because of its low 64 ISO. I wanted to see if, given enough light, it would carry more detail than higher ISO films, and I was not disappointed.

The above examples are from the river walk in Georgetown, South Carolina, shot on a sunny day. I love the detail in the boats in the background of the top photo and the grasses in the background of the bottom one. The contrast is nice, not overwhelming but nice and crisp.

These above photos from the NC Ferry between Southport and Fort Fisher, also shot in full sun I also really enjoyed. 

But my favorite is below. It’s the Kaminski House in Georgetown and it’s one of the few I shot that day with a lot of shaded areas. I wasn’t sure it would work, but cranked the shutter speed as low as I dared and fired away. It’s nice having an old mechanical rangefinder that has no mirror to flip up and down letting you shoot at 1/30th or even 1/15th of a second with not camera shake if you’re careful. I was amazed at how well this film handled all the dynamic range, letting details show well in highlights as well as shadows. I will certainly try this one again.

The Devil Made Me Do It

We’re heading out on a long road trip in September that will include a search through the Mississippi Delta for some historic crossroads. You’ve likely heard the song Crossroads by Eric Clapton’s Cream. That’s a cover of a song by blues legend Robert Johnson, who, legend has it, sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for his unmatched guitar talent. In the Cream song, at the end, you’ll hear Clapton say “I’m standing at the crossroads/Believe I’m sinking down.” That line is direct from the original and that’s Hell he’s sinking down into. 

Some of the story is verified fact, some legend, some….who knows. Robert Johnson was in fact a guitar player at a young age. He played around the Delta in the early 1920’s, including the Dockery Plantation which is kind of the birthplace of blues music. The older men there, Charlie Patton, father of the blues, among them, made fun of him because he wasn’t very good. He got angry and left, on foot, not to be seen in the area again for months. When he came back, he was one the best, if not the best guitar player anyone had heard. That much is fact, corroborated by blues histories who spoke with those who were there. 

Robert Johnson in 1936

Then the legend begins. The idea of meeting the Devil at the 

Crossroads has a long history. In the part of Africa where many of the enslaved people of the Delta had roots, the Trickster god in their pantheon is called The Dark Man. He was the only of the gods who was unpredictable. Praying to him might get you want you wanted, or not. He was associated with places where paths or roads crossed. In America, as the Africans were introduced to Christianity, The Dark Man was a natural fit for The Devil. And so we get the Devil at the Crossroads. A story in the Delta held that you could bring your guitar to the crossroads just before midnight and play. At midnight, the Devil would appear, take your guitar from you, tune it, play some, and hand it back. From then on you’d have great skill as a guitarist, but your soul belonged to the Devil.  This is what many people thought was the source of Robert Johnson’s talent. As an entertainer who depended on a certain degree of notoriety to draw audiences and make his living, Johnson did not discourage the story.

You can believe that or not. But after he became a great musician, Johnson never rested. He never lived in one place and never stayed in one place long. He traveled all through the Delta and the South, up to St. Louis and Chicago, and even to New York and Canada. It’s hard to listen to him sing “Hellhound On My Trail” and not at least entertain the idea that he did in fact believe he was trying to outrun an evil fate. He certainly lived like it. 

The actual Crossroads involved in this story were never specifically nailed down. The “official” spot is the intersection of highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There’s a big sign marking the spot, and I’ll certainly go and get some photos, but it’s a busy intersection and today features such things as a Sonic drive-thru. 

We’ve also tracked down some other possibilities, much more out in the country, and these are what led me to my Devil Made Me Do It purchase of a new-to-me old lens. The Delta is very, very flat. These crossroads are dirt roads through mainly cotton fields. I thought that to capture them the way I’d like required a wide angle lens, so I found a 24mm Pentax for the Spotmatic at Roberts Camera (https://robertscamera.com/) used gear site Used Photo Pro (https://usedphotopro.com/ )for about $60. Buying from them was a breeze, it came quickly packed safely and in great shape. I can’t wait to try it out here then take it to the Crossroads. 

I hope to come back with my soul intact. But if when I return, I’m all of a sudden shooting stuff to put Ansel Adams to shame, you’ll know what happened. 

