Christopher Walmsley

Rolleicord Review

Rollei made the classic TLR (twin lens reflex) cameras of the 50s and 60s, the 'cord being the budget sibling on the 'flex. Both boast the excellent build quality synonymous with the German manufacturers of the era and budget is perhaps a word that may give the wrong impression. There are some compromises with the 'Cord, such as having a knob to wind on the film rather than a lever and then having to manually cock the shutter rather than this being part of a wind on lever's operation. I also understand the lens to be different, mine Rolleicord has a 75mm f3.5 tessar-type Xenar lens, and if the internet is to be believed this is inferior to the lens on the Rolleiflex, although mainly visible wide open.

So why did I want one? Shooting 6x6 medium format has established itself as my favoured format over the last few years and I wanted something less bulky than my Bronica SQ to take on trips where I cannot justify the bulk of the Bronica. Another feature I was looking for was a fully mechanical camera that had a bulb mode as this was something lacking on the SQ and I want to be able to try some exposures of several minutes. So a TLR fit the bill nicely, and given that the Yashicamat 124G did not pan out for me previously, I decided to stick with the classic Rollei brand.

I must admit I was baffled when first trying to use the camera - I could not work out how to fire the shutter! On the Yashica the wind on lever cocked the shutter so that it could be fired with the shutter release button. The Rolleicord has a knob rather than a lever and no obvious (to me at least) shutter release button. So admitting defeat I found the manual online and realised my oversight - there is a lever just below the lens that you need to slide to cock the shutter and then tap the other way to fire the shutter. The ergonomics of this operation could be better in my opinion, flicking a lever feels quite weird to me rather than using a button when handheld, although most of the time I ended up using a tripod and shutter release so this wasn't a big deal.

The focus knob has good travel and loading the film is easy so no issues there. Using filters was a necessary feature for me and as it doesn't use standard thread mounted filters I had to also consult the manual to find out it uses Bay I mount filters. Whilst you can get old original Rollei ones off eBay you can also get some new ones from B&H it turns out. For $15 I got a red filter made in India by a company called Nisha although I didn't end up using it. Instead I managed to find an adapter for Bay 1 to 52mm thread meaning that I could use my full set of ND and coloured filters. What's really great about a TLR over an SLR for using filters is that they only cover the taking lens and you can frame normally without the filter as the viewing lens has none. This is especially useful for a strong ND like a 10 stop filter which is such a pain on an SLR to screw on and off between shots. One downside of this camera though is the dim focusing screen, which is far worse than the Bronica SQ.

Before heading to the US on a family vacation I thought it would be prudent to check the cameras actually worked so I headed to my local park to get through a roll. I developed it myself and the photos came out reasonably well exposed (so as not to suggest shutter timing issues) and in focus (suggesting the viewing and taking lenses are in alignment, something I'm pretty sure was not the case for the Yashicamat). So confident it was working I ran 2 rolls of TMax 100 and 1 of Ektar with many long exposures on the former. Unfortunately I did not check the shutter speeds less than 1/60s and just as I was finishing my first roll I realised that the shutter had not closed on a 1/2s exposure whilst I was framing up for the next shot. Thats the downside of a leaf shutter I suppose, you can't hear it open and close to notice normal operation. So I reverted to using only bulb mode for some long (20s - 2min) exposures. Note to self: carry some cards with reciprocity failure corrections with you! I must admit forgetting to write these down and then realising your on a beach with no phone signal is annoying, although my best guesses did at least end up with some usable frames.

In conclusion this is a really fun camera to use and I'm glad to get a decent copy unlike my previous Yashicamat TLR where the lens misalignment led to focus woes that drove me mad. I will invest in a CLA I think because this is a camera I'll probably keep on to for many years to come. The form factor to shoot 6x6 medium format is great and such a nice change from the heft of the Bronica. Although it only has the option of the built in 75mm lens available it is somewhat liberating and restrictive. Liberating in that one can focus on getting the best angle with what you have availabe but restrictive that there are just shots you won't be able to get with this camera. Its telling that my most used lenses on the Bronica SQ are typically the wide 50mm and telephoto 150mm and 250mm and there were shots I would've liked to capture that I couldn't really with a fixed 75mm. Although my suitcase appreciated the reduced weight.

