Vintage or Lomography anyone?

[Threewheelbonnie]

I'm currently waiting for my first film in years back from processing. My dad found his dads old camera (1953 Ensign folding "pocket" camera) and as it brought back a few thoughts about how things were done back when we had real explorers so I thought I'd give it a go. There is definitely something more to this when you have to work by estimates of exposure and range. Hopefully in a few days I will be getting back 9 lovely black and white images taken round the house and at the local bike café (I know there won't be 12 as winding on got a bit confused at one point and the focus markings in feet threw me on a couple), but no errors that can't be blamed on the nut operating the shutter would be nice.

When looking to buy film I noticed lots of this Lomography stuff. (old Soviet era cameras for those who've not seen them).

Anyone else out there lugging old kit about just for the fun of it?

Andy

[backofbeyond]

As I've earnt my living as a snapper for 30yrs I have loads of old cameras - both digital and film - lying about the place and periodically the muse strikes and I pick up one of the old film ones. It doesn't last long though because the logistics of buying and then processing medium format film these days is prohibitive and I've long since sold off most of my lab equipment. A pity really because there is something satisfyingly mechanical about old cameras and everything is done at a slower pace. Not much use for photographing 10,000 people running a marathon but great where you want to think about a picture before capturing it.

I've got two Soviet cameras - an old Zenit 35mm thing from the 70's that feels like it's made from recycled T34 tank armour and one of the current Lomo Lubital medium format cameras. Strangely I only remember paying about £15 for it but maybe my memory is playing tricks as it currently goes for £290 in the Lomo shops.

I'm probably missing the point of Lomography but if I wanted to shoot medium format film either of my old Mamiyas are ten times the camera the Lubital is and the Hasselblad I've just sold is from a different planet. My weapon of choice for film is the 70's Nikon F3 I've had forever. It's of similar build quality to the Zenit but it has the advantage of being reliable enough to take on a trip. Here's a couple of shots I took with it in Mali some years ago -





I've got cameras going back to the old Victorian wooden box glass plate cameras and they still get used for corporate challenge type events. Having to coat your own plates with photographic emulsion makes you realise how convenient film, nevermind digital, is.

[Threewheelbonnie]

It lives, it lives

https://picasaweb.google.com/1044429...eat=directlink

All I need to do now is learn how to use it

BTW, Did you notice that Donkey seemed to know it was having it's picture taken? Not quite like Blackpool mind! Lovely feeling of richness to the colours, or maybe that's just knowing it's film. There is something oddly satisfying in doing this mechanically/chemically.

I wonder if in 2067 someone will be able to just chuck a new card or battery in my Panasonic and go snapping?

Andy

[backofbeyond]

Yes, it's great when something like that comes back from the dead Roll film is still "reasonably" easy to buy, if not particularly cheap, these days so more power to your elbow with it. I suspect you'll have an easier time taking pictures like the ones I posted with it than with something like an iPhone because people will be interested when you haul it out.

I'd be interested to know what film you used and who did the processing - up to about 10yrs ago there were pro labs in just about every industrial estate round here but when the industry went digital they all vanished in a couple of years, as did the supporting wholesalers and of course, Kodak. I'm not surprised the world went digital though - I changed over in 2000 and my direct costs for getting proofs in front of potential purchasers went down by 90% - and that was before the internet which would have removed the last 10%. In two years I went from shooting 200 film frames a day at a sports event to shooting over 5,000 digital ones.

The nearest I've got to your Ensign is a 50's SpeedGraphic press camera but the one we've got needs 5"x4" sheet film so nothing like as easy to use. In practice we've modified it to hold a small Canon digital inside so we can use it at themed corporate events and actually shoot pictures. A wireless link back to a laptop + printer and prints turn up faster than you could reload it with film back in the 50's. Isn't technology wonderful

[Threewheelbonnie]

The digital conversion sounds interesting. I'm guessing sheet film now has to be bought from the aerial survey people, or have they gone digital too?

The film was Ilford HP5+ just like us amateurs used back in the day. Fiver for three (I wanted in-date and predictable for testing), processed by CC Imaging in Leeds (also still there from back in the day and fortunately for me still on the next industrial estate from work). They are trying to get the Lumography crowd in, so process and scan is on offer at a tenner. A scary £1 a picture or there abouts!

If I get into this I might go the chemicals, Patterson tanks and scanner route, but too much to invest for now and CC will do colour, black and white and cross processing as I like without throwing in my unused-for-25 years darkroom skills as yet another unknown. The E6 slide stuff seems to be deader than negatives, that was always easier to do in colour at home. There seems to be a bit of a trend for loading 35mm into 120 cameras too, involves a lolly stick and unloading in a changing bag!

