Lately I’ve been curious about medium format. I like the look and I like the 6×6 format. Unfortunately for me, I’ve never shot film. But that shouldn’t stop me, should it?
I first got my hands on an early 50s French Semflex TLR. It was in ok condition, all working, but looking a bit old, with parts oxidised and a fairly dim visor. That made the focusing a challenge, especially in bright sunlight.
I put a roll of Fomapan B&W 200 in it, I brushed up on my Sunny 16, familiarised myself with the controls, and went round the garden and the house to test it.
I don’t know if the lens isn’t entirely clear, although looking at it it appears fine, or if I didn’t expose right, or if I didn’t develop right, but all the Semflex images are a bit washed out.
I went round the house in the street to take “street” photos. And of course our doorbell spied on me.
This is the photo I was taking:
I processed all these in Df96 monobath at 24 degrees. I wonder if I should have pushed it a bit to 27 degrees to get more contrast. Then I scanned them with a Canon 5D mkII.
Then, as I had put a few eBay TLRs in my favourites, I got an offer from a seller in the Czech Republic for a Flexaret VI first gen (only manufactured for a year in 1961). It seemed very clean and at a great price, so I bought it.
It came with a film that expired during the Apollo landing!
Compared to the Semflex, it’s day and night: it’s heavy, all metal, the visor is clear, not trace of corrosion. It’s very nice. It’s also much easier to use with its guillotine focuser.
So I put a Fomapan B&W 100 film in it and I went round the garden again. Immediately, we can see that the images are sharper.
I also went out in the street.
Then I realised that something happened to the images. From then on, there is more and more light incursion. I wonder if I did something wrong during processing or when I took the roll of film out of the camera.
I processed the 2 films on different days. The Semflex film at 24 degrees and the Flexaret film at 27 degrees to push a little bit.
Overall, even though for me it was first time shooting film, first time using manual cameras, first time using a TLR, and first time processing film, the experience was kind of fun.
The development itself was fairly easy. The worst part of the black bag of doom and spooling the film, but even that went ok first time because I had practiced about 20 times in the morning to get it right every time on a stuntfilm (Fomapan 100 that got chewed by the Flexaret the first time I tried to put a film in it).
I have to say that the monobath was the key to the whole thing: very easy 10 minutes development of a film is great. Sending it for processing would have made it way too expensive to continue using film. As it is, I’ve bought lots of various speed rated film and I’m going to continue using the TLRs for fun.
#Photography #Film #TLR