Analog EXIF Data

 

EXIF data is, at least in part, the camera settings used when an image was captured. Digital cameras attach this to the photo file so you can always see what f/stop, shutter speed, iso and any number of any settings were used. Film cameras don’t do this, of course, which makes it tricky when you’re trying to test one out to see how the camera is operating or how a certain film stock behaves. I’ve run across this problem lately while trying to rehab some antique cameras, particularly my 75 year old Ansco Titan. 

I’ve found a solution in the Analogbook, a handy notebook printed with spots for all the relevant data but without anything you won’t need. It’s an efficient use of page space. There are blocks for frame number, a short description, aperture, shutter speed, date/time, lens, and a block for notes. The notes block even has little icons you can circle to denote things like flash, double exposure or tripod use. The book fits perfectly in my back pocket, so it’s easy to tote around and always have handy. 

I like the idea of using pen and paper to record this info rather than my phone. It seems to me that it just keeps me in the analog mindset.

Mine is specifically for medium format and I’m probably going to get a second for 35mm.

I found the Analogbook at B&H for only $7.95. Money well spent. 

Camera Rehab

Jeffrey’s Home For Misfit Cameras grew by quite few when my friend donated a box of old cameras from her father-in-law’s house. They include a miniature folding autographic Kodak from 1915-17, a twin lens reflex from mid-1930s Germany, an American movie camera from the late 1930s and a simple little point and shoot from Ansco circa 1938 called the Jr. Press Photographer.

That Ansco was in the best working order, so I cleaned it up and took it out for a test run. I found both a PDF of the original manual and a video of how to take the lens pieces apart for cleaning, so with my new set of itsy bitsy screwdriver bits, I got to work. The lenses came much cleaner than I expected them to and the disassembly was a breeze. I put a cloth to the outside and got the dust off and in the end, I think it looks pretty good for a 75 year old toy camera.

Before Cleaning

After

It requires 620 film, which is simply 120 film on a narrower spool, so I bought a roll of trusty Kodak Tri-X from the Film Photography Project store, loaded it up and shoot a few photos. 

I had read that this was a 6x6 for a camera, but after I developed the film, I found that it really shoots in 6x9 format, which is cool. That would explain why I got 8 frames instead of the 12 I expected, though. I had a bit of trouble winding the film onto the spool in the darkroom, so some of the frames are bit wonky, but that wasn’t the fault of the camera, which looks to be in fine working order. It’s sharp in the center and much less so at the edges, but it worked out just fine with 400 speed film on a nice sunny day. I think we’ll get some fun use out of this simple little guy. 

And I can’t ever get enough of the name :-)

Jeffrey’s Home For Misfit Cameras

 I’ve taken to looking at Facebook Memories quite a bit lately. Seems the Plague Times have completely thrown my concept of time out the window and the Memories help me sort out what happened when. In any case, a couple weeks ago Memories told me it had been one year since I bought my first antique film camera, the Folding Brownie. And last week, on our trip back from Alabama, I found the latest addition to the collection at an antique shop on the top of a mountain. 

I never intended to be a camera collector, I bought the first one as an office decoration. But seeing how it was really a quite simple machine that should theoretically work, figuring out how to make it capture images again was fun. 

And that’s the best part of the collecting for me. Some people like the challenge of finding old cameras in the best condition and then using them to create amazing art. I’m more interested in the quirky and then finding out how it works and trying to make it the best it can be. 

The Brownie was just a matter of finding a way to make modern film work, the camera itself was performing exactly as intended even after 100 years. The Petri I bought mostly because it was a rangefinder and I wanted to try that out, it’s the least quirky I own and has become my go to if I want to make sure I get the shot. The Canon EXEE is a work in progress. I’m still shooting in different conditions and at different settings to try to noodle out why some images end up a bit foggy. Once I do, I’ll maybe look into how to fix it so it always gets a good image.

The Ansco Titan in all its glory

The latest addition is the second oldest and is another folding camera kind of like the Brownie. It’s nearly 75 years old but is in pretty good shape. With a folding camera, light leaks through the bellows is the most common issue, but this one seems fine there. The shutter seems to be firing correctly and the aperture opens and closes smoothly. But the focus is a bit off, and that needs to be addressed somehow. Thanks to YouTube, I have a plan and the proper tools are on the way. 

