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 :-)

Road Trip!!!!!!!

 It’s been soooooo long since we went anywhere for any length of time. We’ve done some fun day trips and we’ve been on a couple overnighters to go see the boy, but we haven’t proper been away since before The Plague Times. Tomorrow morning, though, we drop the News Hound off at Pet Camp and head to a fancy resort in Greensboro for four whole nights! It’s not quite really a vacation, though. It’s the annual conference of the North Carolina Association of Municipal Clerks, during which my lovely bride will become the new president of the Association. I’m very proud. I’m also really happy I get to tag along. Lisa will be in classes all day, so I will actually have a bit of vacation time. Naturally, I’m planning to use it to play with cameras.

We’ve been to Greensboro enough that I have a start of an idea of some things I need to see and hopefully shoot. The city has a fun little downtown area that we’ve mostly just driven through, so exploring that is high on the list. Greensboro prides itself on its green spaces, too, so I have some gardens and parks and trails on my list as well. It’s supposed to be sticky hot, but partly cloudy with just a chance of thunderstorms rolling through, so should be pretty good photography weather. And since Lisa’s classes start early, I can easily get my butt out for morning light and come back to do some magazine when the light is harsh (and it’s super hot.) That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve not been anywhere on photo safari since I began messing about with film photography, so I was’t sure what I wanted to bring. After thinking about it a it, I settled on pretty much everything. I have a good sling camera bag and also a fairly large backpack, so I have the room. I’ll leave the Brownie at home because folding it is a little iffy, but I’m bringing the Holga and the Petri 7 and the Eos R. I have the two RF lenses as well as the telephoto and the wide angle zooms. I figure I can look at the day’s weather and where I’m going and pack the sling with whatever I’ll want for that trip. Or throw the backpack in the car, who knows? But as far as cameras and lenses, I’m pretty well covered.

The Go Bag

Film left me putting in a little more thought. I’m leaving the slide fil at home because that’s for my Disney Project and I’m not confident about being able to replace any that i would use in Greensboro. The medium format film for the Holga was pretty easy as well. I’m taking three rolls each of Tri-X 400 and Lomo 400, that way I’ll have both color and black and white. I’m thinking it might be fun to load the Holga with color and the Petri with B&W or vice versa, so I always have both as options. That means I’m able to bring some pretty funky 35mm film. I have my Washi “S” 50 ISO sound recording film as well as both the 50D and 500T Vision3 Kodak film stocks from Film Photography Project. I’m also packing a couple rolls of the tried and true Gold 200 as well as two rolls of the very normal but new to me ProImage 100. 

I think that gives me a wide variety of film speeds in both color and monochrome for the Petri. I’m expecting lots of light, so the low ISO stuff should work well, especially in the urban areas. I can go to the 200 for the shady spots in the woods if I end up there. That’s the plan anyway. 

I’m hoping to have the chance to branch out a bit with my subject matter. Not only is it a new city, but it’s also much more urban than even Wilmington, so should offer a different style of shooting than I’m used to here at the beach. If there are people around, I could try some street photography. We’ll see if I get up the nerve. Maybe shooting strangers won’t seem so weird in a city. We shall see. 

And I’ll also always have the mirrorless Eos R with all its bells and whistles and options and a  big pile of memory cards to go along with it. 

I’m looking forward to spending some time just focusing on photography (heh, see what I did there). If all goes well, I’ll be busy in Jeff’s FotoMat and on the computer when we get back. And let’s be honest, this is a dry run for the Disney trip, so any lessons learned will be valuable. It’s all very exciting :-)

The Holga 120N: Socialist Photography

 The Holga was developed in China to provide a camera to the Chinese working class. They were fans of 120 format film at the time, so it’s a medium format camera, made of plastic so it was easy and cheap to produce for the masses. The original had two f-stops (f8 and f11), a fixed shutter speed of 1/100th of a second, and a plastic lens that could be focused from 3 ft to infinity. It was, and if we’re being honest still is, an total piece of crap of a camera. 

The Holga is poorly made. The plastic that makes up its body isn’t particularly good plastic. It either comes straight from the factory with light leaks or tends to develop them over time. The lens is plastic and also not well made so focus is entirely random between cameras. You may get one that is sharp in the middle to varying degrees, or you may not. There is heavy a vignette. The camera back gets looser with use and will eventually just randomly fall off if you don’t gaff tape that sucker on. It’s bad.