Abstract Photography

Photography, as I am appreciating more and more, is less about capturing reality and more about conveying an idea or emotion. In its most abstract form an image that enables you to see something that you would not appreciate through the frame of real life. Whilst going back over my photography library in an effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, I was inspired by some of the more abstract images I've captured over the years. I've never properly started a project to follow a theme of structure or colour and so each of these are collected together only with some hindsight.

The first image is the corner of a building near Kings College's library in London. I'm not sure what inspired me to take the shot, it was an anonymous building where an interesting angle caught my eye. The way the colours have rendered - simple brown, white and blue with a nice shadow emphasising the 3D effect has stuck with me. The final two are more muted in their palette and are captures of two famous landmarks - the Bullring in Birmingham and the Guggenheim in New York. The Guggenheim is not a shot that I took much notice of at the time, I marked it down as an idea I did not fully execute. However some 4 years later I saw some hope that cropping the image would make it more impactful, which with the relatively large 6x6 negative I had plenty of room to maneuver. The composition is now more pleasing but its the subtle details in the marks on the paintwork that draws me in as my eye lingers. As for the Bullring image, its a building hard not to get a good image from. What I like about this particular image is the grey nature of the day created conditions where the colour is so muted and subtle that it is these minor details that draws my interest every time I see it.

Abstract themes is something I should try explore more in the future, especially living in a city, and I would do well to think of a theme to help create a series of images rather than images in isolation that I try to group together after the fact.

Olympic Peninsula

The Olympic Peninsula hold much rugged majesty for anyone interested in landscape to observe. I first visited in spring 2015 and had resolved to return one day. On that trip, unlike Yosemite the year before, I did not opt to take my Bronica. It had fallen somewhat out of favour and the heft it added to to my luggage certainly influenced my decision. Fast forward four years and I find myself increasingly drawn to using 120 film in 6x6 format to make the images I enjoy most; this time the heft did not phase my and my Bronica with every lens I own accompanied me (40mm, 50mm, 80mm, 150mm and 250mm).

Such a great volume of gear may seem extreme and in hindsight probably was. I tended towards using the wide lenses and the two telephotos to either compress or accentuate my perspective; in the past couple of years I havent found myself using the 80mm much. Its too bad that 95mm filters required are for the 40mm and will probably result in me opting for the 50mm in the future as all of my filters are 77mm.

For film I had some Ilford HP5 in my freezer that wanted using so I took this rather than buying in some new TMax 400 which would've been my preference. Colour I dug out my last Velvia 50 and a roll of Ektar. Wow I'd forgotten just how good Ektar is when well exposed.

The peninsula can easily be seen from the city of Seattle on a clear day but how long it takes to get there depends on wait times for a ferry or traffic around Tacoma. As it was a holiday weekend we took the latter and suffered traffic that I'm sure was to at its worst. We stayed at an holiday rental on the north coast down a private road with access to a restricted bay. The views to Canada's Victoria island were superb.

Day 2 saw us drive back to Port Angeles and up the road to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. As you can see from the map the main attractions in the National Park are accessible via sparse inroads into the wilderness, leaving the majority only accessible with multi-day backpacking trips. The ridge itself has a large car park and a visitor centre. There are some short hikes around the meadows opposite, but carry on through the car park and you will go down a narrow winding road for a mile or so to another car park. This is the trailhead for the Hurricane Hill trail an accessible ~3 mile hike with outstanding views of the inner mountains and north to Canada. As we reached the top of the hill mist rolled in making for some great mysterious photographic conditions.

Sul Duc falls is another very popular short accessible hike in the park. I had done this on my previous trip and continued on to Deer Lake but today with kids we would only go as far as the falls today. To our surprise we were greeted at the trailhead by emergency services out in force; turns out someone had been standing on rocks on top of the falls, slipped and fallen down the falls. It's incredible the risks people take with their safety and I hope it was not driven by the quest for a photo. The trail had reopened but we were warned there would be the emergency services returning and we did pass the injured being brought back on a gurney. At the falls I got a few long exposures of the falls.