I’ve never been a tinker kind of guy, not mechanically inclined at all. But I have always been curious and always interested in how things, especially old things, work. These cameras are right on the edge of my comfort zone, and push it a little which is fun. The oldest ones are simply mechanical, with no electronics at all, and since there are really a limited number of operations that have to happen for a photo to be captured, I’m finding I’m able to figure them out. 

The design of this camera is just so cool. And that case! 

I’m also leaning into my general “glass half full” attitude. When I got the Brownie I was happy all the mechanical parts worked rather than frustrated that it had been decades since they made film to fit it. The Canon is fun to use despite some of the images coming out wonky, and again for a 50 year old camera, it has held up well.

Not the sharpest images, but I think we can fix that

The latest project is, as I said, 75 years old. It was made right after World War Two by an American camera company called Ansco and was the last of their cameras to be designed and produced in New York  before they moved those parts of the business to occupied Germany. So I look at it as a real piece of history, and the fact that everything but the focus is fine makes me happy. 

I’m looking forward to my tool set arriving and trying to bring this relic back to full working order. And I wonder what will have joined the collection by this time next year…..

A Strange Little Camera

 

I took some money I’d received as birthday gifts and went looking for a new old camera. I wanted a 35mm slr (as opposed to the rangefinder I already have in the Petri 7S) produced sometime around mid-century. What I found was the Canon EXee. 

This was a transitional product in a couple of ways. It represented Canon following the public’s shift away from rangefinders. It wasn’t the company’s first slr but it was one of the first. It also sought to reach that transitional spot among photography amateurs turning into serious hobbyists. 

I think this sort of wishy-washy positioning is what led to some of the weirdness that I also think has left this camera model relatively undiscovered by the new breed of film photographers. I kind of like a misfit, though, and because they aren’t widely sought after, these cameras can be had in good shape for under $100. 

The first strange feature is its interchangeable lens system. Many mass-market, non-pro level cameras, such as my Petri 7S, have a lens that is built entirely into the camera. The Petri lens is great, but it is what is, there’s no option to go wider or telephoto. The upside is a simple, light design and a lens that can be closer to the film plane making it easier to capture sharp images at slower shutter

speeds. Professional cameras at this time had interchangeable lenses with a huge variety of options in one of many lens mount designs. 

The Canon EXee sort of splits the difference here. The base of the lens, the part closest to the camera body, is built in, but the outer piece can be unscrewed and changed up with a few options. I bought a model that came with the most common 50mm lens, but a 35mm wide angle and both 95mm and 135mm telephotos are also available. That isn’t nearly the number of options available for Canon’s EF mount lenses made for the pro-level cameras of the time, but it does offer some flexibility. Also, because you’re really buying essentially half a lens, the EE lenses are, and were at the time, very affordable. The other advantage is that this camera retains some of a fixed mount lens camera’s slow shutter speed stability. It’s definitely strange, but I think it’s also pretty cool. 

Canon also got creative in its attempt to split the difference between fully automatic and manual controls. This camera has very strange aperture controls. I guess they were trying to simplify the exposure triangle by putting one side of it completely in the hands of the camera? They were pretty proud of their idea, I guess, because that’s where the EE designation comes from. It stands for “Electric Eye”, which sounds more ominous than they intended I think. In EE mode, you select the film ISO and a shutter speed (from 1/8 sec to 1/500 sec) and the light meter selects an aperture for you. The light meter gauge you see in the viewfinder tells you the aperture, rather than the scale of under- to overexposure in other cameras. There is a manual mode for selecting your own aperture, but you kind of have to guess as the control only has the max f16 and minimum f1.8 settings displayed.

And the light meter still just tells you your aperture, not whether it not you are exposed correctly. The system isn’t so much difficult to use as it is just weird. It will take some practice and experimenting to figure out how to make this camera do what I want it to do rather what it wants to do.

My first test did not go well, but it was due to old processing chemicals rather than the camera itself. My results with a second roll of 400 speed B&W film were truly encouraging. One thing I noticed was that the images I took in the late evening (when I was really pretty sure there wasn’t enough light) came out much better than the ones in full sun. I’m not sure if that has to do with the metering of the camera, the accuracy of the settings or the film I was using, but time will tell. I’m excited that the camera did so well in low light, actually. Some of these photos that I thought would be throw-always turned out to be great. 

