Among the trove of expired film I was recently gifted were six rolls of 120 Tri-X Professional with an ISO of 320.  I decided to shoot the first roll with a use-by date of 08/1992 in my Welta Perle folder.  I made a few shots in my neighborhood and then spent a morning walking around the UNM campus.

I gave the film an extra stop of exposure to compensate for age and then processed it in L110-b for six minutes at 20C.  The negative density was a little thin, but there were no obvious age-related artifacts in the images.  I'll try an additional stop of exposure in the next roll, and maybe add another minute in the developer as well.

UNM Alumni Memorial Chapel - Architect: John Gaw Meem

The Welta Perle is the oldest of my 6x4.5 folders, but also the best preserved, it looks like it was hardly used since it was produced in 1935.  The f3.5/75mm lens is a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar which is uncoated, but still a sharp performer as long as it is not brought too close to the sun.  The rugged old Compur shutter seems accurate throughout its range.

Perfect weather for the annual car show at the Albuquerque Museum; lots of sun, but not too hot.  The sun, of course, does pose some difficulty for photography as the reflections of the sun on the acres of chrome are just about impossible to avoid.  I could actually deal with that with the use of a polarizing filter on an slr, but I always end up choosing to use my older rangefinder and scale-focus cameras for which a polarizer is not very practical.  On this occasion I shot Tri-X in the Benzin Primar plate camera and Fomapan 200 in the Leica.  Here are some from the Bentzin Primar, which always amazes me.






It is not hard to imagine why the plate cameras became so popular for a time in the 1930s.  The 6x9 or 9x12 format behind a 4-element Tessar produces images of extraordinary resolution, and the camera folds flat enough to slip comfortably into a coat pocket.  The Rada rollfilm adapter I use adds a considerable amount of bulk to the outfit, but it is quite a bit more convenient in use than a stack of individual film holders.

I thought it would be interesting to spend some time with my Contessa 35 after putting a few rolls of film through my Kodak Signet 35.  The two mid-'50s cameras came from very different design traditions and were aimed at different segments of the consumer photography market.  However, there were also many similarities in the construction and capabilities of the two cameras.  Both were fixed-lens rangefinders of nearly equal size.  Both had four-element coated lenses and shutters requiring manual cocking, and both had knob film advances linked to double-exposure prevention.  The Signet 35 was considerably lighter in weight thanks to the cast aluminum body.  The Contessa 35 was a little more compact as the the shrouded bellows allowed the lens and shutter assembly to be retracted into the camera body.  I think it would be hard to distinguish pictures made by the two cameras with the apertures set at the mid-range and smaller, but the Contessa 35 clearly has a marginal advantage due to an extra stop of lens  and shutter speed.

Corner Color

Alternate Albuquerque

Shooting Pansies in a Barrel

Vacancy

Rustic Comfort

Parade

The Contessa 35 sold for about $140 in 1954, which was the equivalent in today's inflated currency of almost $1,300.  Kodak at that time relied on its Stuttgart subsidiary to provide a competitive offering in the form of the Retina IIIc which also had a built-in light meter and carried a price of about $100.  By 1957 the more modestly furnished Signet 35 was being offered by Peerless for $40.

I decided a good first step in working more with my collection of plate cameras would be to examine each of them thoroughly and make whatever adjustments and repairs were needed to get the best performance from them.

The Bentzin Primar at the Velvet Cafe - (picture from the Olympus mju on Fuji 200 film)

I found a few overlooked pinholes in all five cameras.  To my surprise, when I fully extended the bellows of my Benzin Primar I found a torn front corner causing a hole that I could poke a finger into.  I removed the lens and shutter assembly to free up the front end of the bellows, and a little super glue closed up the hole nicely.  I loaded a roll of Tri-X in the camera and took  it out for a test drive.

On a bright Spring morning Aspen shadows dance at my window.

