Jonathan's blog

Hana went to a car boot sale recently. I half-jokingly asked her to pick up anything photographic if it was cheap, hoping to sell it on eBay for a few quid (and maybe even use it).

Girl done good – she found a early 1960s Braun Paxette Electromatic II for not many pounds. The seller assured her it was fully working, so she bought it.

Braun Paxette Electromatic II

The camera

For those that aren’t familiar with the Paxette series of cameras (I had never even heard of them until this week!) the Paxette Electromatic II has a fixed shutter speed of 1/40s and a variable aperture between f/2.8 and f/22.

It has a crude light meter which shows a red marker in the viewfinder if the light is insufficient and a green marker if there’s enough illumination. I think it’s broken on mine, because it always shows red. I don’t mind though, because it almost feels like cheating to use any electronic or automatic features on a camera like this. I will use the sunny 16 rule to help me expose the photos properly.

Unfortunately it seems quite hard to find much information about it on the Internet. Almost all information refers to the Paxette Electromatic I which seems to be a very similar camera, except with fixed focus. You can tell the I and the II apart because the I has striped ridges around the barrel of its lens while the II has a slanted chrome ring, which also twists for focussing.

Mending it

All day I was hopping with excitement until I got my hands on it. Unfortunately the shutter mechanism seemed to be jammed. Unlike many modern cameras, the shutter is composed of 5 or 6 metal leaves that open in the same way as the aperture leaves. I couldn’t find any service manuals online (without paying – bah) and my heart sank. Anyone who knows me will tell you I have as much dexterity and patience as I have oestrogen. But I thought “what’s the worst that can happen?” and went to fetch my precision screwdrivers.

I wasn’t able to get into the back of the camera because it was very well put together, to say the least. But it didn’t take too much work to get the various elements of the lens out, and I poked the shutter leaves with a tiny screwdriver and suddenly they pinged into place. Apparently they had simply seized up from lack of use. I reassembled the lens in reverse order.

Results

I shot a roll of Ilford Delta 100 black & white film in it, and this evening I developed the film. The results are quite nice. Most of the outdoor shots are overexposed, so I guess everyone else’s definition of “Slight overcast” is different from mine. I’ll know for next time – shoot one stop slower.

A greater shortcoming of this particular set of photos is the focus. The camera has a viewfinder so you don’t get to see the results of your focussing. The focus ring has numbers printed on it – the distance to your subject in feet or metres. I just guessed (or paced) how far it was in each case. Apparently the focus ring is not at all accurate, so most of the portraits and other close-ups are quite badly out of focus. The landscapes and architecture (effectively at ∞) are in pretty good focus.

As I mentioned above, the shutter has a fixed speed of 1/40s. This is a pretty slow shutter speed, and through most of my film there is a fairly large amount of camera shake. Obviously I could use a tripod or monopod to steady the camera, but there is no self timer. It looks like there might be a small hole for a cable release, but it’s filled with half a century’s worth of fluff.

I’ve published all the best photos from this roll of film on my photo blog.

Other thoughts

Loading film into this camera is an absolute pain. It doesn’t hook into the spool very strongly and kept pinging off as I tried to wind the film onto it. Eventually I managed, and closed the back of the camera. I shot about half a dozen frames and then the film apparently became unhooked again. No idea how – you’d think the film being wrapped around the spool several times would be enough. So I couldn’t wind it on, but I couldn’t wind it back either, because it had got snagged somehow and rewinding it tore the sprocket holes out of the film. I had to open the back, ruin all the photos I’d taken so far, cut the spoiled film off, snip the corner off to make a new leader, and reload the film. This time it stuck. Next time I will probably stick it to the spool with a square of sellotape.

Winding the film on doesn’t always advance it by the same amount. Some of my frames were touching, instead of leaving a few millimetres between frames. Not the end of the world – just makes it a bit annoying to scan because my filmstrip holder has a plastic frame round the edge of each picture.

In future I will be using a tripod with this camera, because the 1/40s shutter speed is just too slow for the focal length of the lens. I also noticed by looking at the inside of the shutter (without film) that you can take long exposures by holding the shutter release.

I will calibrate the focus (or at least figure out by how much it’s out). This should be quite straightforward, simply by opening the back of the camera and holding some tracing paper where the film would be. I can place a subject precisely 5m away from the camera (for example) and then see what the focus ring needs to be set to in order to achieve focus at that range. It might even be possible to adjust the alignment of the focus ring.

This review might sound negative. But it’s anything but! If I want an accurate camera with perfect focus and exposure that’s right every time, I can using my DSLR. Which is boring. This camera is fun, and I will be using it again!

In today’s day and age of convenience, you might ask why bother using film to take photographs?

After all, a digital camera is cheap and easy. You can take hundreds of photos of anything you like. You can take photos like mad without thinking, and hope one turns out alright. You can delete the poor ones. What could be better?

This is why I have preferred to use my 35mm film camera in preference to my digital camera recently.

