I recently shot a roll of expired Ektachrome 100 EPN that I’ve had sat in the freezer for quite a while now – since last Christmas in fact when they were kindly gifted me by my Emulsive Secret Santa. I like the thrill of shooting expired film, there’s a certain frisson of tension around how the shots might turn out. On the other hand though, I never use it for outings where I want my shots to count – holidays, day trips, special events and so forth that I might not get the chance to visit or photograph again. I still aim to get shots I like though – the last thing I’d want is for it to be wasted – and so I shot this roll on a very nice sunny day last month.
The subject matter is just a bunch of things that I thought might look nice (to me at least). I’m not sure what genre this sort of thing falls under – I’m tempted to say it’s inspired by the New Topographics movement, but I’m not sure it that’s the case or not. A sort of halfway house between street and architecture I guess. Who needs labels anyway?
The film was shot at box speed and turned out pretty nicely I think. There’s a bit of colour shift towards magenta but nothing major, and it has a subtle, overexposed Portra look about it that’s nice.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Ektachrome 100 EPN (expired 2008).
The Lipca Rollop II. Portrait by Nikon F80, Sigma 105mm f/2.8 OS HSM, and Ilford HP5+ (@1600asa).
A year or two back I was given a box of old cameras, four in total. These included a Voigtlander Vito B. a couple of Soviet-era rangefinders, and a Lipca Rollop TLR.
I tested the Vito B with a roll of film not long after receiving it, but not a single shot was even close to being in focus, and I suspect someone had attempted to repair it at some point but then not correctly aligned the zone-focus lens when putting it back together. Both the rangefinders had aperture rings that were locked solid, so I passed those on to people who might hopefully be able to repair them and make use of the cameras.
The Lipca though, while a little dirty, looked ok – the only issue that stood out being some rotted light-seals in the film chamber – so I decided to hold onto it and give it a test. In the end it remained in a drawer for the best part of two years until, a couple of weeks ago, when I finally decided to try it out. But before I go into detail on that, here’s a little pen protrait of the camera…
According to Camera-Wiki.org, the Lipca company (short for Lippische Camerafabrik Richter & Fischer) was formed in Bartrup, West Germany, in 1947. The owners, Fritz and Charlotte Richter, and Karl Fischer had moved some of their equipment and employees from Tharandt, near Dresden, which was in the Soviet zone as they feared the factory would be expropriated. The new company was fully founded the following year.
The company was a small organisation with around 50 employees working in a close-knit family atmosphere. Their peak output was around 1000 cameras per month.
They produced a number of TLR models, starting with the Flexo in 1948. This was to be re-named the Flexora following a trademark dispute with Franke & Heidecke. There were three variants of the Flexora before a new camera, the Rollop, was introduced – this model using an injection molded aluminium body rather than the sheet metal of the earlier cameras. Three versions were produced between 1954 and 1962. The main difference between models was probably the film transport which started as a knob winder on the Rollop I. A crank winder was introduced on the Rollop II, and this crank was upgraded to also cock the shutter on the Rollop Automatic, the final variant. The Rollop Automatic also featured an Enna Lithagon taking lens, replacing the Enna Ennagon on the previous versions.
When the demand for TLR cameras fell into decline in the early 60s, Lipca tried to gain a foothold on the emerging 35mm market by selling re-branded cameras from King, and Franka. Lipca also manufactured other equipment such as binoculars,slide-viewers, and they carried out some production work in conjunction with Plaubel. After a move to a new site in Bad Nauheim in 1961, all camera production ceased in 1962, and the Lipca name was dissolved in 1972.
The model I have is the Rollop II, a twin lens reflex camera with a 75mm f/3.5 Enna Ennagon taking lens (replicated in the viewing lens). Both lenses have a filter thread. Shutter speeds range from 1sec to 1/300sec with a bulb setting for long exposures. Apertures cover f/3.5 through to f/22. Shutter speed is selected by rotating a toothed wheel mounted around the taking lens, aligning the required speed with a red arrow at the 12 o’clock position on the lens barrel. Aperture is chosen with a lever that rotates around the lower right section of the lens barrel, this needs to be pulled out slightly to change the setting as it latches into the teeth on the shutter speed dial. This latching mechanism means the camera has a simple but effective shutter-priority function. For instance, if the shutter speed is set to 1/125sec and the aperture to f/8, then rotating the shutter speed to 1/300sec will simultaneously change the aperture to f/5.6. Changing shutter speed to 1/60sec would change the aperture to f/11 and so on. The aperture can still be manually set if required.