The far west side of the peninsula is a wild rugged coastline with deadwood washed up to line sand and stony beaches. There are large stacks left in the sea where the mainland had receded away leaving towering monoliths that conveniently make for attractive photographic subjects. There are many beaches, Ruby and Rialto being two of the most popular but unfortunately due to time we could only visit the latter. Next time I would base myself at the town of Forks to explore more of this coastline. We arrived at Rialto beach whilst it was thick in morning fog. Proceeding down the beach it was easy to lose track of distance and time with the view impaired to only metres in front of your feet. Before reaching the stacks it suddenly cleared leading me to regret not capturing some frames of the tree lined shore in the fog on my walk out there. I realised I'd been so set on getting to the stacks I'd missed some good potential of the treeline diminished by the fog. The images at the top of this post are from here and are some of my favourite from the trip.

The final image above is from the private access to Freshwater Bay from the holiday rental. Nearby is a public access point to the coastline called Salt Creek that has some good potential for photography. Whilst I captured some images sunset was not the optimal time. Sunrise would be better, as would not mistaking the film back with Velvia 50 for my HP5.

Folding Camera Finds

Old Zeiss folders have been the subject of intrigue for me over some time. Near the start of my interest in shooting film a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517 6x6 folder was discovered by a relative and given to me to experiment with. I found it quite a curio - bellows? guessing the focus? would it even work? Some research dated it to 1949, some 60+ years prior, but it looked in good condition so I gave it a whirl. I have written about my experiences with this camera before and now and again I put another roll through it. The character of the images produced with this camera really are punchy with a sharp contrasty lens in the centre frame, and a nice natural vignette and softness towards the corners. To say framing is an approximation would be a slight understatement, and focus is normally guesswork, and of course there is no meter, but these things become more comfortable with time.

I love shooting medium format film and find myself gravitating towards B&W 6x6 images, and my Bronica SQA is a solid workhorse for this. Its got so much flexibility with all the different lenses but if I am travelling where the primary purpose of the trip will not be photography then it is hard for me to justify bringing so much weight along. This is where the Zeiss Ikon folders came back to mind as they are so light and compact. There are of course some compromises, nothing comes for free: I would be limited to one focal length (a 75mm 'normal') and also I did not think it would be easy to use my existing sets of filters, particularly the ND filters for long exposures.

Inspired by this Shooting Film Like a Boss YouTube video performing long exposures with a Nettar by bodging the filter on the front with an elastic band, I had a brainstorm. Why not use a step up ring with an appropriately sized inner diameter to slip over the lens and then use the 52mm filters I already owned? For armed with a micrometer I measured the Novar-Anastigmat 75mm f6.3 lens on the Nettar, ordered a 38-52mm step up ring. I knew this ring would be slightly bigger than the lens so I added some stick on velcro (the soft part) to the inner circumference. It worked! Now I can push this adapter over the lens and use my standard 52mm filters. You may notice the Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 521/16 in the photo above. Its a recent acquisition and there will be more on this another time but in case you are interested the 75mm f4.5 Novar-Anastigmat lens takes a 40.5-52mm step up ring with the soft velcro inside too.

So this is where I hoped to share some images from my recent trip to the white cliffs of Dover using some red and ND filters on the folders. My new Ikonta 521 let me down, it turned out that using a shutter release cord did not consistently work to fire the shutter, and then the double exposure prevention mechanism blocked me from trying again. Further investigation after my trip led to me realising part of the shutter trigger mechanism had come misaligned which enabled me to fix it. So I will try this one out another time. The Nettar has the cable release mount next to the shutter and so no transfer mechanism is necessary. There is also no double exposure prevention, which could be seen as a benefit, as there is less to go wrong. The only downside in my eyes is that the shutter on the Nettar is very limited with only Bulb, 25, 75 and 200, whereas the Ikonta has Bulb, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 250 enabling far more flexibility.

The Nettar was still loaded up with some Ilford HP5 that I'd half used at Christmas in the US. So at least I still had this to experiment with. I shot off the remaining 6 frames with a mixture of with and without a red and 10x ND filter (with some 20 second exposures) and looked forward to seeing how the results came back from the lab. Peculiarly in all of the 6 frames I took in Dover (but not the 6 exposed 9 months prior), and increasing with severity towards the end of the roll, there are speckled marks. These are present on the negative itself as dark marks and so must be something additive to the negative (e.g. light, debris etc) but I can't explain them. Searching online I have found a few similar examples that had suggestions of expired fixer or perhaps some issue with the backing paper affecting the film. The former doesn't make sense to me as if there was an issue in development (which was performed by my normal lab) then I would have expected it to be present on all frames. One suggestion I saw was air bubbles accumulating whilst developing so perhaps this is plausible if it only occurred on one part of the tank.

