Today I shot another roll of Catlabs X Film 80, this time pushing it to ISO 200. I had another box camera that I hadn't tested yet so I thought I'd take it out and see what it can produce. The camera is a very early box camera made by Houghtons Ltd and couldn't be more different from the Ful-Vue. It is an Ensign Cupid, which was in production between 1922 and 1928.The first thing you'll notice is that it isn't a box, in fact it has a very distinct T section. There is no glass viewfinder. Instead there is a huge fold-up frame finder with cross-hairs to assist with aim. Obviously this means you hold the camera at eye-level when shooting.
To cock the shutter you pull up the pin in front of the frame finder. There is a shutter lever to choose between Instantaneous and Time exposure and at the base of that is the shutter release button.
The achromatic lens helps to prevent aberrations. The camera shoots at roughly 1/40 at f/11. It's unique selling point, though, is that it shoots half frames so instead of 8 exposures you get 16.
So, naturally I was keen to see what this camera could do. It was shooting in the evening sun so I decided to push the film to 200 in development. The negatives were developed in HC110 (B) for 15 minutes. If you are curious about how to calculate timings for pushing or pulling film, check out my previous post, which has a link to a neat calculator created by my husband.
Here are the results:
So, for a camera that is nearly 100 years old I must say it's a delight to shoot and produces nice images. The lens stays remarkably sharp close to the edges and only gives a mild vignette. Clearly it also produces some impressive flare when pointed at the sun, though whether that is good or bad is personal preference. While the viewfinder looks comical I got pretty much everything I wanted in the frame, so it worked.
Pushing Catlabs to 200 worked nicely with these images.
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