The shutter cocking mechanism is a lever on the upper-right of the lens barrel, and the shutter lever resides on the lower-right. There is a threaded cable release point just above the shutter lever.
Also on the front of the camera is a sync socket. M and X synchronisation settings are available from a small switch on the upper left of the lens barrel.
The film is advanced by a crank mechanism on the right of the camera. This operates in a forward / return action, rather than full rotation. The handle of the crank is hinged and can be latched to prevent accidental advancement of the film.
The camera viewfinder is a standard ground-glass affair, but with a horizontal split-prism in the centre. A magnifying lens hinges out from the front of the viewfinder housing for fine focusing, and the housing also features a sports-finder.
The left side of the camera houses the focus knob with distance scale, the film reel release knobs, and a small screw that holds the film compartment closed. When partially unscrewed, this is pushed in to pop open the back of the camera. There is also a cold-shoe on this side of the camera.
There are a couple of latches for a camera strap on either side of the body, and the base of the camera has a tripod mounting socket and four small metal feet.
The first thing I did with my Rollop II was to give it a clean. The bodywork is in pretty nice condition, the leatherette is all intact and there are no significant marks anywhere, but it was a little scruffy. A soft cloth and some rubbing alcohol removed most of the surface dust and dirt without trouble. I removed the focus screen housing to give it a better clean and to allow the mirror and inside of the viewing lens to be cleaned with a dust blower and (for the lens) some lens cleaner. Both lenses were cleaned on the outside, and I then cleaned the inside of the taking lens while the camera was in bulb mode.
While the light seals looked in a bit of a state, I decided to leave them alone for the time being (they are partially covered by the film tension plate, and I could see no easy way to remove it to allow access) and just see how the camera would fare with a test roll of film – some Fomapan 100.
In operation, the camera was straightforward to use and gave no unexpected surprises. My only issue being that the focus screen didn’t have a lot of contrast and it was quite difficult to see depending on the light. Using the magnifyer helped though. I found the shutter release to be easy to use and think that this lever-type release is perhaps better for keeping the camera steady than the push-button release on something like a Yashica Mat 124.
I went for a walk around a local nature reserve and shot the full roll. I noticed with some surprise that the camera would still fire even after winding on from the twelth frame, so took another shot for good luck, not really expecting anything from it. I would be surprised…
I developed the roll of film in my usual Ilfotec DD-X and was pleased to see a negatives appear. One instant plus was that my extra shot had given me a thirteenth frame! It was right at the very end of the roll, and I ended up having to crop it afterwards because of marks caused when drying the film, but still – a bonus! This pleasant surprise was, sadly, marred a little by the unfortunate fact that around half the frames had very noticeable light leaks.
The lucky 13th shot. I had to crop it a little, and I’m not sure what has caused the circular mark at top-centre but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers!
While some of the light leaks looked normal given the state of the light seals, many of the affected frames had an odd arc of brightness across the centre of the frame, as can be seen in the three photos below.
Based on these findings I decided to do what I could to replace the seals. With some degree of fiddlyness, I was able to replace the ones the were partially obscured by the film plate, along with the rest of the more accessible foam.
A few days later I took the camera out again, hopeful that my replacement seals would resolve the problems.
This time, when loading the film, instead of winding the crank four times as stated in the manual, I just wound it on three times hoping I would again be able to squeeze an extra frame from the roll.
I again shot all (thirteen!) frames on a single outing, albeit the final bonus frame being a shot of a mug on the kitchen counter taken when I got home.
The second bonus 13th frame. Maybe not the best shot ever, but again – bonus!
This time, most of the frames were free from light leaks – all except one, again showing the odd arc-shaped mark.
There was also one completely blank frame where I think I accidentally wound the film on without firing the shutter!
I decided to look at the camera more closely, and wondered if the light might be coming from the lens, rather than the film compartment. I shone a bright light at the front of the camera and opened the film compartment. This revealed a feint glow coming from the edge of the taking lens. Further investigation also revealed that the front standard had a very small gap when focused closely (so that it was racked out as far as it would go). This explained why the leak only appeared on certain frames – those where the camera was focussed at or closer to infinity where unaffected as the lens standard was racked back to the body of the camera, closing the gap. Only the shots where I had focussed on closer subjects had the problem.