The testing of the Ikona 521 and long exposures with both of these cameras will have to wait unfortunately, but at least the forgotten images from 9 month prior came out ok!

On the street with an Olympus 35RC

This Olympus camera from the 1970s has a near perfect form factor for me. Its the film camera I can take anywhere and depend on. However the first copy I picked up (review) came with lens that had seen better days. After running a few rolls through the camera it was a model that worked well, but there was a nagging feeling that the scratched lens was a liability, there was a noticeable loss impact on contrast on some images. Buy cheap, buy twice is a saying with truth . So I kept on the lookout for one in better nick and when one came up on an auction that looked in great condition and came with the original lens hood (I havent seen may of these around) at a reasonable price I had no hesitation. Upon its arrival I was surprised it was supplied with a new battery and after installing it even more surprised to find the aperture priority mode for automatic exposure worked. Result!

Street photography, moreso than landscape photography, has a far steeper learning curve in my opinion. With the latter its still easy to appreciate a reasonably well composed shot of a nice place, even if it lacks much in the way of individuality. There can be challenge in getting to the location, especially in the right light, which conversely probably makes this much more difficult to master. On the other hand street photography is typically right in front of us, every day. There are an infinite amount of interesting things to capture but normally they pass by your eye as a mundane background to your busy life. The skill of a great street photographer is to capture that moment that would otherwise have disappeared unappreciated into the annals of history but upon your viewing you get a new insight into society that you would have otherwise not appreciated.

Despite my appreciation of street photographers work, it is not a genre of photography I have tried much myself. Photographing people has never been something I particularly enjoyed, posed or not. However what has piqued my interest is some of the photo books of Ernst Haas, Fred Herzog and Saul Lieter I own and their capture of the vibrant colours of advertising billboards of their era. Advertising is an interesting historical artifact, trying to sell us who we should be at that particular moment. Photography typically ages well, becoming more poignant with time as the world changes. Advertising provides a perfect subject for nostalgia. And so it was with this in mind that the above two pictures caught my eye. The auto exposure of the 35RC appears to have to overexposed the cheap Kodak Colorplus 200 film that I was using to test it. I brought the exposure down a bit from scanning and I may next time try rating down half a stop.

One of my biggest challenges with street photography is actually getting close up. You need to fill the frame for impact, and this camera has a fixed 42mm lens, so no option to try something longer. A full frame of something mundane can draw the eye to more subtle details, although in this instance its the colour palette that I liked.

Finally a snapshot near Oxford Circus tube station. I follow a few active street photographers that use this are as one of their key locations. For me, I was neither patient enough or aiming for anything particular enough for this image to be any better. But it will be interesting in a decade to see what the interesting things about this image will be in hindsight of the change that is sure to come.

Marthas Vineyard Ektachromes

Here are a few slides from the first roll of Ektachrome I've shot. Its expensive, £15 a roll + processing, so was quite an indulgence for mainly family snapshots with my Nikon F4. The colours are nice and punchy when exposed well and for the most part the matrix meter in the F4 did a good job of getting the exposure right. I picked up 3 more rolls in the US as its slightly cheaper over there and hope to try and get some carefully taken shots soon.

Oak Bluffs on Tri-X

Oak Bluffs is a town that was planned for tourism, originally incorporated as "Cottage City" in reference to the mid-late 19th century cottages that adorn the town. I took my Nikon FE out with the second roll of Tri-X loaded since purchasing it. This film stock is becoming a favourite of mine over TMax 400, the grain is more lively and produces that great documentary feel that it is famous for. TMax is cleaner to me, which is no bad thing, but the grittier look of Tri-X is a rendering that I am currently enjoying alot. All of these were scanning with the Nikon LS-4000 at 4000dpi. Whilst I am constantly worried this old scanner will break down on me, the scans it produces has brought me back in wanting to use 35mm more as the quality is so much better than scanning 35mm on my Epson v500 flatbed.

A foggy morning promised a good opportunity to get out into town early, but alas I was a bit too slow and it cleared shortly after the above capture. Later I was drawn to the piers and rocky jetties for some long exposures with my recently ordered 52mm BW ND10x. In a rookie move I had bought an ND8 and in a moment of elusive knowledge I got it in my head this was a 8 stop filter. Of course its only a 3 stop blocker and so an order to B&H was required. On the upside I now have a full filter set in 52mm - perfect for my Nikons and their Ai lenses, and a 77mm set that I will continue to use primarily on my Bronica.