Each time I press the shutter on my film camera, I know it’s going to cost me something like 30p in the cost of buying the film, and developing it. So I think twice before I press the button, and the simple act of thinking a second time usually means my photos come out better. I make sure the composure is right, that the lighting is OK and that I haven’t made some mistake that I’ll regret later.

On top of that, I can only get 24 or 36 photos on a roll of film. Sure, I can change films on the move, but this limitation means I don’t want to waste all my exposures. So I save them for something worth taking a photo of.

And besides all the benefits of better photography, it’s fun to  develop a black and white film in my bathroom. I find it so satisfying to take a photo on a camera that is fully manual, take the film out, develop it, and then scan it, and the image on the screen has been almost entirely my own work. No assistance from a microprocessor that thinks it knows best.

Clearly film photography isn’t for everyone, and it’s not for every occasion. I still use digital for my Photo Challenge entries where it’s essential to get them from the camera to the web as fast as possible. But if you fancy learning to become a better photographer, then film is a great tutor. Why not have a look at some old cameras on eBay?

After I posted the other day about building a pinhole camera, I immediately ordered a body cap from eBay. Last night it arrived, and here’s how I made my pinhole camera.

Making the pinhole “lens”

Not only do pinholes have to be tiny in diameter, they should also be made through a thin material. I didn’t even attempt to make a pinhole directly in the body cap. I drilled a 10mm hole and superglued a piece of tin foil over the hole. Using a fine pin, I made a small hole.

Front of pinhole lens

Rear of pinhole lens

Uh, that’s it. Most guides I write have more steps than this, but making a pinhole “lens” for an SLR really is this easy.

What’s the f-number?

The formula for working out the f-number is pretty simple:

           focal length
f-stop = -----------------
         aperture diameter

The aperture diameter is the diameter of the pinhole, and the focal length is the distance between the film and the pinhole.

The Canon AE-1 Program has a small mark on the side to indicate the position of the film plane. The rough distance between this mark and the pinhole is 36mm. Getting a decent estimate of the pinhole is a little trickier, as I need to measure the diameter of the pinhole. The best I could come up with was to take a picture of the pinhole next to a ruler with my Fuji S9600 and a macro lens.

The pinhole

I reckon that’s approximately 0.2mm across.

          36
f-stop = ----- = 180
          0.2

So this is a pretty tiny aperture, and we are going to need long exposures to get it to make a decent picture on film.

Earlier on I pointed the camera out of my window. With the shutter set to its slowest value of 2 seconds, the meter reckoned it wanted an aperture of 8. 180 is 22 times greater than 8, so I need to make my shutter 22 times longer than 2. So we are talking 40-odd seconds for outdoor landscape photography in daylight on ISO200 film. In lower light conditions and perhaps on ISO125 film (such as my Ilford FP4) it’s easy to see that I might need to expose for 2 or 3 minutes.

Although 2 seconds is the longest my SLR can do automatically, it has a mode where the photographer can hold the shutter release for as long as necessary. Never thought I’d need a stopwatch for my photography!

My 35mm pinhole camera

The advantage of making a removable pinhole lens is that I can carry it around and easily change between lenses.

Keep an eye on my photo blog. When I’ve got this film developed I’ll scan and post the pinhole images there.

Update: I have now uploaded some of the pinhole photos.

Since I started playing with 35mm photography a few weeks ago, I’ve been using Snappy Snaps near Clifton Down shopping centre. It came with the recommendation of a friend.

I’ve simply been asking them to develop the film into negatives and then I’ve been scanning the negatives myself. But I noticed that the first few rolls had scratches and dirt on them. Today when I went to pick up the latest roll, they were still finishing with it when I turned up, so I was able to watch.

The film came snaking out of the machine, and the guy working there yanked it out, treating it with all the care you’d think more appropriate for a roll of toilet paper. He put his fingers all over the film, making no attempt to handle it by the edges.

When he came to cut the film into strips, again he handled the film by touching it all over and cut it roughly. I noticed that one of his cuts went diagonally and took thin strips off the edges of two frames.

I’m no expert on film, but it seems pretty common sense to me that you should handle something as delicate as film with care, and not put fingerprints all over it. It’s not like it’s difficult to hold it by the edges, either.

Accredited professional photographer Glen Smith recommends treating negatives in the following way:

Negatives are particularly subject to damage. The smallest spot of dust, scratch or finger print will be enlarged many times when the negative is printed. Always handle negatives by the edges. A finger print on a negative can ruin a print. Negatives can be gently wiped to remove fingerprints but then there is the risk of scratches. Clean white cotton gloves are ideal if not always practical.

This is exactly what anyone with common sense would suggest as a sensible way of caring for negatives, too.

So now I know how my films get damaged during processing, and I think it’s safe to say I won’t be going to Snappy Snaps at Clifton Down again.

Update: There is an example of a scratched negative here on my photo blog.