It was also, in its time, hugely popular in China. The Chinese loved taking photos and this was the camera they could buy. There were no options, no free market with other cameras with different or more features or cameras that were better made at a higher price point. It was an option of buy the Holga or don’t buy the Holga. And they bought the Holga. Until 35mm film penetrated mainland China and became popular. 

With fewer people buying the Holga in Mainland China, the government manufacturer expanded sales into Hong Kong, and eventually into the rest of the world. And then options became available, because all of a sudden the Holga needed to compete on a free market. It got a cold shoe for a flash and a tripod mount. But that was about it. It didn’t do well and production was stopped. 

Then Westerners discovered it. Frustrated and maybe a little worn out with modern cameras and all their amazing features, a small but dedicated group of film photographers fell in love with the Holga and its bare bones, Communist simplicity. Once photographers made the conscious choice to use a plastic piece of crap camera all its flaws became features. The vignette became artistic and the lousy focus of the plastic lens became “soft focus,” again, artistic. Production resumed. The free market had saved the communist camera. Now they come in all sorts of varieties. Some are panoramic, some have multiple colors of built-in flash, there’s even a 3-D model, I think. Also, they now come in fashion colors, not just the proletariat black of the original. 

This thing is so ugly it’s cute. Here it’s set on the sunny f-stop and the “mountains” focus. 

It’s still plastic and still, really, a piece of crap. But it’s a $35 medium format camera and I had to try it. And I love it. It really is fun, after using a camera that can do pretty much anything I ask of it, to use a camera that will do what IT wants no matter my thoughts or wishes. 

Shooting with the Holga is easy. You just put the aperture setting on the clouds or the sun depending on if it’s cloudy or sunny, try to noodle out if you should use the one person, two people, group of people or mountain focus setting, aim the camera in the general direction of what you want to shoot (the viewfinder doesn’t show you what the lens will see) and click. 

I used the “one person” focus and Lisa came out in focus!

As I mentioned earlier, each Holga is different. Some people buy several and then pick which to use based on each camera’s peculiarities. I only have the one and feel like I lucked out. It is really pretty nicely focused at the center of the frame but drops of to a kind of wavy out of focus-ness at the edges. The more light I have the heavier the vignette is. I don’t have any light leaks yet. I’ve run a roll of color and a roll or black and white film through it and was pleased with the results. I wouldn’t use it for any sort of professional purpose or to shoot a once in a lifetime event, but as something to carry around and play with, it is absolutely a blast. And it weighs almost nothing, so carrying it around is easy. 

In bright sun, the vignette is heavy, but I like it

I’m grateful to live in a capitalist country where my options for pretty much everything are almost inconceivably wide. I wouldn’t want the Holga to be my one and only photography option. But it is really cool to be so blessed with high quality photographic equipment at prices I can afford that I can buy a truly bad piece of equipment and love it for it’s flaws. 

Just look at the difference in focus from the center to the edge. 

Zen and the Art of Photography

Getting the April issues of Southport and Leland Magazines finished and to the press last weekend kicked my butt. Deadline week always takes a lot out of me because it means wearing all the hats I wear all at the same time. Getting editorial straight, making sure all the advertising is in and correct, laying it all out in InDesign and getting that package to the printer uses all of my available brain power. Adding the time-sensitive nature to that, it all needs to be finished by a hard and fast deadline hour, puts me in mental state that is not easy to just drop out of once all the work is accomplished. 

I tried taking a break last Saturday by taking the cameras out with Lisa and shooting some photos in Leland. We had a blast, but knowing all I had to do and being really in the middle of all the deadline pressure led to me not thinking my way through what I was doing and so making mistakes. I double exposed, I forgot to change the focus, and I messed up the rinse time of the developing of that roll. Using that old folding Brownie requires close attention to do it correctly. 

This past Tuesday was my official “day off” for the month. It was the day after the magazines were sent to the press and the day before they are dropped off for me to deliver. I always try to use that day each month as a re-charge day and not do much if any magazine work. The April issues I had just finished were good ones, full of good content and lots of ads, but they took a lot of last minute work to bring off. I was pretty frazzled and my brain was still running a mile a minute. I needed to unwind. 

Lisa recommended I “go somewhere” and suggested Calabash, just to get a change of scenery. That was a great idea and I decided to go bit farther south and visit the Vereen Memorial Gardens in Little River, South Carolina. I figured the flowers would be out and there is an angel statue there that I really wanted to capture with the Brownie. 