Back to the Plaza Vieja for the little Friday car show.

jimmy

BelAir (Tessar lens - f11 at 1/250)

100% enlargement at 1200dpi

I've gotten good results in the past with the combination of  Tri-X film and Rodinal developer, but I was not real pleased with it on this occasion.  I'm willing to chalk this up to operator confusion, but I still have a complaint against Kodak.  The frame counting numerals have been made so dim on the paper backing that it is just about impossible to see them through the ruby window of a folding camera.  That would not be a problem with a camera like the YashiaMat which has auto-frame-spacing, but I'm going to need to find some other option for any of my folders.


This is my essential tool set for getting my folding cameras up to speed.  Tiny pinholes in the bellows can be very difficult to track down.  I have tried several lighting methods in this quest, but the best so far has been a very small flashlight with exposed LED bulbs.  The little "BE VISIBLE" bike light lets me press the bulbs right into the bellows creases.  Once found, the pinholes are painted over with Tulip ebony fabric paint.  The fabric paint stays a little tacky even after drying, so it is best applied judiciously.  I have tried other products, but the Tulip paint stores better than anything else, and I've had this bottle for years.  The needle nose pliers with the tips filed down are especially useful for loosening the retaining ring that couples the bellow to the shutter and lens assembly while the bellows is partially extended. If the job is attempted with the bellows fully collapsed there is a danger of damaging the fabric with the rotating tool.

nice doggie

I bought several rolls of tri-x recently from B&H; the first was shot in my Contaflex, and this second one went into my Contessa 35.  I like the tonal character of the film and it always seems an appropriate choice when shooting any of the old film cameras.

The f2.8, 45mm Tessar lens in the Contessa is the same as that in both the Contaflex and the Ikonta 35.  All are coated and  front-focusing, with four elements in three groups.  In the Contessa the high resolution Tessar is complimented by the unique rangefinder design which incorporates wedge prisms to create a double image.  Mine remains quite bright, contrasty and well adjusted sixty years after the camera was made.

The wedge prism rangefinder appeared on Zeiss Ikon cameras in the mid-1930s.  In other respects, the overall design of the Contessa and the Ikonta 35 represented a significant break with earlier design traditions.  For instance, while my Contaflex has a very worn leather covering with significant Zeiss bumps on the back, the Contessa and Ikonta 35 are both virtually faultless and have no Zeiss bumps at all.  I haven't looked under the covers of those two cameras, but my guess is that the designer, Hubert Nerwin, dispensed with the brass rivets which corroded and caused the appearance of the Zeiss bumps in so many of the older cameras.

This first model of the Contaflex was introduced in 1953.

Zeiss adapted exisiting post-war design ideas as well as earlier ones to produce this uniquely compact 35mm single lens reflex camera. The fixed lens on mine is an f2.8, 45mm coated Tessar. Since the slr mirror is not instant-returning, the film advance knob must be wound to cock the between-the-lens leaf shutter and bring the mirror down into viewing position. Having the view black out after pressing the shutter release takes a little getting used to for photographers accustomed to more modern cameras. Balancing out that slight inconvenience is the fact that this is still about the only full-frame 35mm slr that can easily be slipped into a jacket pocket. The camera is really only marginally larger than the tiny Ikonta 35, and according to Mike Elek, the lens design of the Tessar is identical in the two. Over-all, materials and construction are top drawer, and the camera is a pleasure to hold and operate.

My camera, purchased for not very much on ebay, came with the impressive Teleskop 1.7x accessory lens, which yields a focal length of about 75mm, a nice portrait length. I was looking forward to using the telephoto accessory, but could not at first see how that was going to be possible as it clearly does not screw into the front of the fixed lens Tessar. A little research revealed that I was lacking the necessary mounting bracket. I wrote to the seller, he rummaged around in his tool box, turned up the bracket, and sent it to me at no additional charge - a stand-up guy. To mount the accessory telephoto, you first install the slip-on bracket, and then screw in the Teleskop. The fixed Tessar needs to be set at the infinity mark to enable proper focusing with the telephoto. The bracket is also used to mount a stereo photo accessory.

