My new friend

Pretty new strap, loaded with Ilford FP4+ and we’re good to go.

Au Jardin

Ensign Ful-Vue Super on Ilford FP4+ 120 filed to fit 620 camera and home processed.

The focus is SO hit and miss with this little camera, but I guess that fits with the timeless quality… 🙂

Sam Zair’s Cafe

Ensign Ful-Vue on home-processed Ilford FP4+ 120, filed down to 620.

Brunch

Ensign Ful-Vue Super

This is the little beauty:

Taken with a Canon 5D. And this is its gorgeous little waistlevel finder:

As you can see, with the sieve-like memory I possess, the only way to remember a) that it is loaded and b) what with, is to stick the end of the box on the back of the body. So, today I shot the last frame of the 12 on a roll of Ilford FP4+ That, in itself, is not thoroughly straightforward since this little camera takes 620 film, which is now pretty much extinct (please, please correct me if I’m wrong!), so it is loaded with 120 film. The plastic spool is trimmed back right up to the beginning of the backing paper roll and then the top and bottom are sanded down to within an inch of their lives. And only then will it fit. Just. Added to which this particular model had difficulties getting past the 10th frame on the two occasions I used it last – years ago – but a small metal washer kindly donated by ‘Imself fixed that problem. I got all the way to the 12th frame.

So tonight, after mixing fresh chemicals and fiddling and fiddling in a dark bag to spool it and get it into the developing tank, with baited breath I developed it.

And look, it worked!

Hung out to dry

And now, the hardest part… I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to scan them and see if they’re any good. *Sigh*

The main issue is usually being a really very poor judge of distance for the rather basic focusing. Keep everything crossed for me! 🙂

(I’m now hatching a plot to stick 35mm film to the backing paper and run a few frames of that through it… *squeee*)

I’ll be your brakes…

Halina A1 TLR on home-processed Ilford FP4+ b/w film.

Teddy and his Daddy (the brakes).

Nostalgia

In the long and pleasurable meander down Memory Lane yesterday, it wasn’t just funnies I found.

I discovered photographs of Norfolk rape fields (Lomo Lubitel II):

Pottergate. the streets of Norwich I once roamed (Lomo Lubitel II):

More pictures of Norwich (Comet Bencini iiS on Rollei 80s 127 film):

Reflections in a shop window

Retro fashion and an alarmingly good supply of vintage cameras

Always an interesting find to be unearthed in here

A rather fabulous Belgian Bistro: the Belgian Monk

I found memories of beautiful walks along Norfolk Broads, and crumbling stone discoveries (Canon AE-1):

The Norfolk Broads

Trouble comes in threes ❤

And I found beautiful memories of family times and much younger children! (Canon AT-1 Fujicolor cross-processed):

Overhead window making for beautiful lighting on a beautiful boy

Another crumbling wall on another long ramble

The days of eye contact – pre autism diagnosis. Same lovely overhead skylight.

Another skylit portrait

Canon AT-1 bokeh 🙂

Once a dreamer, always….?

A loopy dog, posing beautifully

“fishing”

But enough looking back!

Time to create new memories, in a new place, with the same beautiful old cameras.

And maybe one or two ‘new’ ones, too 🙂

When cameras go right and photographers go wrong

I got chatting to a lovely lady (who you can find over here) on Twitter today, and our conversation took me tripping down Memory Lane, to the time when I was predominantly analogue and to all the experiments with a million and one different old film cameras (more about which you can find over here – a blog set up by me and my husband to chart those very same trials, errors, dramas and successes).

And some of the photographs I found tickled me muchly. You know they talk about the cutting room floor, in film-making? Well these are (some of!) the pictures that never get shown off. I hope they amuse you almost as much as they did me.

Is the shutter working?

This was the inadvertent selfie discovered when I processed a roll from my Halina Paulette which, it turned out, also had a rather shocking light-leak. It has to be kept in its case at all times…

127 to 35mm conversion.
Note to self: the frame is smaller. MIND THE HEADS!

This was taken on a Comet Bencini iiS, on Fujicolor film, cross-processed at home. Neither love nor money will buy you 127 film just now but you can, with a little fiddling, load it with 35mm. It’s just that that makes the frames smaller. So… you know… don’t lose your head 😉

My two faces

Here I am on the beach at Blackhall Rocks. This was taken my my Beloved: “Oh hell! Did I take the shot? Erm… I don’t think I did.” He did. So here you see me, one exposure smiling nicely for the camera, the other telling one of my darlings to stop climbing too high while his little brother is following. *snort*! This was taken on the Halina A1 TLR

Is the shutter working? #2

Taken with the Ensign Ful-Vue (not to be confused with the Ensign Ful-Vue Super, which I love). Let’s pretend I wanted an arty shot of that fabulously blustery sky, shall we? But I think the line of the roof (is it?) at the bottom of the shot rather gives the lie to that assumption…

The last-minute protest

All happy and full of beaming smiles, you twiddle yer knobs, adjust yer settings… and the bottom falls out of his world, not to mention the focus. *sigh*… Canon AE-1, cross-processed Fujicolor

The Moon. It was never going to work.

I mean, what was I thinking?! Over-enthusiasm, I guess. Live and learn. Lomo Lubitel II – one of my all-time favourite cameras.

There are so many more, but they’re sitting on a hard-drive in a broken laptop, so it’ll be a while before they’re recovered. One day, though, bloopers #2 🙂

 

Old Friends

I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine – the Ensign Ful-Vue Super.

Ensign Ful-Vue Super

It is the most adorable little TLR, manufactured between 1954 and 1959. You can’t tell scale from the photograph, but it fits in the palm of my hand, and that flippy bit on the top? It folds down so the whole thing is a cute little almost-square.

Here’s another perspective, my glasses through the stunning viewfinder:

Ensign Ful-Vue Super

As you can see, I have loaded it with Ilford FP4+ 120 medium format film. This is not a straightforward task, since this little camera takes 620 film, and you can’t get hold of it for love or money these days. Well, you probably could, if you had enough money to throw at it. But the 120 can be adapted, with a little tinkering, some clippers / scissors and some sandpaper. The plastic ends of the spool need to be cut back to the edge of the backing paper, and their tops need to be sanded down until they are thinner than you imagine necessary. Then it fits a treat.

The last time I used this camera was a couple of years ago. I became dispirited because when I got to around frame 10 the winder lost its grip and kept slipping and I could never get a full roll of negatives off it. Until… today, my Beloved gave me a super-thin metal washer from his toolbox and I hope (fingers are so firmly crossed) that this time around, I’ll get them all…

So – it’s loaded up and ready to go. As soon as the weather improves, I’m off out to give it another spin. In the meantime, here are a few of the shots I got last time around:

My favourite Norfolk stomp.

Bertie against the chimney, sitting on the coal-box

Details of a Norwich Church

Teddy in Cuba Viva

 

Humph in the window of our old home

I’m happy to have rediscovered my mojo 🙂

Forgotten Time

This is rather a sad picture.

I mean, it’s rather a wonderful picture, taken with a very old Lomo Lubitel II on Ilford XP2 Super and home – developed in our kitchen. But it’s a good year and a half since it was shot, and the film sat, forgotten, in a cupboard. This is one of only two shots left on the roll that are remotely discernible.

This is Bert. You have to count to three, but take the picture on two, or else he pulls a daft face. He’s almost there on this one 🙂

And the splendid pile in the background is Dunstanburgh Castle in Northumberland. An amazing place, right on the sea.

Develop film straight away! Lesson learned…

Dunstanburgh Castle