Back from a break...International Brownie Days!

 Well, it's been a while since I last posted. I took a break from blogging and box camera-ing to get to grips with being a new mum. My daughter is now seven months old and the outdoors is finally showing signs of Spring, and I have been itching to get out shooting again. It just so happens to be the middle of February, which, conveniently is a month dedicated to International Brownie Days! over at Chuck Bakers superb Kodak Brownie website.

The idea behind International Brownie Days! is simply to have fun shooting an old Brownie and then to share up to 5 of your best photos on Chuck's gallery. Entries are open until 14th March 2022. There are some outstanding images there already so click the link for inspiration. 

Well, what better reason to grab a box camera and enjoy shooting film? I have three Brownies in my collection. A Baby Brownie Special, which is still untested as I don't have any 127 film handy; a Brownie Cresta III, which takes superb photos and featured on this blog before; and a Brownie 620 model D. I chose the 620 model D for this outing. It was still untested and had been waiting patiently for me to run a roll through it for quite some time. 

So after my husband re-spooled some 120 film onto a 620 spool using his ingenious method that I shall post here in the near future, we were all set to go. I was shooting Foma Retropan 320 film, which I really love.

 

The camera itself is lovely to use and dates from the mid 1950s. It shoots eight 6x9 frames, has a 100mm meniscus lens, a fixed aperture of f/11 and a single shutter speed of 1/50, plus bulb setting. It can be used with a tripod to assist long exposures, and it has two decent sized and very bright viewfinders. Not as big as the Ful-Vue's, but plenty big enough so composition is easy.

If there's one thing Retropan does not excel at it is grand vistas, which we have lots of in the North West Highlands. Fortunately I managed to find some subjects relatively close by that the film handled nicely. The boat came out particularly well. 

 

 

So now that I'm back into the swing of things I hope to be able to post more regularly again. I have posts in mind for the upcoming months as well as a big project this year that I hope to document here. Watch this space.

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.

C. T. Goode's Railway Rambles

It isn't often one finds a photo book that featuring pictures taken exclusively with a box camera, but by chance I came upon these two volumes by C. T. Goode [Charles Tony Goode] and thought they were worth sharing. If you Google this name it will become clear that the author's real passion is railways as he published a number of books on the subject between the 70s and the 90s.

Volume 1, published in 1988, is called Railway Rambles with a Box Camera and in the short and entertaining intro Goode writes:

 As far as I am aware, I think that I should be the first photographer to admit to using a box camera to take and display pictures in a collection, as it would not be done to state that one had used such a simple device in a sophisticated world of 'f's, zoom lenses and apertures, a world where the more complicated things are, the better....

...Even then [just after the end of WWII], to produce the box on a platform, peer into the inefficient little view finder and produce a massive 'click' did occasionally cause a stir...

...I do use it from time to time [still[]...The looks on the faces of others when the box camera is produced 'on location' have to be witnessed to be believed. It is as if one has suddenly rolled up in a suit of medieval armour!

Well at least in 2021 you are less likely to cause a stir shooting a box camera in public as more often than not people don't realise the box is a camera.

Volume 1 shows some historic steam locomotives. It is not meant to exhibit the capabilities of the Brownie No. 2 camera being used. That said, Goode does mention a few of the challenges of taking this subject matter with a box camera in his intro. 

He points out that he generally needed sunny conditions, or if the light was dull, he would take the photo anything up to four times on the same frame to get the correct exposure. Sometimes he would tilt the camera to the desired angle on some pennies and take a long exposure. He was also limited to taking either stationary or slow moving trains due to the low shutter speed.

 Volume 2, published in 1989 shows photos taken not of trains but of sites and stations and is a nice additional collection of photos taken on a simple box camera dating from c.1931.

 It was very refreshing to find photo books featuring snapshots taken exclusively on a Brownie box camera. It is inspiring to see the camera used this way to make a project on a theme and has me wondering what I might be able to achieve with my own box cameras. It has been a long time since I've been shooting with mine (largely due to the travel restrictions imposed by lockdown due to the current Covid 19 pandemic), and I could really do with a project to look forward to when we are free to travel again. Next year marks the centenary of the Ensign Cupid, and it might be nice to produce a zine or similar project that showcases what this marvellous and quirky box camera can do.