More Brownie… Delicious Brownie…
Finally got around to developing another roll of shots from my Kodak Brownie Six-20 D. These shots where taken on Shanghai GP3 100 and developed in Kodak D-76 1:1.
Getting exposure right with a Brownie is not easy. First of all, there's no settings. You can't adjust anything on the camera, the only way you have any control over the exposure is by selecting the right film type. A couple of shots taken on overcast days seemed to not come out so great, so this is very much a sunny day type camera.
Still, it's great fun to use, and those amazing 6x9 negatives freak people out when they see the size.
Serious 6×6
There's something about the 6x6 format that feels more serious and professional than 35mm. This is strange, as a lot of fun toy cameras (the Holga and Diana for eg.) use this same format.
As you may have read a while back, I picked up some Shanghai GP3 film on the cheap recently. I've shot a few rolls, but my developer was dying fast, so I hadn't had the chance to develop them. This past weekend I was invited to Brisbane for drinks. Taking the opportunity I grabbed some developer while I was there.
This is the first time I've used Kodak's D-76 developer. Once it's mixed and ready to go though, it's just as easy as the liquid concentrate Ilford chemicals I had been using (LC29 and Ilfosol 3). Using D-76 in a 1:1 solution (1 part D-76, one part water) and developing for 14min (@ 20 degrees) with intermittent agitation, and there's the result.
I'm very happy with the results, and will surely be using this combination more. These two images were scanned in with my new scanner, and with minimal post processing (levels, no sharpening). There was a couple more shots that turned out OK, but these are the two I'm most happy with. Overall, my experience developing this roll was much better than it had been previously with medium format.
Try again
I finally finished off my first roll of Kodak Tmax 100. Kodak black and white films have a huge following, but I've only ever used Ilford film and chemistry. I grabbed this roll of Tmax 100 a while back and stuck it in my Konica Autoreflex T. After 1 or 2 frames, I realised the light meter wasn't working properly, so I shelved it. Many weeks later, I thought I'd try and find out why. Turns out it was merely flat batteries.
This normally isn't a problem, except this camera is old enough that it requires mercury batteries that provide 1.33v each. No common batteries provide this voltage. The modern equivalent batteries provide 1.5v, which doesn't sound too bad, but with two of them you're looking at 3v instead of 2.66v. For a light meter, that's a fairly big deal.
The closest you can get these days are hearing aid batteries that are 1.4v each. That's a total of 2.8v instead of the 2.66 the camera expects. There's ways to get around this, but I won't go into that here. The easiest way is to just ignore it, film latitude will accept the small difference it will make.
The problem I started to notice after replacing the batteries this time, is that the light meter is basically super sensitive now. It's constantly reading 2 to 4 (or even beyond) stops underexposure. That's what has happened on this picture. I trusted the camera on this picture, and it underexposed it severely. Turns out it still looks good. Instead of a shot of a pot plant on a table, I ended up with an abstract with some great lines.
Some site news: I've added another techniques page. I've started a series on the very basics of cameras and camera use. I hope some people find it useful, as there's a lot of information out there that assumes a basic knowledge of some of these technical terms and concepts. I hope to provide that basic knowledge. Drop me a line if you find it helpful or confusing.
Old Camera, Meet Graffiti
This shot was taken with a Kodak Brownie Six-20 D on Ilford FP4+ at ISO 125.
This isn't unique photography, neither is it hard photography. It's a pretty simple formula that works more often than not. Take an old camera, load it up, point it at some graffiti, done.
It feels like a lazy way of getting interesting pictures to me. Someone else has done all the hard work here, the art in this picture was someone else's doing. They spent the time creating the image I see, and I just pressed a button. Well, I just picked the right film, framed the shot, made sure my settings were ok, pressed a button, loaded the film into some reels in the dark, measured and poured the right chemicals, agitated periodically, washed the film, hung it to dry, scanned it onto a computer, adjusted the levels and cropped out the frame.
Ok, maybe I was wrong. It did take a lot of work on my behalf. This is where I get hung up. I quite often feel like I'm just pushing a button to make a picture, but there is so much more to it than that. I have to use my past experiences and acquired knowledge to produce a final image. AS simple as pushing that button is, with film photography, that's just the start of the journey.
Update: Taking advice from Dan below, I'm adding a google maps link and some info on where this graffiti was found.
This graffiti was found on the wall of a now empty building that used to contain an "A-Mart All Sports" store in Morayfield, Queensland, Australia. It's the blue roofed building to the right of the street marker.
Search
Pages
Archives
Blogs
- alexluyckx.com | blog
- Anton's Photo Kitchen
- Dan Takes Photos
- Factory Takeover
- Michael Raso Film Photography Blog
- Middle Gray Studios
- Musings of a Photographic Idiot
- One Eye Open
- Sharkriverfilmsandphotography's Blog
- St Clair Photography
- Street Noise
- Thrillarama
- Urban Hafner Photography
- VERSUSNYC
- View From The North
Donate