I don’t have the necessary technical ability to repair this properly, at least not without risking more significant problems or breaking it completely and, as the camera was a freebie (and I already have a working TLR in the form of my Yashica Mat 124G) I don’t really want to pay the price of a professional repair. I think I will give it another test though – I have an idea to attach a skirt of black felt around the racking mechanism using some tape which ought to block the light getting in where it’s not wanted. Maybe not elegant, but hopefully it will work. I guess I’ll find out before too long! 🙂
This telephone box at Shireoaks is slowly being engulfed by ivy. Perhaps it wants to make a call?
It was slightly awkward to make the shot as, firstly the sun disappeared behind the largest cloud in the sky, and then a guy in a van pulled up behind our car and asked if we could move as we were blocking a gate (although there were no signs or markings stating that this wasn’t allowed – it wasn’t a gate that vehicles could pass through, and it could be easily entered be people). As a result I had to grab the shot pretty quickly as soon as the light re-appeared.
I’ve been meaning to visit the Emley Moor television tower for some time now so, while on a week’s leave from work recently, I decided to take the opportunity.
The transmitter is visible from miles around (although not from where I live, it being fully obscured by all the hills around Sheffield) and can easily be seen from the M1 or A1 roads whenever we’ve driven north. As well as it being an impressive sight, it also provides a pang of nostalgia for my childhood where, on days I was up early before television had started for the day, there would be a bombastic start-up broadcast announcing that “Yorkshire Television was broadcasting from the Emley Moor, Belmont and associated transmitters of the Independent Broadcasting Authority“, accompanied by a stirring orchestral piece that gave the impression that a bunch of Spitfires and Lancaster bombers were fighting off an attacking German force or something, so much like a WWII movie theme it sounded.
Although I’ve seen the tower on numerous occasions, this was my first close visit since one time I went to one of my friends’ relatives houses who lived close to it. That would have been the better part of forty years ago! My, how time flies!
It took a little over half-an-hour to drive there (most of the trip being on a fast route up the motorway) and there’s a small car-park beside the road near the transmitter. I’d planned some potential shots in advance from the comfort of my PC by using Google Street View. As the cameras on the Street View cars have super-wide-angle lenses though, it’s difficult to know exactly what your own shots might look like, and unless I moved away a considerable distance from the tower (it’s already quite a distance from the road as-is), it was impossible to fit it into the frame with the 80mm lens on my Yashica Mat 124G, so the first couple of pictures here show only the base of the tower. Well, towers actually – the thin metal mast is a temporary structure that was constructed in 2018 to maintain broadcasts while the main tower undergoes maintenance. The upper sections of the metal mast were lowered into place by helicopter apparently.
The concrete tower is 1,084′ tall and the metal mast 21′ shorter. The concrete tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom and was built in 1969 after the previous mast (the second one built on the site) collapsed due to an accumulation of ice. Although not open to the public, there is a lift that takes people to the equipment area that operates at the top of the tower. It apparently takes seven minutes to reach the top in the lift.
The official name of the structure is The Arquiva Tower, after the company that operates it, but it is commonly known as Emley Moor.
I had to drive further from the tower in order to get the full structure in the frame, and even here I’ve had to correct some very noticeable converging verticals. I like the way it towers over the farmhouse in this shot.
Another wide shot from even further away. I like the cyclist that has just entered the bottom left of the scene. Because of the angle of view, the temporary tower appears to be much taller than the main structure in this picture.
In all it was a nce trip. There isn’t an awful lot to do at the tower given it’s privately operated with no public access, but it’s very impresive to behold from close up.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Delta 400 (@800asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.
This small trophy and key-cutting shop was bathed in some nice light on the same evening I made the scarecrow photos I posted yesterday.
While I’m having more success scanning E6 film when using Vuescan instead of EpsonScan, I still find I have to tweak the colours somewhat. I think a purple / magenta cast is a factor of the film emulsion when shooting Provia and Velvia, but it still seems to be somewhat overbearing still in my scans, so I tweak the colours to try and get them as close to the original transparencies as I can. I’m mostly successful I think, but I’ve not quite nailed the reds yet.
A few weeks ago we drove through the village of Harthill (the same day I made the photos of the person magnet fishing, the house with the pointed roof, and Shireoaks station) and noticed a whole series of “scarecrows” dotted about the place. I call them scarecrows as it seems a reasonable term, although that wasn’t their purpose. They had been installed as part of the village carnival – held virtually for this year – in celebration of key workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I didn’t have any film left in the camera or on me when we encountered them, so I drove back out to the village later that afternoon to photograph some of them before they were removed.