My next step is to try a lower ISO (200 speed in tis case) B&W film to see how that fixes the problems in full sun. After that I’ll venture into color films. I’m looking forward to the adventure and may even try to get a wider angle lens from eBay before a trip to the mountains of Alabama (yep, Alabama apparently has mountains) early next month. 

Nostalgia & Progress: 50 Years of Walt Disney World Photo Project

 This is my first attempt at an organized, thought-out photo project, and I’m super excited to dive into it. To understand this, you’ve got to understand that I’m a Disney Geek. My family went to Disney when I was growing up quite a few times. My parents took the Lovely and Talented Lisa and I to Disney World as a graduation from college present. Lisa and I have taken John as often as we could, and have instilled a love of Disney in him as well. Disney to me is all wrapped up in the best aspects of nostalgia, but at the same time the fun of it still comes from its constant change as they push the boundaries of what is possible in immersive entertainment. But that’s getting away from the point, I was talking nostalgia.

I remember most of the trips we took to Disney well, some less well, and one not at all, because I was not quite two. Some of what has kept these earlier memories so vibrant is the photos my dad captured along the way. I have my dad to thank for much of my love for photography. He always had a camera, and he had it out at not just the “special” times, the birthdays and holidays and vacations, but at the regular times. Looking back on those photos, the ones of just random weekend car rides and everyday stuff mean the most. Most of our life is not holidays and vacations, right? He definitely took the camera on vacation, too, but he took his “regular times” eye with him, I think. There are posed photos in front of things that represent where we were of course, but there are also others that just seem kind of random. And I love them. 

Dad shot on slide film and those early slides of our earliest trips to Walt Disney World have come under my care. I’ve scanned them all, but still have a screen and projector that, as far as I know, still work. The look of slide film, and I think this was specifically Kodachrome, just says “childhood memory” to me. I went looking through these old Disney photos when we decided to make a trip for Walt Disney World’s 50th birthday. I gift to thinking how different it looked then, but at the same time how much the same. Nostalgia and Progress were in those images. 

I got to thinking it might be cool to try to recreate some of those photos, to go to the same places and seek the same angles and framing and see that mix of nostalgia and progress. But I didn’t want to step in too much as the photographer. I think that taking those photos with a modern DSLR would be just jarring, and probably say more about the change in technology over the last 50 years than the story of nostalgia and progress I’m trying to tell. So I bought a 35mm slr film camera that was made in the mid to late 60s, something that might very well have been carried by the tourists during those first years. I can’t get my hands on Kodachrome any longer, it’s not been made in over a decade, but Kodak did re-release another slide film. It’s not the same look, but slide film is distinct from negative film and I thought this would get me closest. 

I’ve gathered 15 images from dad’s collection, only two of which feature me or my mom. They are scenic shots, and some of them a bit random. I asked my dad why he was taking photos of the rest rooms on Tom Sawyer Island and he said he had no idea. But he did, and so will I. I’ve chosen images of places I am fairly certain I can get to and put myself in the same spot as dad. I’ve checked Google Earth and pinpointed as best I can where he was standing. I feel like I’m ready.

A truly epic view of the restrooms on Tom Sawyer Island, from, I think, the fort. 

That’s me in the red overalls and yellow shirt. I may have someone else shoot this and try to ride that horse again. 

I began this thinking it was a tribute to Walt Disney World. But the more I look at these photos and the more I think about it, the more it becomes a tribute to my dad. Thinking about him walking around the Magic Kingdom with my mom and little me, camera swinging on his neck, shooting things that struck him reminds me of just how much he has given to me. And when I think that just a few years before he was walking around the jungles of Southeast Asia armed with much more than a camera, well, I just hope that someday I can grow into the kind of man he is. 

I hope this works out like I’m envisioning it. It’s a little squirrelly working on film and not knowing until you get photos back from a processor what you’ve captured. But I have high hopes. I mean, it’s Walt Disney World, it’s the Magic Kingdom. I feel like Walt would approve.

One big difference will be the missing Sky Ride. 

Pinocchio Village Haus doesn’t really look any different today