I am wanting to do some portraits with my plate cameras.  It seemed only fair and prudent to first subject myself to the process.

I picked a corner with reasonably good light and propped a box up where I thought my head would appear.  I focused on a barcode on the front of the box and then substituted my nose for the barcode.  I made the shot using my longest cable release with the camera set to 1/2 second and f/22.

Shooting closeups with the Kodak Recomar 18 or any of the plate cameras is not for the impatient or the faint of heart.  With the dark slide in place, the roll film holder is replaced with the ground glass back for focusing.  The lens is opened wide for visibility and the shutter is actuated on the T setting to hold it open.  With the focus established, the shutter is closed and then set to the speed indicated by the meter, with a sufficiently small aperture to ensure adequate depth of focus.  Finally, the ground glass back is removed and replaced with the film back, hopefully without disturbing the positioning of the camera on the tripod.  The dark slide is pulled up and the exposure is made.

I took my Kodak Recomar 18 plate camera on a walk north of Jemez Springs where the Jemez River and its East Fork come together near Battleship Rock.

The Nagel-built Recomar is a little bulkier than the Patent Etui or the Bentzin Primar, but it is solidly constructed and it accepts the Rada film back, which is sturdier than the Rollex.  While the accessory film backs make all the plate cameras more practical to shoot, the added bulk interferes with the use of the wire-frame viewfinder by keeping the eye too far behind the rear sighting aperture.  The little swiveling reflex finder is small and subject to confusing reflexions.  The ground glass back can give very precise framing, but is awkward to swap out with the film backs.I like to shoot 400-speed films in my medium format cameras because they give a nice range of tonality and grain is not perceptible in moderate enlargements from the big negatives.  My past favorites were Fuji Acros and Kodak TMAX, but I'm not willing to pay the current asking prices for those brands.  In fact, the only 120 roll film which meets my cheapskate standard is Fomapan at about five bucks a roll.  For the Jemez outing I loaded a roll of  Foma 400 which I shot at 200 ISO for processing in PMK Pyro.  I haven't been too impressed with the performance of Fomapan in the past, but I thought the results on this occasion were acceptable and worthy of further experimentation.

I decided I needed to get back to shooting my plate cameras.  I got out my Kodak Recomar 18 and patched a pinhole I had overlooked.  Then, I got up early and headed out to the riverside bosque with some HP5 in the camera.  I thought I was well prepared for the low 30s temperature with a vest and winter jacket, but I didn't think about gloves.  By the time I had hiked to a place where I wanted to make some pictures my hands were so stiff from the cold that I couldn't wind the film or set the shutter.  I stuffed my hands in my pockets to restore some manual function and managed to adjust the camera, but the light was so dim under the trees that I had to set the aperture nearly wide open.



I headed home to thaw out, and then took a walk around Old Town when the temperature had gotten up into the comfortable 50s.  The Rada roll film back for the Recomar gets in the way of using the flip up wire-frame view finder on the camera, so I am experimenting with a little open frame viewfinder which I salvaged from an old folder and taped to the top of the Rada.  I got better results from the afternoon outing, but still am clearly in need of some more practice with the plate cameras.

exhibit graphic

The Kodak Recomar 18 is a 2¼ x 3¼ compact folding plate camera. Two models of this type were produced in Kodak's Stuttgart plant in the 1930's, the other being the larger Recomar 33 which yielded 9x12 cm negatives. The Recomars were designed to be used with plates or sheet film, either in individual film holders or in film packs. Roll film backs were also available which allowed the use of 120-format film.

All the major camera manufacturers produced compact plate cameras at around the same time; Kodak's offerings, originally a Nagel design, were very competitive in regard to materials and craftsmanship. The Recomar 18 was equipped with a Kodak Anastigmat f-4.5/105mm lens and a Compur shutter with speeds from 1 to 1/250 secs., plus T and B settings. There was no front or back tilt capability, but the lens board could be shifted laterally and vertically. Three different view systems were available to the user: a ground glass back, a wire-frame viewfinder with a pop-up eye piece, and a swiveling reflex finder to which was attached a bubble level. The extended bellows could be racked out to produce a subject to image ratio of nearly 1:1.

My camera came to me clean and fully operational, but it lacked the reflex viewfinder. I found a junker with a good finder for a few dollars, so now have everything as originally configured except a working bubble level. I also have a Rada roll film adapter, and have only used that to make pictures with the camera. The adapter makes the camera about as convenient to shoot as any of the folding cameras of the same era if used with the reflex viewfinder. However, with the Rada adapter in place, the additional bulk interferes with proper aiming of the camera through the wire-frame viewfinder in the landscape position. I really got the camera with the intent of using it for close-up work using the ground glass back, so the limitation on the use of the wire-frame finder has not been a hindrance to me.

I've only put a few rolls of film through the Recomar since acquiring it a couple years ago. The results I've gotten from the camera so far have been inconsistent. Thinking that something might need adjusting, I devoted some time recently to make sure that the ground glass back and the roll film adapter were properly positioned at the film plane. I also verified that the infinity setting was correct with the use of a film plane target and an slr. I bought a new piece of ground glass and installed it in the film pack holder, but the brightness is not noticibly better, and the Zeiss ground glass back with the little fold-open hood is more convenient. In low light, or when dealing with strong reflections on the ground glass, I drape a large black cloth over me and the camera.

The Rada film back allows the use of 120 roll film.

My conclusion at this point is that my dissatisfaction with the photos I've gotten from the Recomar has more to do with a lack of operator skills than with camera qualities. Except for tilts, the Recomar is a view camera and it demands a somewhat higher level concentration and attention to detail than I am accustomed to. Since I tend to use the camera mostly for close-up and macro work, that adds an additional level of complexity which also calls for greater self-discipline. I could spend some money and get a more modern medium-format camera, or I could use fine-grain film in one of my Pentax to do close-up photography, but I'm intrigued by the challenge of making pictures with this elegant little view camera that is really not significantly bigger when folded up than my Leica copy FED-1g.

Pentax K1000

Pentax Spotmatic

Kodak Recomar 18

I photographed this fine little sculpture-fountain at the Botanic Garden yesterday. It is a subject I have photographed on other occasions with at least three other cameras.


Argoflex Forty

The boy with a swan became a popular subject for artists midway through the 19th Century. There are sculptures and fountains with this theme in many cities around the world.


Kodak Recomar 18

The inspiration for all the works of art on this theme was most certainly a depiction of a boy with a goose by the Greek sculptor, Boethus, dating from about 160BC.


Olympus 35RC

The fountain in Albuquerque's Botanic Garden appears to be a bronze casting, possibly from the early Twentieth Century.


Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim

swan rider



I've put another roll of film through my Kodak Recomar 18 and posted the images on my web site.

At the Botanic Garden





I went to the Albuquerque Botanic Garden today with my Kodak Recomar 18. It is a compact folding plate camera with an extended bellows. The Recomar was built to use sheet film, plates or film packs. I have some sheet film holders I've never used for it, but I also have a Rada rollfilm adapter which lets me use 120 roll film. I normally make 6x9 cm negatives, but it is also possible to use masks in the Rada to get either 6x6 or 6x4.5 images.

The Recomar never quite performs the way I expect, but it is an interesting camera to shoot. I'm going to try sorting out some of my issues with the camera, and maybe I'll write an article about it for my vintage camera site.