Is the Nikon FE the best SLR?

Sure, its a sensational headline, pulled right out of the clickbait SEO guidebook. But a few months ago in a dazed splurge on that well known auction site I ended up with a FE arriving at my door some 3 days later. Whilst the acknowledgement that I've become somewhat of a Nikon collector these days will likely come in a later post, I thought I'd write something on the FE. During the initial 3 rolls its consumed on my behalf it has quickly endeared itself to me.

So why such a bold statement? The relatively compact size, vast lens compatibility and aperture priority mode make it a winner for me. The first two points are ones that had already made the FM a favourite already. The body weighs in at 0.59kg (thats 22% less than a F3HP or 30% less than an F2). And you can use any lens Nikon has made with an aperture ring since 1958 (the folding Ai tab permits pre-AI lenses to be mounted and metering is then requires using the DOF preview lever to stop down the lens). I used to think the FM, being fully mechanical, was more impressive. If I ran out of batteries I could carry on capturing images. This has happened to me before with my F3 but luckily I was in the US where replacement batteries are easily available from common stores like CVS. In a different country perhaps this would have ended my quest to capture photons. The FE requiring a battery with charge to fire the shutter ends up not so big of a deal, and in my humble opinion worth it for the benefit of aperture priority mode. Yes, I could live without it, but I sure get good use out of it. The other big winner for me over the FM would be the needle display for the meter output in the viewfinder. The FM has a simple LED showing +/o/- which doesn't help to show you how many stops you are off from the current reading. This is probably my biggest gripe with the FM, aside from the fact that mine has a contact issue on the Ai ring that screws out the meter reading sometimes.

There you have it. Maybe the Nikon FE is the best SLR one can buy. Even if it isn't, its hard to dispute that at around £80 for a decent example, this is one of the best value ways you can shoot Nikon glass on 35mm film.

What happens when you don't develop Cinestill 800T promptly?

Its a luxury to have enough cameras that a roll of film can languish for a year and a half without being finished. I'd wanted to try out some Cinestill 800T and had grand ideas of low light shots in and around London so I promptly loaded it in my relatively new (to me) Nikon F4 and went out and got a few shots one evening after work. However the longer nights soon came and I never prioritised getting out to really try out some shots with this film. So it sat there for a year and a half before I picked up a Hoya 81B filter so that I could use in natural light, get the roll finished and enable me to use the F4 once again with some Portra or Ektar. The manufacturers website for the film couldn't be clearer: "The new boxed CineStill film has a 2 year shelf life, and should be stored in the fridge and shot within 6 months of purchase to achieve optimal results"

But instead of wasting the roll I figured I'd get it processed anyway and see what came back. As you can see, weird stuff happens. I'm not sure what that red line is as I'm pretty sure my F4 doesn't have a light leak. The roll was professionally processed by my normal lab and the weird bubbling in the emulsion is only present on the first section of the film which was mostly, although not exclusively, exposed around 1.5 years before it was developed. To my surprise though the latter section of the film actually came out ok and with some pretty decent colours (using Negative Lab Pro to convert a positive scan with a Nikon LS-4000).

Colours of Banality

The magic of photographers like Eggleston, Herzog and Haas is to capture scenes that we would casually pass by without any other thought than apparent normality but to their eye they see some form of intrigue or beauty. Most often it is the colour that makes the scene remarkable, perhaps a vibrancy in the various tones that evade you in reality. Its a form of photography I am fond of observing, and whilst I don't believe I've got quite the eye as these masters, they certainly do inspire me to press the shutter at scenes I would have previously not even noticed.

Photographs of products and advertisements age well. As do cars and people's fashion. The changing styles will look more intriguing as time passes through a decade or more. But its the first picture of the painted wall behind the dilapidated basketball hoop that I like the most here. Captured on my Olympus 35RC with cheap Kodak Colorplus film on a bright sunny London afternoon the orange and teal really stand out to me. Decaying paint is also another subject I'm drawn to, and American fire hydrants make for good subjects for this. Finally a sunny day with a rusty BBQ and some condiments finish the set. Aside from the top image the rest were captured with my trust Nikon FM and Portra 400.