Vintage Photography

You may have seen one of these in an antique shop...

It's a Kodak Autographic Brownie camera, dating from around 1924.  This was a very good model for its day, having two shutter speeds plus a bulb and timed setting, plus an aperture that was variable down to f64 and it even had an early form of data back - you could write on the negative using a stylus and its special pressure sensitive film would transfer the text to the printed image.  The negative is 56x84mm compared with 24x36 for 35mm film.  That's also bigger than IMAX at 70x48.5mm This gives you a very high quality, negative where the grain is hardly noticeable, even in the largest of enlargements.  This particular example was given to me by my uncle many years ago.  He rescued it before it was thrown out.

You can still get film for these cameras, but in this digital age, buying a roll of film that will only give you 8 exposures may seem like a waste of time, money and effort.  But nowadays, people are coming back to film photography for a variety of reasons.  It's an art form that has a completely different feel to digital photography.  Black and White photos seem to have deeper blacks, and smoother tones than images that have been shot digitally, converted to monochrome and printed on a colour printer.

I studied monochrome photography at college, and while I was never a great photographer, I really enjoyed the process of creating an image out of light and chemistry.   It was a conversation with Carolyn Lefley,  an artist that has been in residence in a nearby heritage centre that got me thinking about getting back into film photography.  Amongst other things, she had been working with a special type of photographic emulsion that can be painted on to objects and the results look amazing.  I've not got the space to get back into doing the full wet process, but I thought about putting a couple of rolls of film through my oldest camera to see what would happen.

The thing about film photography is that it stops you rushing.  There is a tendency with digital photography to charge ahead, check the preview image on the camera and if it's not OK, just snap another one.  Using a camera that has a fixed film speed (Ilford FP4 shot at 64 ISO and HP5 at 200 ISO), a choice of two shutter speeds (1/25 and 1/50 plus B and T) and a viewfinder that only gives a suggestion of what the image will look like makes you really think about composing your subject.  A tripod is also a necessity.  And as for onboard light metering, forget it.  You need a hand held meter and also a willing assistant to lug all your kit around.

The film was processed in a lab in Edinburgh then scanned.  Prints were also made, although these were printed on a colour mini-lab, and this does not give the same rich blacks that you get from a genuine monochrome print.

I have a bulk roll of 35mm monochrome film sitting.  I think it's time I got the old cameras back into use once more, and this time I'll do the processing myself.  And I feel like rescuing some more vintage cameras and bringing them back into use.  I really fancy a Mamiya C330.  Please join my campaign to save the silver halide.

The images are below.  Unfortunately the light seals or the bellows seem to be leaking light, and the lens itself seems to be squint, giving a tilt/shift effect. Of all the images, the first three seem to have fared the best, as the light was failing towards the end of the day.  Still, it's not too bad for a 90 year old camera that was destined for the bin.

We'll let the digital Nikon have the last word...