The plan worked. I took both the Brownie and the EOS-R with a new 35mm lens I’d just bought. It was amusing to me to carry around two ends of the technology spectrum like that. The EOS-R was for fun and the Brownie was for therapy, to force me to slow down. 

Using the Brownie is different. Its limitations force you to think both differently and more. With a max of six frames, choosing a subject isn’t impulsive like it is with a digital camera. I had a couple shots I really wanted: the angel and something waterfront Calabash. I wasn’t confident of finding the beginning of the film so I took an image I wasn’t dying for as the first. Just a shot through a fallen tree looking out over a saltwater marsh. It came out ok, but also shows that I wasn’t fully invested. It’s just ok.

I put the Brownie up and took a walk with the EOS-R that was just the kind of relaxing I needed. It was warm but not hot, breezy but not windy and sunny but full of big puffy clouds. I got some cool photos but I’ll write about that later. 

Then it was off to get the shot I drove there for. The angel is part of a memorial to the Vereen family after which the gardens are named. It sits just off the road in a clearing. This day the sun was coming in and out from behind the clouds and when it was out, it shone right on the angel. I concentrated on doing everything right. I paced off the distance for focus. I checked the exposure with my app and set what I though would be right. I took my time fussing with the viewfinder to frame the angel well. Then I just stood there and waited for the sun. There were no cars driving by and no other people. It was just me and the wind and the angel and the old camera. When the sun came out and hit the angel’s face just right I tripped the shutter and repeated the process for another angle just to cover myself. I figured this was worth two of my six frames. 

My second angle. I like it, but like the one at the top of the blog better

The entire process probably took 20 minutes. It was exactly what I needed. Slow, meticulous, step-by-step and entirely without deadline. I had slowed down and found my calm, and my happy. 

Then a dude with a leaf blower rolled up so I moved on. Off to Calabash.

On the waterfront I found the shrimp boat I had planned to shoot, but then I had a change of plan. There were big pelicans on the pilings by the boat. I’m a sucker for a pelican on a piling and these were very chill pelicans who didn’t mind me being there in the least. So I was able to go back to my slow, methodical routine. I was excited by the birds and didn’t want them to fly off, but forced myself to just trust they’d stay and not rush at all. It worked out well and my pelican buddies remained perfect models. 

I’m thankful for the outlet photography gives me, and I’m particularly thankful for having discovered this old camera that forces me to slow down and fully engage in the process. I feel like it is more than just relaxing, I think it makes me a better photographer. Even using a modern DSLR, it is never a bad thing to slow down and think. And it’s good for the soul as well. 

ISO, Grain, and My Collection of New Film

When I decided to try to get the folding Brownie working, I ordered a 5-pack of Kodak Tri-X 400 B&W film. I figured five rolls would give me a good shot to see if the camera was viable or not and Tri-X is pretty much the standard in the US for black and white film. This is the film stock used by nearly all photojournalists back before the digital age, so it’s “look” is one we are all familiar with from newspapers. I thought that would be the best film to judge how the camera was working because I knew what it should look like. I believe that worked and that I now know that that old camera can, if I get everything right, produce great images. 

Now it’s time to branch out. One of the fun parts of film photography is working with different film stocks that all have different properties, some slightly different and some vastly different. The range of films in black and white isn’t nearly what it is in color, but there are still differences in tone and contrast and grain that can be fun to play around with. 

So, I went to B&H and found four different films that were all among the cheapest on the site. I don’t want to break the bank and seeing as I’m not using anything approaching state of the art, why not embrace that and go as simple as possible? I also wanted to try out different ISOs to see if I could get good exposures using my kind of guesswork light metering system and the Brownie’s limited options. 

The 400 ISO Tri-X I started with is a great all-around film speed that can handle both bright sun and even indoor artificial light. If you’re not familiar, ISO refers to the film’s sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO (sometimes called the ASA), the more light-sensitive the film is and the less light is needed to get a good exposure. Higher ISO is also called higher speed. The nomenclature is confusing at first, but it means the same thing, higher number equals able to shoot in lower light. 

