No that’s not the deterioration of this camera over time. The one on top was stolen from my vehicle and the bottom one is its replacement. Not really an upgrade in aesthetics but just as good at taking pictures. In addition to always capturing images at a 2.75 aspect ratio the camera sports a 24mm wide angle lens. That aspect ratio is nearly approaching 3 to 1 which forces you to think differently when composing. The image quality doesn’t allow for much enlargement but the panoramic format is a nice change when it comes to composition. More information and samples can be found in the links bellow the gallery.
I had the need to scan some old Kodak safety film that was both an odd size (65mm x 110mm) that did not fit into any of my Epson film holders and had a massive amount of curl. And not a curl that is easily tamed more like the curl a 10 year old puts on their plastic floor hockey stick. The solution that I came up with was to use the glass film holder for my enlarger. I realize that not everyone has a 4×5 enlarger and by extension a 4×5 film holder but if you do it is one way to handle a situation like this. Handily it also turns out to hold the film at the right height off of the scanner glass for focusing the same as other film holders.
I picked this Holga up at a thrift store and could see that it already had a roll of film in it. “Waste not want not” so I finished the roll and processed it. Expectations being exceedingly low there was little danger of disappointment. And the camera is yellow that is always a bonus. The film turned out to be Ilford HP5 and because I was not set up for doing black and white developing I set it aside for quite awhile.
The Lens apparently, according to the writing on its front, is optical which is good because the other option would seem to be not being a lens. 60mm for medium format is a reasonably wide field of view considering that 80mm is more of a normal focal length for 6x6cm. The results were as expected poor. The film had been in the camera for quite awhile attested to by the frame number 5 and the paper backing being burned into one image.
I had difficulty making out what some of the previous owners images were but they seemed to all revolve around the kitchen.
And a babies hand double exposed onto someone sitting at a kitchen table.
The most identifiable image though is of the consumption of waffles. I’ve cropped the individuals face to protect them in case they have been claiming to be a lifetime member of the Keto diet society (That is not almond flour)
And finally here are the images that I took using the remainder of the roll. Poor quality to be sure but just good enough to show how crappy the lens is as well.
The Minolta X700 was a great film camera and the first camera that I ever bought for myself. It had a long run and was made from 1981 all the way to 1999. This means that there are many of them out there still in good working order. I’ve never actually come across one with a mechanical issue , their only weakness seams to be the electronics and in particular the capacitors. There was a trade off in weight vs the use of materials and to save weight and likely expense Minolta used a lot of plastic in the X700. Despite that the X700s that I have seen have all survived without any cracks or broken bits. In addition to the abundance of bodies there are numerous lenses available. Not only do the Minolta MD series lenses work on this camera but the older MC lenses work well although not necessarily in program mode. The gallery images were shot on Fuji Superia 400 which is a nice general purpose film that doesn’t have the finest grain for its speed but is more economical than Kodak Porta 400.
I’ve had some mixed results with expired Kodak Gold the main issue being the way it curls making it hard to hold flat for scanning. It also fogs and has poor contrast. So I decided to give a little push during development of this Gold 200 to roughly ISO 320. I can’t really say it came out better it still has more of a brown mask than orange but I could at least see the gaps between frames which I have also found to be a problem with expired Kodak Gold. The good news is that the Olympus XA I shot it with worked perfectly.
To achieve the push I merely increased the development time of the Unicolor kit I was using. The standard time for development is 3:30 min pushing two stops is 1.5x or 5:25, pushing 1 stop is 1.25x or 4:40, so going from 200 to 320 is 2/3 stops or a 1.16x increase for a time of 4:05. That is not to suggest that I’m achieving a to the second level of accuracy. There is difference in how long it takes to pour in and out the chemistry and when I start or stop the timer. Not to mention the variations in agitation.