As luck would have it, I already had several filter adapters and a lens shade which I could use with the camera. All of these are Series V, 28.5mm push-on models. The set of four accessory close-up lenses was purchased separately for about twelve dollars. I like the push-on type lenses for close work as they require no exposure compensation as do extention tubes on other slr cameras.
    The plastic-cased close-up set is a good example of Zeiss design thoroughness. The back of the case features a pretty depth-of-field calculator. Inside the case, each lens is securely held in place by raised tabs so as to minimize fumbling in the field. If you closely examine the mounting tabs on the accessory lenses, you see that there are three pairs on each lens, with one half of each pair bent slightly inward to grasp the tabs in the case, and the other of the pair is adjusted slightly outward to provide a secure fit against the inner surface of the lens focus ring.

The camera shown here is my second Contaflex; the first was a non-working one received as a gift. I managed to get that original one working well enough to put a couple rolls of film through it and to develop some respect for the quality performance that the camera was capable of delivering. In that same process, I also learned some important lessons about acquiring and owning a Contaflex all these many years after it was produced by Zeiss.
    The most important of these lessons, perhaps, was that claims about the working condition of an old Contaflex are meaningless unless they are accompained by a recently taken roll of film showing proper exposure. Old Contaflexes often sound like they are working perfectly, but the chances are slim that the complex train of events leading to an exposure in a Contaflex is going to happen in just the right way to put an image properly on film.

The biggest and most common problem with the Contaflex is a slow aperture stop-down mechanism. One also sees mirrors that don't don't quite close quickly enough, sticky shutters, and dirty internal lens surfaces. Since I like the camera so much, I sent it off to have the slightly sticky aperture repaired along with a few other minor things. It worked ok for a while after that, but the aperture started acting up again. I finally summoned the courage to tackle the problem myself. I separated the shutter and lens from the body and found that the aperture blades and actuating mechanism were dirty. Near the extremes of open and closed, the blades moved very stiffly. I cleaned everything with lighter fluid and Radio Shack electronic cleaner, and then dried thoroughly before reassembly. The task was made immensely easier by access to a discussion of the problem and how to fix it at the Classic Cameras Repair Forum, along with some helpful sketches by Rick Oleson.

A few pictures from the Contaflex:









The user manual for the Contaflex is at the Butkus site.

The narrow road originally was built for a railroad to haul logs down to the the big mill that was located near where we live.  The Gilman tunnels had to be cut to allow passage through the narrowest part of the canyon.


The fast-flowing stream joins the Jemez River about ten miles south of Jemez Springs.


About a hundred yards north of the tunnel we found this rock climber testing her skills on the sheer face of the canyon.


There were some pitons and carabiners in place on the wall.  She looped her rope through them as she ascended.  Her partner belayed her from below and was able to stop a fall about half way up.


I was generally pleased with the performance of the Contessa 35 with its Tessar lens.  The rangefinder is very accurate, but the tinted finder is a little dim in low light.


When I got home I took the top off the camera and cleaned the optics.  That didn't improve the brightness much, but opening up the camera did give me the chance to appreciate the extraordinary quality of the workmanship that Zeiss put into this compact 35.  By following Mike Elek's fine instructions I was also able to get the lightmeter working.

I recently acquired another Kodak Duo Six-20 Series II.  This one has the older Compur shutter with a 1/300 top speed coupled to a Carl Zeiss Jena f3.5 Tessar lens.


The camera arrived in good cosmetic and functional condition and required only a superficial cleaning to ready it for a test run.  I re-rolled some Tmax 400 onto a 620 spool, loaded the camera and strolled over to the Santa Fe 2926 locomotive restoration project that is not far from where we live.




 Both kids were totally into the locomotive's extensive lore and were able to talk easily and at great length about the history and operation of 2926.  It was great to see such a couple bright kids so passionately involved in a worthwhile project.