The trade off is grain, the kind of chunky look that a print or scan of an image has, making it look like it’s made up of a ton of little dots. Grain can be big or small and rough or smooth and it is one of the huge differences in different films. Grain is not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of photographers add grain to their digital images in Photoshop or Lightroom. There’s a slider right there just to do that. It makes an image look more.....artistic, maybe? More “real”? Which is kind of ironic as it actually makes the image look less like the thing the camera was actually aimed at in the real world. But we are used to seeing grain in photographs, so to us, or many of us at least, it belongs there. Anyhow, often cheaper films are grainier, and higher speed (higher ISO) films are grainier. 

The films I chose are Arista Edu Ultra 100, Arista Edu Ultra 400, Holga 400, and Foma Creative 200. These each cost about $5 versus the more than $7 for each roll of Tri-X. I thought I had three film brands and four different rolls. Turns out all the film I bought is made by Foma, the Czech company I talked about in the last blog post. It’s just different packaging. I don’t mind, except that I really have three different films as the Holga 400 and Arista Edu 400 are the same thing. But no biggie, I’ll have fun with all of these and look forward to seeing the results. 

Home Developed Brownie Photos

I really couldn’t be happier with these. The magical alchemy of fumbling in the dark with getting the film on the reel, pouring in the chemical and shaking it around just enough but not too much, rinsing it for what feels like eternity and then pulling it out and seeing actual real GOOD images is just awesome. I got five images out of this roll, which is an improvement. The first one is borderline edge of the film, so maybe another half turn of the spool there. There’s enough space between images that I think I could turn less and squeeze a sixth frame out of the roll, but that will be tops. Here’s what I ended up with from a stroll around Southport on a beautiful Thursday afternoon. 

 I found this classic parked next to Southport’s Garrison House with the owner, in a matching sweater, sitting on the lawn next to it soaking up the sun. He loved the old camera and said he’d had one very similar to it before his wife sold it at a garage sale. You can see on the left what. Think is the very beginning of the film, I think it’;s the tape holding the film to the paper backing. My light leak is on the top left, but I’m increasingly leaning toward not worrying about plugging it. I set the focus to 8 feet and erred a bit toward over exposure and I think it worked well. I’m terrible at getting a horizon straight on my modern camera, even with a digital level showing, so I think getting a non-tilted photo out of this camera with a waist-level viewfinder that’s clouded with age is simply not in the cards. We’ll call it artistic. 

I have been hesitant to take two images of the same subject since I have so few frames available, but I wan’t sure the first was actually on the film, so I shot this of the iconic tail fin. I ended up with a cool reflection in the immaculately clean paint job and a nice sun flair on the fin. Again this was set to 8 foot focus and I guessed how far away I was. I’m blown away by how sharp a 100 year old lens can be especially with focus being so much guesswork. 

This is the least successful image of the lot, but I kind of expected that. First off, I forgot to move the focus up from 8 feet to 25 feet, which turned out to be less of a problem than I expected. Also, I was shooting holding the camera above my head over a wall to get what I hoped was a good angle on this historic home’s porches. The entire image is a bit foggy, which must be due to something at the time of the exposure rather than developing because it’s only on this frame. Southport architecture photography will take some more work. Maybe I’ll dedicate a roll to just that soon. 

This is one of the boats in the double exposure I took on the first roll. She’s a refurbished fishing boat now serving as a cruiser and she’s gorgeous. My light leak is not causing any real trouble and the focus was set to a proper 25 feet. Again I’m so happy with the performance of this old lens. Also, the contrast is nice with detail in both highlights and shadows.

Here’s the last shoot, a shed used by the folks who own the nearby slips. This one might have been a little more exposed and been better, but I can likely mess around with it in Lightroom until I love it. Even so, I am really pleased with this, another 25 foot focus. I included too much gravel and cut off the top of the roof because the viewfinder doesn’t quite match either what the lens is seeing nor the size of the film. But that will just take practice to noodle out. 

All in all I’m super happy with these. This old camera doesn’t just work, it looks like it’s capable of capturing truly great images. The challenge will be working out the quirks of the viewfinder and the winding of the film. 

As far as the developing, I nailed it if I do say so myself. I don’t feel like I lost anything by going with a one-step developer rather than the traditional multi-chemical process. The TriX film I’m using performs great in this camera. I have several different brands and speeds of film on the way, so we’ll see how they work, but 400 speed might just be the sweet spot. 

Next, I’d like to take more close (8 foot focus) shots and work on some portraits of the Lovely and Talented Lisa. Stay tuned :-)