Shooting the Balda Baldixette

 I've mentioned this lovely camera a few times on this blog but haven't yet shared
any photos taken with it, so today's the day to share some of its snapshots. 

A little background about the camera. Well, it has a fancy (for a box camera) 72mm 2-element lens and a choice of two apertures, f/9 and f.16. It shoots at 1/60, focuses down to 5 feet, and dates from around 1956. It shoots 6x6 squares and has the most laughable, impractically small viewfinder. To make composition easier I bought an accessory viewfinder that slips into the accessory shoe on top.

 These were all taken on Lomography 400 film. 

Well, I think it's safe to say these are some of the nicest and sharpest colour shots I've taken on a box camera. The Baldixette is certainly worth the few quid they go for on eBay if you are looking for an eye-level box camera. That said, the tiny viewfinder can be challenging, so it may be worth investing in an accessory viewfinder like I did.

Another Eye-Level Box Camera: Kodak Brownie Cresta III

 I had a recent trip to Inverness and took with me another box camera, just in case there was anything nice to shoot while I was there.

After my failure with the Agfa Clack I decided to give another camera a go that is also shot at eye-level, a Kodak Brownie Cresta III. This plastic wonder may not look like much but it has one of the most reliable shutter mechanisms in my whole collection and its plastic Dakon lens gives lovely results. 

It dates from the first half of the 1960s and has a choice of two apertures, f/11 and f/16 (though these are labelled EV12 and EV13). It also has a close up lens that pulls into place with the lever on the side which allows you to focus as close as 4 feet. Its single shutter speed of 1/40 puts it on a par with the plastic Ensign Fulvueflex, another camera that many might dismiss as a toy but actually gives rather nice results.

As it happens, the weather was rather nice in Inverness and my husband and I had a hour before we had to move on, so we decided to take a walk along the Caledonian Canal. I am very happy to say that my pictures came out a lot sharper on the Brownie than they did on the Agfa, and most of the roll had some nice pictures on it.

One interesting thing did crop up, though. Apparently, at some point during lockdown, I loaded this camera in the vague hope of getting some nice shots near my home. I guess the conditions weren't great and I only managed to get 4 shots, after which I shelved the camera and awaited better conditions. I guess they were a long time coming because I couldn't remember for the life of me when I loaded the camera, or what film it was loaded with when it came to our Inverness outing. Peering through the film window revealed rounded numbers, which were a tell tale sign of Catlabs X Fiilm 80, a film I am very fond of. Now, either because the camera had been shelved for so long or because the film unravelled a little on loading, the first couple of shots had light leak. It probably happened during loading as I took the same shot of a sand castle three times, so I must have suspected the first frames wouldn't come out. The third shot was mostly unscathed and is pictured here:

Sand Castle

That's a surprising amount of detail in the sand from a plastic lens. 

Anyway, as I couldn't remember what the first 3 frames were, or the conditions in which they were taken, we decided to semi-stand develop the film, a process I will explain in more detail in the next post. For now, it will do to say that the film responded very well to this approach and we got some nice snaps.

Old Tractor Factory

Boats on the Caledonian Canal

More Boats on the Caledonian Canal

Swans

Bell Tower

Caledonian Canal

Wait For Me, Dad

Clachnaharry Railway

Railway Cottages

So we've ended up with some pretty vintage looking shots. I think C. T. Goode would have been very proud of my Clachnaharry Railway shot!

 I don't know how long the film sat in the camera but the sky shows some imprinting of the film backing paper on the image in many of the shots. I've had this happen before when a camera has sat loaded but unused for some time, so it's best to avoid that if possible. It hasn't ruined the shots though. Shall we just claim it adds character?

The Cresta III is a lovely camera. Highly recommended. A great box camera for beginners that's easy to use and doesn't involve any tricky waist level composing. British made Brownies are also good choices as they tend to take 120 film. Lots of other Brownie models take 127 film which is harder to come by and expensive.

Shooting the Fulvueflex in Bristol

We visited Bristol in late October last year and I decided to take the Fulvueflex with me to take some snaps. I loaded it with Fuji Pro 400H and we went for a walk around the harbour. It was a gorgeous sunny day and Bristol is such a colourful place to photograph. The Fulvueflex performed very well.

Capturing Fireworks with the Ful-Vue Super

My husband and I took the Ful-Vue Super to a fireworks display on Bonfire Night in Inverness last year. We finally got round to developing the negatives a few days ago and here are the results.

We took the Super because it has a tripod thread and cable release socket, which were essential as we were going to be doing long exposures with bulb mode.

We were shooting Portra 160 film. Shooting fireworks is easy. You just hold the shutter open for as long as there is something pretty in the sky. 160 ISO may sound too slow for night shots but the fireworks are very bright and we didn't want them to overexpose. The background is just black sky, so no worries about overexposure causing unwanted glow. Underexposure wasn't a problem either as the background was meant to be black.  Normally long exposures would need to account for reciprocity failure, but as the fireworks are moving they don't expose the same bit of film for very long so it wasn't an issue.

If you want to capture multiple bursts in one frame you can. Just take multiple exposures before winding on. If you want to break the bursts up to make the streaks of light look more like confetti, just take many rapid exposures (with a cable release of course). Nicky and I both took shots on the night but it was so long ago we don't remember who took what. Anyway, here they are:

It was great to be out and about with the Super. Sometimes it gets overlooked because it requires us to re-spool 120 film onto 620 spools, but for long exposures this is absolutely the one we need. The results are great.