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
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.
Posted in Photography.
– January 9, 2011
Agfa Clack Pinhole Mod
I made the modification that I planned to the Agfa Clack I received. I changed it to a pinhole camera. Here is how I did it:
Step 1. Remove the lens cover.
There is a tiny screw at the bottom of the lens. That holds the metal ring around the lens cover. I removed that and the ring. Then the cover can be screwed off.
Step 2. Remove lens.
Remove two screws. One is above the lens the other one is on the right. Then the lens can be lifted off.
Step 3. Remove shutter.
Remove the screw on the bottom of the shutter. Then lift it a bit up with a screwdriver. There are two wires holding it back. Cut them. Then the shutter comes off.
This is the shutter from the front:
And from the back:
Step 4. Remove the apertures / filter
The clack has three preset apertures. One with a yellow filter, one with some lens and a simple hole. They would be in the way so the plate with the holes should be removed. I just cut the plate off”
Step 5. Create pinhole.
I used a simple soda can for the material of the pinhole. I cut out an approximately 15 mm wide rectangle. Then I sanded that with 2000 grit sandpaper. I hit a hole on it with a needle. Then sanded again. The thickness of the material is 0.09 mm. Then I painted it with black permanent marker. and sanded a bit to make it matte. I scanned the hole and measured it size in Gimp. I scanned at 2400 DPI so it is easy to calculate the hole size from the pixel count of the diameter.
My hole size is 0.3 mm. The ideal size would be 0.36 for the 75mm focal length. Anyway it is close enough so I give it a try. My aperture size in this setup is f/250.
Here is my scanned pinhole:
Step 6. Glue the pinhole
I used super glue to glue the pinhole to the camera body:
I centered the hole from looking it from the back. From this point I just placed everything back as they were.
Step 7. Assemble the shutter:
Step 8. Assemble cover:
The cover will need some further modifications. The hole on it is too small. I saw on some blog that someone installed a step down ring to the cover and put a yellow filter on it. Now I will look for a filter and get an appropriate step down ring for that.
Posted in Photography, Pinhole.
– January 1, 2011
