medium format – cjdavies.org

Return to Covent Garden

Back in December 2011 I was in London with a Yashica-Mat 124G that I had just bought on eBay. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Mat was actually broken & of the full 12 shots I took on that first roll only half actually came out. As far as I can tell, the rest were actually shot onto the backing paper. That roll was also the first time I ever developed a film myself, so looking back at it I was incredibly lucky to get such a nice photo of the Christmas decorations at Covent Garden, which looked even better when I rescanned it when I got my Epson V600.

I told myself that if Covent Garden had the same decorations up again, I would go down better prepared with a tripod & camera I knew worked properly. Well Christmas 2014 came around & the same decorations went up, so I hopped on the train with my RB67 Pro SD, a 5-pack of Tri-X & a nice Manfrotto tripod borrowed from work. Well, not so much hopped, as it was rather a heavy setup!

Of course ‘the best laid plans’ etc. & the shoot didn’t go quite as perfectly as I had hoped. It was quite late on a Sunday night by the time I made it out & got set up, so there were far fewer people than I had expected & the same bustling Christmassy atmosphere wasn’t really there. But conversely, because there were fewer people & the parasols were down, you could actually see from the vantage point all the way to the back of the building & the pillars across the entry. The flare from the lamps is unfortunate as well, but I’m honestly not sure how I could’ve avoided that – something to learn for the future!

I took a bunch of shots, both from the same off-centre position as 2011 & from the exact centre. None of the shots jumped out like that original 2011 shot, but there were a couple that I was relatively pleased with (click for bigger).

Available light portraits w/ RB67

Despite knowing next-to-nothing about portraiture, my girlfriend wanted me to shoot some of her & I wasn’t about to turn down the offer. Very pleased with how they came out & the crazy skin detail the huge 6x7cm negs captured (click for full size & view 1:1)!

Random Snapsh!ts

I think when I first got the Biogon I decided to take photos of foliage simply to see whether the lens was as sharp as people raved. Of course when scanned on a flatbed it’s not like I can really judge…

Playing with some programmable logic teaching aid thing.

Then to the pub again.

And more flash in the pub, but which somehow ended up on this roll instead of with the others.

And two more shots that came out of the Yashica Mat at some point during its broken-ness.

Yashica Mat 124 G test roll (own development!)

I got a bit obsessed with the gorgeous big viewfinders of TLRs so I grabbed myself a Yashica Mat 124 G on eBay from a guy in Nepal (couldn’t quite afford a Rolleiflex…).

I shot a test roll in London back in December, hence the Christmas theme, but only just got round to developing it myself in the darkroom at the Students’ Union. It was my first time developing medium format but it went surprisingly well until I dropped the negatives onto the dirty floor whilst hanging them up to dry…

This is definitely my favorite of the bunch, taken at Covent Garden, 1 second exposure with the camera rested on the handrail.

Not sure if I like this composition as much.

I found the waist-level viewfinder to be much more stable than an eye-level viewfinder on an SLR though, so I managed this shot of the London Eye after dusk without camera shake ruining it – must’ve been 1/8th or slower.

The carousel proved more tricky though – it was too dark for a short enough exposure to freeze the movement, but I couldn’t hand hold a long enough exposure to blur it sufficiently.

These were developed in Ilfotec HC diluted 1+31, using vinegar for stop because the darkroom were out of proper stop chemical, 4 inversions per minute. I scanned them on a Canon CanoScan 9000F which my advisor has in his office & doesn’t mind me borrowing – much better results than my last solution!

I suspect the large amount of dust is largely due to me dropping them on the floor… will have to be more careful next time!

Agfa Isolette V Test Roll

I’d wanted to try shooting medium format film for a while, but was put off by the price of buying into even a relatively cheap medium format system such as the Zenza Bronica ETR. But then I discovered that old medium format folding cameras & even some twin lens reflex (TLR) cameras go very cheaply on auction sites.

So for the grand sum of £20 I bought myself a late 1940’s Agfa Isolette V folding camera, which is completely different to any other camera I own as not only is it medium format, but it’s also a folding design with bellows spacing the lens & shutter assembly from the film plane.

As when buying any ‘vintage’ camera there are certain things to look out for, such as whether the light seals have degraded & disintegrated allowing light to leak onto the film. But with old folding cameras the bellows are the most likely source of problems. Because they stretch & compress every time the camera is opened & closed it isn’t surprising that 60 years on they might not be light proof anymore as cracks & holes appear. A good way to check is to unfold the bellows, open the back of the camera & in a dark room shine a powerful torch into the bellows from the back of the camera. Sure enough when I did this in my bathroom I found that most of the corners of the bellows on my Isolette had pinholes that would let light in & ruin the film.

Instead of building an entire new bellows from scratch, or buying a replacement, I decided to try just patching up the holes. According to several photography forums there is a certain brand of nail polish in America that achieves this very well, but I couldn’t find it for sale in the UK (& felt a mite silly asking about it in Boots). Instead I used a product called Plasti Dip, which is almost like paint but dries to form a flexible rubbery coat. So after 2 coats I re-did the bathroom check & all of the holes seemed to be gone! I don’t know how long the fix will last, but I have an entire tin of Plasti Dip so I can redo it many times…

The good news is that it seems to have worked, as the results back from the lab don’t seem to have any light leaks on them. The bad news is that my scanner doesn’t do medium format, so to digitize these I resorted to a somewhat low-tech approach – using my DSLR to photograph the negatives held in front of a white computer monitor using the cardboard envelope that they were posted in. Hardly an ideal solution, but an adequate stop-gap until I invest in a better scanner! (Sorry for the cellphone photo, but obviously I couldn’t use my DSLR.)

The Isolette V is a viewfinder camera, so there’s no focus assist whatsoever & you have to guess the distance to your subject & ‘zone focus’ by thinking about the depth of field at the selected aperture.

The viewfinder isn’t particularly great either so framing shots was a bit hit & miss. Of course there’s no light meter, so it was Sunny 16 all the way.

I know I shouldn’t be shooting an uncoated (or at least only primitively coated) lens into the sun, but it only seems to glare slightly.

Same bridge as in my recent Canonet post, though I think I should’ve rotated this one slightly more counterclockwise.

Same house as in the Canonet post as well. Quite different trying to frame it for a square mask.

Obviously the cardboard negative holder isn’t ideal & because they weren’t necessarily straight-on to the camera they’re skewed so impossible to crop properly. So I choose to crop loosely & leave the borders of the film in – all the cool lomography kids are doing that anyway.