Isti's Blog

Welta Junior Samples

Isti — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:30:40 +0000

Today I managed to scan the first negatives I have shot with the Welta Junior. I tried the camera in both 4.6×6 and 6×6 format. In both cases I have used Efke R 50 BW negative film. I developed the film in Caffenol. Result is quite satisfactory, however the pictures are a bit soft. I edited them a lot in Photoshop. This is the best I could get out of them:

I mainly changed the levels, applied unsharp mask and pulled the contrast to the sky.

Since the viewfinder not viewing trough the lens there is a slight problem with the focus, but maybe I can improve that by practice.

Welta Junior

Isti — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:36:06 +0000

I have made some photos about the Welta Junior that I mentioned in my former post. I did not find any marks on it about the year it was made. I guess it was after the second world war around 1947. The camera supports two formats: 6×6 and 4.5×6. The smaller format requires a small metal frame to restrict light from the film. The lens has 75mm focal length. It is a Trioplan lens made by Meyer-Optic. The aperture can be set from f/2.9 to f/22. Focus is marked from 1.6m to infinity. The shutter can be set for 1/25s, 1/50s, 1/100s, B and T where B probably means Bulb. I do not know the meaning of T. I should check this later.

Here are the images:

Success with Efke R 50 120 Film and Caffenol

Isti — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 19:52:24 +0000

As I wrote earlier I had couple of failed film development with Efke R 50 120 Film and caffenol. For those films I have used my pinhole camera that I made from an Agfa Clack. Now I tried the same film with a Welta Junior camera. This camera was my grandmother’s camera and I just got it from my parents recently. It is a nice little folding camera. It was made around 1947, right after the second world war. It can shoot two formats: 6×6 or 4.5×6. I developed the film with caffenol the same way as I did earlier. It was successful. Basically all the shots are correctly exposed, as far as I can tell that by looking on the negatives.

Old Cameras and Lenses

Isti — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:43:18 +0000

While shooting with the Casio RF-2 film camera I got fond of taking analog pictures. I like the whole process and the retro style images. Most I like the moment when I take the film off from the developing tank. It is just so exciting to check whether there are images or it is yet another failure. I started to ask around my family who has some old analog cameras.

Soon I got a Zenit-E from my father in law. It is an old Russian SLR. Looks cool, not so heavy. It came with a 50mm f/2 prime lens. It has some grease in its viewfinder but otherwise it is in pretty nice condition. I could not wait to try it. Unfortunately I did not have any B&W films, but I got an idea. I had some old disposable cameras. I bought them when I needed some cheap flash for my water drop experiments. I decided to take the film from one of them and reuse it in the Zenit. The only challenge was to take the film back to its cassette. In these disposable cameras the film is pulled off by default and pulled back into the cassette after each exposure when the film is advanced. So it is not necessary to roll it back when all the exposures are taken. It means I had to “exposure” the whole film before I could open the camera to take it off. I used three layers of black tapes to cover the small lens. I shot the whole film without actually exposing it to light. Then I took the film off and put it to the Zenit. I guess I do not have to mention the film was ISO 400 color negative.

I shot the whole film in one afternoon. Then I mixed up some caffenol and developed the film along with a kodak T-Max 100 from the Casio. Bingo! Both films developed well. I have to wait until June to scan them because guess what? I asked my father about his old cameras. Besides he promised to give me his old Praktica MTL-3 with a set of lenses he also promised to give me his film scanner! I visit them in June. Only two weeks left Oh and did I mention that my grandma’ had a Kodak medium format camera? My father already got it from my grandfather. He is 90 years old now and I guess that camera is from the 40′s or even older. That will also be exciting to test.

The Zenit and the Praktica both have M42 lens mounts. So if everything is true, soon I will have a large amount of M42 lenses. I started to play with the thought whether I could use those lenses on my DSLRs. I ordered a cheap adapter ring from eBay. I tried it with my old Canon D60 first. I took the 50mm lens from the Zenit, screwed it to the adapter and mounted it to the camera. I put the camera to manual, set the focus manually, measured the light with stopped down lens and shot. And I got a nice ERROR 01 message from the camera. After googling a bit I found this means communication error between the camera end lens. Of course, but it is not an error I thought. It is just a feature of the adapter ring. Someone mentioned in a forum he solved a similar problem on a Canon DSLR by insulating the adapter ring from the connectors. While I was sure the ring does not touch the connectors in the camera I gave it a try. I applied some tape to the ring, but it did not help. I was a bit disappointed. Then I googled more and did not find a solution but nobody complained about camera damage. My D60 did not damage either so I tried the adapter with my Canon 50D. And it works! I did everything on the same way and my newer camera just works. It puzzles me a bit, so I keep on looking for the solution with the D60.