Four photographs today that I made at Shireoaks railway station a few weeks ago. My wife popped into a nearby shop, so I decided to finish my roll of HP5+ at the nearby empty station.
It was a hot afternoon and the wrong time to be making photographs. The wrong time if you base everything you do on “rules” that is. It’s generally accepeted that midday is not the best time to make photos. This time of day, particularly in mid-summer, means the sun will be high overhead casting harsh illumination onto scenes. The light will be very bright, with harsh highlights and shadows. But is this always necessarily a bad thing?
It’s all very well seeking out golden hour, when the light can be undoubtedly beautiful, and I’m a great lover of low sunshine and the warm light and long shadows it provides, but sometimes it isn’t possible or desireable to catch these conditions. And what if you want a photograph to depict bright midday conditions?
While these photos are of a mundane scene – a small, modernised, rural railway station devoid of travellers – they record the time I was there perfectly. Maybe there will be better images to be had in different light or circumstances, but these provide a visual record of my memories of the time. and looking of them I can feel the heat of the platform, the smell of warm concrete, the whole sense of a hot day. I’m glad they were taken in the “wrong” light.
I scan all my medium format black & white and reversal images using an Epson V550 flatbed, while 35mm is scanned on a Plustek Opticfilm8100. Ive always left unsharp mask on when scanning 120 film as I thought the results were good. Untill a week or so ago when I was testing out Vuescan.
Vuescan allows image sharpening, but it has a simple on/off checkbox rather than the levels of control afforded by Epsonscan and (moreso) Silverfast so I decided to test a few things to see how the various scanning options on each piece of software compared – plus no sharpening of the scan at all with sharpening applied later in Lightroom.
At first it looked like the sharpened images from Epsonscan had better resolution of detail, but after a lot of scanning, re-scanning, and playing around with the sharpening control in Lightroom I decided otherwise. The sharpened images from Epsonscan were displaying a level of noise and “grit” that I decided I didn’t really like, whereas unsharpened scans from the same software processed in Lightroom were much more appealing, showing a much nicer rendition of detail and grain.
It’s striking how, after years of thinking you had something just how you wanted it, you can all of a sudden change your mind.
I think I’ll stick to Epsonscan for my 120 B&W scans. Vuescan is great, and does a much better job on reversal film, but it lacks the tweakable visial histogram that Epsonscan has, and that makes a big difference to my final results. At least until I find a better way… 🙂
Today’s shot was scanned on the V550 and sharpened in Lightroom. If you look at the full size image on Flickr you might find a black cat that was keeping an eye on me. At least I think it’s a cat. It could possibly be two spots of strategically located dust that look like eyes. Or something more sinister… Eek!
My wife and I went for a walk a few weeks ago and, when it turned out we needed to book to enter our original destination, instead took a walk beside the picturesque section of the Chersterfield Canal that joins Shireoaks and Turnerwood.
On the way up to Turnerwood we passed a man swinging some sort of weight on the end of a cord into the canal and then fishing it back out.
After reaching Turnerwood, we turned around and re-traced our path back along the canal. The man was still there, casting his weight into the water of the canal. My curuosity piqued I asked him what it was he was doing.
It turns out he was “magnet fishing”. This practice involves the use of a powerful neodymium magnet to try and grapple metalic items from the bed of the body of water. Looking it up later I saw reports of people “catching” somewhat less-than-desirable items such as live hand-grenades and unexploded bombs that have lain submerged since the 2nd World War.
At my time of asking the man about it, all he’d found was a 3′ length or rebar though.
Making black and white photographs in woodland, or any other place featuring large areas of green foliage, can sometimes be tricky. Without well defined subject matter I find tht such scenes can become a mass of mushy grey textures. Differing shades of green that are easily discernible to the eye merge into less defined shades of varying brightness.
So I think a clearly defined subject is important, either seperated by brightness, contrast or texture, or isolated in some way, such as it’s placement in the composition, or by using a shallow depth of field to add separation.
I think the photo today uses a bit of both techniques. The trunk that is the point of focus is isolated here by the light that falls on it (or rather doesn’t) – there’re splashes of sunlight, but overall it is darker than the background where more light is falling. I also opened the aperture to throw the tree into focus while leaving everything else softer.
I’m happy with how the shot turned out – I have a number of similar photos from other outings that didn’t work as nicely!
Yashica Mat 124G & Fomapan 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.
Steel City Snapper photography 