When digital cameras came out, people hailed it as a great revolution. You could now take thousands of holiday pictures and simply delete the ones you didn’t like. While this is certainly a bonus for some, it can encourage the photographer to be lazy about setting up the scene properly.

My first “real” camera was a digital one. I do try to think about the composition, the lighting and other things. But often I end up going with the trial-and-error approach, and sometimes for photos like this one I would take hundreds of photos with slightly different settings, just to get the perfect shot.

Since I’ve started using a 35mm SLR, I’ve noticed I think much more carefully when taking photos. Naturally, you think twice before pressing the shutter when you know that it will cost you 25p to do so. I tend to take only one or possibly two photos of the same subject, which makes me carefully consider everything.

This can only be a good thing!

The downside is that it can take a while to fill a roll of film, as I have to have up to  36 pieces of inspiration before I can get the film processed When I get my current film done, I’m looking forward to seeing some of the shots I’ve taken over the last few days.

That is, I wish I wasn’t a cretin when I was a child.

I have an archive of hundreds of photos that I took as a child on various single-use cameras. I’ve scanned in the 6″x4″ prints over the past few weeks and they’ve come out as well as can be expected for grubby, well-handled photos with an inexpensive flatbed scanner.

But last month I bought a 35mm scanner, mainly to scan in new negatives that I will be taking with my 35mm SLR. I’ve also used it to scan in the old negatives. Trouble is, as a cretinous child I had no idea how to look after negatives and I didn’t realise the significance of preserving them. In 1990, who’d have thought that almost two decades later I would want to scan them in?

The negatives are extremely scratched and fingerprinted. The scratches are too wide for infrared scratch removal to be of much assistance. Shame, as it is now impossible for me to have a perfect digital copy of the photos I took all those years ago.

Having said that, the scratches don’t ruin the photos for me. If a stranger were to look at the scans, the first thing they would notice would be the appalling condition. But for me, the photos still conjure up memories of family holidays, weddings and school trips past – regardless of the scratches. In that way, they are still doing their job perfectly.

Today my new 35mm scanner arrived – a Plustek OpticFilm 7200.

The 7200 is the bottom of its range, but perfect for my needs. All of the scanners in the range have the same optical resolution, but some offer features such as iSRD infrared dust and scratch removal, or MultiExposure where the scanner makes 4 images and combines them to reduce noise.

As I’m scanning brand new negatives, I don’t plan to scratch them or let them get dusty. The MultiExposure might have been nice, but it nearly doubled the price of the basic 7200 model, which set me back just £115 from Amazon.

First impressions

Opening, the box I was impressed straight away. Obviously the basic were there: the scanner, power and USB cables but there was also a padded carry case.

The build quality of the scanner definitely puts it in the realm of home users but it’s perfectly fine.

There are two plastic trays: one that can take four slides and one that can take a strip of up to six negatives. I was a little disappointed by the negative tray, as it didn’t have the “dots” to help the film keep aligned and it can be tricky to get the film into it, especially if it’s new film that still has a tendency to curl.

When sliding the trays into the scanner, you can feel it “bump” into notches so it sits in the right place. These notches aren’t as precise as I would like and you can’t always tell if you are exactly in the right place until you’ve done a preview scan.

The software

According to this page, the OpticFilm 7200 is not supported by any SANE backend, and therefore cannot be used with Linux. Shame.

Installation on Windows was easy enough, although the supplied SilverFast software has a distinct “Windows 3.1″ look and feel about it. It works well enough though and after a few minutes of playing I worked out most of the important features.

Image quality

So far I’ve scanned two rolls of film and I’ve been impressed with the results. I’ve been scanning at 3600dpi which gives a resolution of round about 17-18 megapixels. Saved as a TIFF, this takes up about 55MB.

The built-in sharpening feature does a good job – I can’t tell that my scans have been sharpened which is a relief. Some sharpening software overdoes it and you end up with unsightly artefacts.

The colours are good so long as you’ve done all of these:

• Chosen the right film manufacturer
• Chosen the right film type
• Chosen the right ISO film speed
• Done a prescan to allow SilverFast to calibrate itself

In extremely over- or under-exposed photos, the software can do some funny things with the exposure. But I guess the moral of that story is to expose your photos properly…

The photos I’ve scanned so far have either been on old, grainy film or not focussed properly so it’s hard to tell how sharp the scans are. Except that some of my old negatives from a disposable camera had scratches, and these showed up lovely and sharp in the scans!

Conclusion

This scanner is fantastic value for the money.

Sharpness, colours and dynamic range are all very good.

Serious users should consider getting one of the higher scanners with iSRD and MultiExposure which will help with image quality even more. And they still don’t cost ridiculous amounts.

Sample

I took this picture recently with a Canon AE-1 Program 35mm SLR, using a 50mm prime lens and ISO400 Fuji Superia film.

Unfortunately the lab who processed the film also scratched it, which is pretty annoying. But it demonstrates how sharp the scanner is, and highlights the reason for buying a scanner with iSRD.

Flowers