I recently located the proper sized film that it takes and have shot several test rolls. This little darling takes 127 film. The only company manufacturing it in black-and-white is Fotokemika out of Croatia called Efke. I’ve heard a rumor that a Canadian company is manufacturing it but haven’t come across it. The Efke line is cool because, as stated on the Fotokemika Web site, they “are manufactured using classic emulsions with very high silver content. This results in a large grayscale reproduction. The Efke 25, 50 and 100 films are made using the ADOX formulas that were first introduced back in the late 1940s.” There are several photography companies that carry the line in America but I’ve found that B&H has the best prices and fast shipping service. Below are a few prints from my first roll.

Boardwalk Apartments - street view

Boardwalk Apartments - east side

The Baby Brownie Special is a fixed focal length camera as well as having both the aperture and shutter speed fixed. This makes taking photos a real challenge. The subject has to be at least 5 feet away to be in focus and even then it seems like only the center area of the negative gets close to being sharp. I love this about the camera; using an old camera and old emulsion film produces images that look they were taken in the 1940’s or 50’s.

I am still experimenting with development though. The Efke 127 film is ISO 100, so is not very sensitive to light. Any images taken that are not in full sunlight tend to be underexposed. The processing information I’ve found on the Web has been a bit spars but I have used the suggestions from the Fotokemika Web site with okay results. They suggest using Kodak D-76 to develop, a stop bath with very low pH or just water (I use water), and a fixer with a hardener as the emulsion formula used is quite soft. I have been using the Kodak Rapid Fixer with the included hardener.

The cool thing is I also have found an antique developing tank with an adjustable reel that accepts 135, 127, 120 and 616. This is especially useful as I own a Kodak Brownie Target 616 camera. Fotomkemika makes Efke 616 (70mm) in bulk 100 foot rolls available through Freestyle Photographic Supplies. I adapted the Target 616 to accept 120 but it is a bit smaller and I have never been completely satisfied with how they turn out. But that is another subject I will address in a future post.

As for developing time, I found that 11 minutes at 68° works best with negatives exposed in full sunlight. I agitate 10 seconds out of every 30, which might be just a bit high. With underexposed negatives, I would suggest adding about 10% more time. After 3 rolls, I have finally produced a roll of negatives with very good density. I will post images from that roll as soon as I can get around to printing them.

My first Intermediate Photography class assignment this semester was for night exposures. It was a really easy assignment as our instructor told us exactly what aperture to use (f 4 or 5.6, I used f 5.6) and to take 8 frames of the same image with exposure times of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 seconds. Since we were exposing at night our light meters wouldn’t work so the multiple exposures gave us a very large range of negatives to choose from. This makes all the difference when you go to print a night photograph. It guarantees that at least one negative will be usable and very easy to print from. Of course, at these long exposure times a tripod and cable release was absolutely necessary.

These two photos are from a roll I took at the St. Joseph County Grange Fair in Centreville, Michigan. I took these the same day I took the previous daytime shots but obviously in the evening. The other trick to night photography is to under develop the film. I developed these 25% less than the normal processing time. Combined with the overexposure of the film, this allows for full detail in the shadows while maintaining those wonderful highlights. Nice technique that I look forward to using in the future.

Took these photos of the Harness Races at the St. Joseph County Grange Fair in Centreville, Michigan. Great opportunity to practice my motion photography skills. Not too bad considering I took them without a tri-pod! Also experimented with a yellow and red filter. Prefered how the red filter rendered the sky. Using the filters is a bit tricky as you have to compensate for the change in f-stop. The filters reduce the amount of light entering the camera, the red more so than the yellow.

I got busy this week scanning negatives from winter. This was taken with a very old Kodak Brownie 616. Film is no longer made for this camera so I modified it to use 120. The negatives are a huge 2 x 4 inches! This was taken with Kodak T-Max 100.

There are only two f-stops on the camera (neither labelled so I’m assuming indoor and outdoor) and I have no idea what the exposure time is.  It does have a manual override on the shutter so I can keep it open as long as I want so will be experimenting with some night photography soon.

Taken during the summer of 1990 or 1991; one of my first experiments with B&W 35mm film. Shot with my father’s Pentax 35mm camera that I have since inherited. We spent that summer taking photos all around the area we lived in in southern Michigan and has been a major influence in my life to continue photography as a creative outlet. See my slide show  ‘When We Were Young‘ for more photos from that time.

I just joined this group today so I don’t have any photos to share from this weekend. Instead, I uploaded a photo I took in June. But I start my Intermediate Photography class next week so I should have something new to share every Monday!

Cindy Sherman wrote the summary for the book, to some criticism. I’m not usually a fan of artists discussing there own work. They are too close to the subject, censor their true feelings, and usually lack the vocabulary to properly describe their work in the broader context of the art world. The downside of having an art critic write the summary is they tend to obfuscate the topic with their large vocabulary and knowledge of art and just seem to like to ‘hear themselves talk’. Cindy completely circumvents the need to overcome the difficulty of self analysis by simply explaining her motivation and thought process behind the photos. It is refreshing to hear the artist explain her creative process in her own words; to find that it can be as simple as just taking some photos. Art critics are notorious for over thinking the process. A simple smudge of paint or accidental chemical mix turns into some grandiose intellectual challenge to the entire historical evolution of art. Blah, blah, blah. As the great Freud once admitted, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

The other photographer that is exerting major influence over me right now is Jeff Wall. I missed his retrospective exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, organized by The Museum of Modern art in New York, by a matter of days. I was completely unfamiliar with Wall’s work but happened upon the exhibit book in the book store. It was half off so I picked it up and was instantly intrigued. But what made me purchase the book was not the photographs themselves so much as the technique used to exhibit them. All his photos are color transparencies mounted in light boxes. Brilliant!

The strange coincidence was that I had been floating this idea around in my head for a year or so as a way to mount my 8mm Film Stills. I hadn’t already done this because of the rather large problem of enlarging an 8mm image to 2 feet by 3 feet or larger. Still working on that but do have the light box designed and most of the raw material sourced. As soon as I get my first photo mounted I will post a photograph of it here for you all to see.