Isti's Blog » Photography

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.

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.

Caffenol

Isti — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 06:59:07 +0000

I finished my first film with my Casio RF-2. As I planned earlier I developed the film with Caffenol-C-M. I took the recipe form here. I live in Finland so I used what I can buy here. The coffee is Euro shopper instant coffee. The vitamin C powder is from the local pharmacy. They sell 20g bags. And the soda is Kidesooda. Kidesooda is a decahydrate so I had to multiple the amount of the original recipe by 2.7 as described here. So my version of the recipe is:

1. 1 litre water (20C)
2. 146g washing-soda (Kidesooda)
3. 16g vitamin-C powder
4. 40g coffee (Euro shopper)

I had a Kodak T-Max 100 B&W negative film. The development was exactly the same as described at the site where I got the recipe. I used a Paterson supersystem 4 tank. I monitored the temperature of the mixture while I was mixing the ingredients. The interesting thing was while I was adding the soda the water cooled down by 4 C. It was just the opposite what was described by the original method. So I warmed up the mixture while I was measuring the temperature. I submerged the mixture tank into warm water in my sink.

I developed for 15 minutes at 20C. Agitating for the first 30 seconds, then agitating 3 times at every minute. If you do not know what is agitating, look for some videos for B&W film development at YouTube.

After the development I just washed the film 6 times. I filled up the tank with tap water, then agitating 10 times and poured out the water. I repeated this 6 times.

After washing I added the fixer. I used Tetenal Vario Fix. I used 100g powder for 1L 20C water. I was fixing for 8 minutes. Agitating at the first 30 seconds then 3 times at every minute. Just like the way I did the development.

After fixing I did two washing cycles (agitating 10 times). Then I did a third one where I added 1 drop of dish washing liquid (Fairy).

After the washing I took the film off from the tank and hanged on my drier. I was surprised! There were pictures visible on the film! My very first film development worked very well. I did not scan the film yet since I do not have a film scanner. I will borrow one from my photo club and post some samples. What I can see right now that some of the pictures are over exposed but most of them are looking good. I guess the good ones are where I pushed the film to ISO 200 as suggested at other sites but I have to verify this.