Braun Paxette with Ilford Ortho 80
If your going to shoot a film that handles blue skies much like what photographers had available to them a hundred or more years ago it makes sense to at least use an older camera. With that in mind I loaded my Braun Paxette with some Ilford Ortho 80. Most films today are panchromatic or sensitive to most of the visible spectrum but there was a time when most photographic materials were Orthochromatic or insensitive to red light much like B&W darkroom papers.
This insensitivity to red means that when you are shooting a scene and trying to properly expose it, areas with blue tend to be rendered much brighter. This is why in really old photos the sky is often seen as an area of white. In reality it could have contained clouds and interesting shades of blue but as it tends to be much brighter than the subject it would have been blown out. In any case Ilford Ortho 80 behaves like this rendering reds as dark and blues as light.
Something else to note about this film is it is extremely fine grained, likely owing to its original purpose as a high resolution copy film as per Ilford’s own information.
The 135mm f5.6 lens is a new addition to my Super Paxette kit and while I dont have a viewfinder to match its field of view I just made a rough determination and made sure that the main subject was near the center of the frame when I did use it. And as per usual with my use of this camera I like to see the edges of the frame and their postage stamp look.