And finally, I would like to say thanks to Vojtech who read my post where I was wondering what lens mount my Casio RF-2 has. He kindly informed me that looks like a Pentax K mount.

3rd roll without success

Isti — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:21:53 +0000

I have developed the third roll I have shot with my Agfa Clack pinhole camera. I have used the same Efke R50 film and the same Caffenol development method as for the first two rolls. From the 8 shots 6 is underexposed and the last 2 is overexposed. What puzzles me is the last overexposed shot was significantly shorter than some of the underexposed ones. So I have no clue what is wrong.

I stop shooting with this camera now and I will take another roll film camera later and try again.

A bit better result with Efke R50

Isti — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 08:21:14 +0000

I shot my second roll Efke R50 film with my Agfa Clack pinhole camera. Since the first film seemed to be underexposed I increased the exposure times quite a bit. In the former session the longest exposure was 25 minutes. So I had to take much more than that this time. In this session longest exposure was 2 hours. I developed the film the same way as before (Caffenol C-M). Most of the pictures were still underexposed but I had two shots where I clearly have some marks. The first one was about 90 minutes and the second was 120 minutes exposure. On the frame with 120 minutes exposure I clearly can distinguish the whole area on the film that the picture occupies. It is still quite underexposed, but could be scanned. It seems this is the way to go. I will increase the exposure times for my third roll. I will go for 4 hours and above.

First Film with Agfa Clack

Isti — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:52:18 +0000

I shot the first film with my Agfa Clack pinhole. It went completely wrong. I shot on an Efke R50 120 film and developed with caffenol. All of the 8 exposures seems to be underexposed. The negative film has hardly any black marks on it. I had all the shots inside with artificial light. Exposure times varied between 4 minutes and 25 minutes. So it is hard to believe they were all underexposed. The other reason might be that caffenol does not work with this film. I have to check this.

Casio RF-2 And Caffenol

Isti — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:52:29 +0000

I borrowed the film scanner from our photo club and scanned my first roll I shot with my Casio RF-2. As I wrote earlier I developed the film in Caffenol. I’m very satisfied with the results. I have found that the Kodak T-Max 100 film can be pushed to ISO 200 without problem. Both ISO 100 and and ISO 200 images were good. I mainly shot in low light conditions. I did not use flash. Here are some samples:

Cover Modified

Isti — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:15:50 +0000

I did the cover modification to the Agfa Clack as I planned in the former post. I made the test rectangle. I found that I should cut about an 8mm wider hole. The outermost part of the lens cover is just a bit bigger than that so I decided to cut that off. When I removed the cover I found it was made of three parts: The chrome ring, the metal ring that has the Clack label and the plastic base. I removed the chrome part, then the metal ring with the label fell off. I cut the plastic base so that the hole is just a little bit narrower than the metal ring with the label. I tried the plastic part on the camera and tested with the triangle. It fits nicely, the hole is more than enough. I super glued the metal ring with the label to the plastic base and assembled the cover to the camera. Here is the final result:

Cover Mod

Now the camera is ready for testing.

Agfa Clack Lens Cover

Isti — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:19:27 +0000

I was thinking to mod the lens cover of my Agfa Clack. Which is not a cover but rather a hole with some filter thread. Actually right now I do not have any filters that I could use for this project, so I decided I will just make the hole big enough in order to avoid vignetting. But how big hole I should cut? I started thinking. The hole distance from the film is 75mm. The with of the picture is 90mm. The height is 60mm. So the diagonal is about 108.1mm. This is the longest distance I should cover and this will set the biggest angle. Even better I can cut out a cardboard triangle where the base is 110mm (just to stay on the safe side) and the height is 75mm. This triangle should fit into the hole while the tip reaches the pinhole.