Extreme Box Camera A&E

 

 
Just look at this poor thing. It may have a smile on its face but it doesn't have much to smile about. It's a crying shame because the Coronet Captain is a really lovely box camera. They went into production in 1955 and shoot eight 6x9 frames on 120 film. The meniscus lens has a 115mm focal length and focuses from 10 feet onwards, though with the close up lens pulled into place it will focus as close as 3 feet. There is also a pull in place green filter, a single aperture of f/16, and a single shutter speed of 1/40. There is a bulb mode too for longer exposures, as well as flash connectors. All in all a lovely camera and one I've had on my radar for a long time. I've never bought one before as they're usually out of my price range, though this one, for obvious reasons, was not.

So what happened? Well apparently it sustained water damage from a leaky garage roof. Now normally I wouldn't take my chances on a camera in this condition, but the Captain is a bit special and I didn't like the thought of this one being binned. It had done the rounds on eBay for a while and generated no interest. I have some re-covering leather so I took a chance.

Needless to say it needs cleaning up and re-covering. There is some corrosion to take care of and the lenses need a good clean. Its shutter isn't firing so needs some attention. Let's see if we can cheer the poor Captain up a bit.  Updates on his progress soon!

Double Exposures on the Fulvueflex Synchroflash

I had one roll of Catlabs X Film 80 left so I decided to have some fun and give some double exposures a try. I'd never taken double exposures before (not intentionally anyway) but I knew the basics. The second image will show up most obviously on the dark areas of the first image. Normally one would underexpose each image by one stop to make sure the final image is correctly exposed. Of course, with box cameras there's no adjusting the settings, so you have to do this in development.

There is an art to taking good double exposures. One of the most helpful demonstrations I've seen is this video by Eduardo Pavez Goye, so definitely check that out if you're interested in giving it a try.

I think I need a bit more practice yet, but these were some of the better results. In the end I pulled these shots to ISO 50 and developed them in HC110(B) for 7:50 minutes at 20°C.

Bath tub in the rushes

Beware

Extra secure storage

Portrait of my husband

Ghost boat

Beached

So, that was fun! After shooting 10 rolls of Catlabs film I'll definitely buy more. The results have been great and I think I can call my experiment a success. You can load a box camera with the same speed film in all different lighting conditions and then compensate in development. I pulled the film to ISO 50 and pushed it as far as ISO 640 and got great pictures. There are probably other film stocks that are just as versatile. I wanted to give Catlabs a go because I'd never shot it before. Like I've commented before, the grain is very fine, the latitude is impressive and the film is super versatile in development so overall very happy with the results.