Andy

[g6snl]

Originally Posted by Threewheelbonnie

I'm currently waiting for my first film in years back from processing. My dad found his dads old camera (1953 Ensign folding "pocket" camera) and as it brought back a few thoughts about how things were done back when we had real explorers so I thought I'd give it a go.

Andy

Good grief ! My dad had one of those, prob. still got it somewhere? It brings back memories for me too of holidays at Butlins and having to wait ages to send off the film and get it back from the processors in the 70's. I used it for a while in the mid 80,s as a kid and joined the school photography club and did the developing in our "dark room" ( aka: broom cupboard ) Most enjoyable developing my own photos, they were never very good though! Things really have changed, it's much easier........but the photos are still not very good

I have loads of photos taken with that old camera and have spent many hours looking through them and practically remember all of them, even some being taken all that time ago. You just can't do that now because you just take 100's simply because you can, and it doesn't cost any more to do so. More pictures but less memories I suppose..........

[Threewheelbonnie]

Did a bit more research. The camera should have cost something like £13 to buy new. Quite a lot in modern terms. Still, Joe, my grandfather, would be happy he was still getting his monies worth. That's Yorshiremen for you!

Andy

[backofbeyond]

Now you just need a despatch riders coat, some waders and a war surplus BSA to complete the value for money ensemble. .

Those folding cameras with bellows and waist level finders looked so err ... previous generation to me as a kid. I wanted something space age, something the Jetsons (remember them!) would use - and I'd seen it in the local chemists window. Pester power gradually wore my parents down and my photographic vision of the future eventually turned up one birthday -



I must have been about 7 or 8 at the time and knew nothing about cameras but it looked like the future had arrived - to my eyes anyway. I remember running around clicking away at everything and taking hundreds of pictures but as there was no film in the camera it was a fairly low cost exercise. The problem was that it took 620 size film and we couldn't find anywhere that stocked it (not surprising living in semi rural Scotland at the time). Neither could I could get the flashbulbs to fire as no one had told me that it needed a battery. Much later I eventually found a screwdriver small enough to unscrew the battery compartment and discovered it was a obscure battery size that nobody stocked either.

Years later I did finally buy a few rolls of film and a flash battery for it and take some pictures but the magic was gone. I think it went to a jumble sale in the end. My enthusiasm for hi tech snapping continued though and a few years later I got one of the early consumer Polaroids - the kind that produced small B/W prints that you had to coat afterwards with a chemical laden sponge otherwise they faded away. To bring the subject vaguely back to bike travel that camera survived long enough to be taken on a couple of my early Euro trips and a few of the better coated pics still survive -



(somewhere in northern Italy)

[photographicsafaris]

I have an old folding 6x9 rather than 6x6 camera - they are prone to flair if aimed at a light source, so finding an accurate way to shield them without blocking the lens becomes a challenge

There is nothing to them really, you just have to get to know what the focusing marks relate to - its a £10 exercise as below.

Make sure the bellows are light tight, and the shutter blades move freely. the shutter speeds are prone to stretched springs so can be a light slower than indicated.
Buy a cheap light meter and you'll love it.

1 on a dark surface (road) Lay out a straight length of white thick rope as long as the focus marker scale on the lens and measure out then wrap a strip of black insulation tape for every distance marker identified on the lens.
2 Open the aperture (low number possible e.g f3.5 rather than f11)
3 place camera on a tripod at the end of the rope showing the closest distance with the lens the same distance away from the start of the rope as the first mark on the lens focus scale (in point of fact the scale should be measured from the film plane but this way gives you 5 inches of error margin either way)
4 frame camera to cover the full length of the rope - start to finish and try to include some of the Horizon, preferably with a close skyline interest e.g. trees about 100m - 200m away
5 Set an appropriate shutter speed for the light conditions, preferably above 1/30th
6 before each shot in section 7 write on a board the distance focused on in the shot, and place facing the camera so the it looks like it is adjacent the actual focus point it represents
7 Take one picture for every distance marker on the lens focus scale (remembering to wind on between shots) (if possible use a cable release)
8 go to step 6 until your have run out of film.
9 Process and Compare photos to see how the focus compares to the distance marker it was supposed to focus on.

The next task is to focus on something about 1/3rd the way through the focus distance on the lens and shoot a roll of film with differing apertures and not changing the focus - obviously adjust the shutter speed to accommodate for the different exposures

Make a note on a board in the picture what the aperture value of that shot was.
Make special note of the red for aperture and distance focus setting this should be the point of front to back focus. (Wishing that the shutter speed is high enough to carry a sharp image)
To make this exercise doubly interesting try shooting a fast flowing water/traffic scene

if you want to freak out the guys in the lab, get a changing bag, and wrap a roll of 35mm unexposed film inside a 120 roll and shoot a load of pictures. Then wrap back into a 35mm cassette and drop in for dev and print as framed....most amusing on a 6x9 camera and the panorama is awesome.

And yes, I still have and use some treasured Film cameras, that i can't bare to part with.

As an aside I really do wonder at the point of shooting 5000 photos a day at sporting event where/how do these treasured 5000 photos get seen by anyone, surely by flooding the accessibility you're restricting your own market?
I can't even begin to get my head around editing and then storing for archival purposes 5000 photos a day (assuming a 32 working week year with a Nikon d800 thats my version of hell!)

[Margus]

Not exacly vintage but I've done most of not all of my motorcycle trips carring at least some sort of a film camera. I did a RTW with 170 000 kms and the only camera that did from start to finish without losing a beat was a Pentax 67 that is as old as I am. While I worn through 4 different digital cameras - shows you how good the oldschool cameras are built to last - built like a tank in comparison!

Only on my Iran trip I had a vintage Moskva 6x9 camera that self-destructed - it's rangefinder just fell off (probably the motorcycle vibrations took it's toll). Fortunately it was freely given to me by a friend to be used as a backup camera in case my main camera failed so it was a happy ending since I just shot one roll with it. So I've not really looked into vintages after that, they can be very fragile, especially the folders.

So far mostly my film camera's been complimented with a compact digital that I use for documenting my travels, but this summer 5 weeks out to Iceland I decided to take only my film cameras with me since while I started my photography with digital I've gotten somewhat tired and bored with the digital gear lately - to my own surprise enjoyed the whole film-only travel photo experience considerably more than I ever did with any of the digital cameras I've had so considering doing my future travels with film cameras exclusevly as well. There's something truly awkwardly (in a good way) different, refreshing, inspiring and rewarding about shooting film on your travels, IMHO.

That being said I stay away from all the Lomography stuff - for me it's just an marketing hype of poor products at a ripoff prices. They sell old rebadged expired film, revive design fails and hype it all up like it's something new, basically treating the analog photography like it's just a one-trick-pony. Hipsters apparently love it and buy the "lo-fi" hype, but it's definitely not for me. While I also love lo-fi the analog film and gear is a much more capable than this.

(Indonesia, 6x7 slide)

For some over 5-6 years now I've learned and done my own darkroom enlarging, developed my own recipes and techniques, analog wet-printing is another hands-on time consuming but a very rewarding activity and a forgotten art these days - resulting a truly hand made photo. It's something film-shooters should look into too.

(Iran, handmade silver-gelatin Lith-print from a 6x6 frame)

Cheers,
Margus

[backofbeyond]

Originally Posted by photographicsafaris

As an aside I really do wonder at the point of shooting 5000 photos a day at sporting event where/how do these treasured 5000 photos get seen by anyone, surely by flooding the accessibility you're restricting your own market?
I can't even begin to get my head around editing and then storing for archival purposes 5000 photos a day (assuming a 32 working week year with a Nikon d800 thats my version of hell!)

It's not an everyday occurance - I've probably done about 20 events of that type this year.

Shooting 5000 pictures where 15,000 people are taking part means only getting less than a third of them and there will usually be a bunch of us at various points on the course - running or triathlons are the most common big ones. I've done a number of events over the years where between us we've shot about 100,000 pics in total - maybe a two day event such as the London triathlon. It's not uncommon though to shoot 25,000 at a "small" event - say 2000 at a cycle race.

Archiving them is not quite like it used to be in the film days. All you need is a database and about 10Gb of disc space. Constructing the database is farmed out to the other side of the planet so they'll be available for website viewing the next morning - just enter your running number.

As a rule of thumb the more you have the more likely someone will buy something - and of course the direct cost of taking more is very little. It does work - my wife bought the video clip of her overtaking everyone towards the end of The Great South Run a few years ago!

Technology does change things - I saw a drone being used at a triathlon this year to capture pictures of swimmers in the water at a triathlon.

[Blommetje]

I have a Lomography DianaF+ and like it. Development is expensive though.. so I barely use it. Also, film isn't cheap, so never use it traveling. Only city trips. Quality is not good so I think of it as a fun only camera. I also have a Yashica Automat 126 g (if i remember correctly) and that makes The Best photos! Tack sharp, lovely focus and superior quality. Downsides: heavy and big. Only 12 exposures on and roll and.. the costs of film and development.

So great, but not practical. I always think of bringing it with me when traveling , and.never do. And no I'm on the road I regret it. Stupid dslr is just no fun...

[Border Unlimited]

Great pictures guys! Keep up the good work