Testing, Testing - Baldessa 1a

First time out with the shiny new Baldessa camera and I’m already a huge fan. As a test roll I loaded the camera with a full '36' of Fujicolour 200, my film of choice from the pre-digital days when it seemed to have a bit more colour than the Kodak equivalent, I’m not sure that’s true now, or ever was to be honest.

As predicted, the camera was a total pleasure to use. Fully manual of course, so everything that's required to operate the FED, just that little bit easier. The aperture and shutter speed rings are a bit fiddly it's true, the push button to lock the two together isn’t really necessary in my view, but once these are set you’re ready to focus, shoot, and wind-on with ease. The viewfinder is big and bright, and the Rangefinder works well although the vertical images don’t quite line up so may need adjusting if that's possible.

When focussing, the front mounted wheel is just where your index finger sits naturally, ready to move down to the shutter release, and the wind-on mechanism feels so well engineered and satisfying to use you’ll be itching to take way more photos than strictly necessary. I started off taking way more photos than necessary in Leicester, in some cases re-taking shots I'd tried with the infamous 'already exposed' film. There used to be a nice modern sculpture called The Clicker outside the IBM Building (below) on the city's historic New Walk, sadly that's gone with just the example shown above by John Atkin, which overlooks the Midland Mainline (left), to excite us modernists. The IBM building itself, whilst appearing totally out of place on the New Walk, is an exciting enough subject for fans of C20 buildings and photographers alike.

The garden is always a good place for photographic subjects, albeit these 45/50mm vintage cameras are not ideal for the kind of closeup 'macro' shots that gardening magazines and websites demand. On a bright day though, a garden offers plenty in the way of colour and contrast, excellent for seeing what a lens can deliver with a decent low-grain colour film.

Oakham's most notable modern sculpture is a bronze of the Queen with her Corgis. I'm not a fan it must be said, much preferring this tiled relief by Martin Minshall on the wall of what is now a B&M store.

Atychodracon fossil, nicknamed The Barrow Kipper, displayed at Leicester New Walk Museum. This was as much of the beast as I could frame at 45mm, but I'm pleased with the result. This and the scan below have been 'monochromed' in the edit.

Class 50 Locomotive 50008 'Thunderer', long evening exposure at Leicester Rail Station

Balda Baldessa 1a - A Curvy Camera Curiosity

It’s a claim I often make when discussing my hobbies and (numerous) specialist interests. Yes, of course I like to acquire things, quite a lot of things in truth, but that doesn’t in fact make me a collector, no-no!*. Just the right number of things to satisfy an interest, and no more. A 'roundabout' figure that leaves plenty of room for casual acquisition, but precludes the mission creep of actual collecting.

I will claim, if asked…

So how many film cameras does a level-headed chap need to adequately indulge his passion? One of everything? Several iterations of a particular model? One example of each format?… Well for me, it's one slightly difficult one, and an easier one as a spare, but ask me again in (say) 12 months time and we’ll see where we are eh!

The trouble is that temptation lies around every corner, particularly if you’re no stranger to Flea Markets, Car Boots, and the multiverse of High Street Charity Shops. And of course many vintage film cameras are quite cheap, often ridiculously so, which is hardly fair!

I acquired my 'spare' from an eye-catching window display in a nearby charity shop. First choice was a smart looking minimalist Minolta that proved too lightweight and plasticky for my taste. It also required batteries, I don’t do batteries. A big old clunky Zenit SLR, some Instamatics, a couple of Box Brownies, several uninspiring 80’s Point and Shoots, none of which hit the spot. A curvy German Rangefinder for just £20 however...

There's already a fair bit of discussion online about the Balda ‘Baldessa’ series of cameras, for the most part it’s all quite positive. Like me they find the curved body of the camera attractive and nice to hold, and whilst the layout is undeniably quirky, it's also regarded as being surprisingly intuitive in use, a rare example of good original design. The lens and photographic quality are apparently quite decent, helped along by a 45mm Fixed Lens which achieves focus by moving the whole lens and shutter mechanism as a single unit, rather than adjusting separate elements of the optics. This one is a Baldessa 1a, the mid-point between the original Zone Focussing camera introduced in 1957, and the 1b which comes with a Selenium Light Meter. The combined Rangefinder and viewing window on the 1a is big and bright, and given that I use a Light Meter app for setting exposure I'm happy to have this particular model.

10 minutes of fiddling and firing the camera in the shop confirmed that everything seemed to be working well. I can confirm that if you ever get a chance to play with a Baldessa yourself, you too will surely want to own one, they really are a fun camera to use.

So, what else can I say about this lovely little camera that hasn't already been said before? The Leather Case?… I’m left with telling you about the leather case. Yes, it really has come to this. An absolute clunker of solid German engineering. Hard brown leather, soft velvet lining, a crash-proof strip of Aluminium around the edge. A proper Volvo of a camera case. Ugly, functional, safe as houses, and I absolutely hate it and all cases like it!

Nobody seems to have mentioned the little Three Leaf Shutter logo on the Shutter Speed ring of the lens, so I'll mention it. This is the logo for the Gauthier company which designed the Prontor-SVS Shutter that these cameras use to good effect, AGC being the abbreviation for Alfred Gauthier, founder of the company in Calmbach, Germany.

Of course the only way to be sure a vintage camera works as it should do is to load it up with film, and shoot it off. Shoot like crazy as it happens because I need to trial the camera ahead of a music festival I'm going to this week. So I took it out for a long walk in tandem with the FED, a Fujiclolour 200 for the German camera, a Kentmere Pan 100 for the Soviet model. Needless to say the Baldessa takes a roll of film without any of the fiddle, faff, and pliers of the FED, a strong factor in deciding which camera I end up taking to the festival, although in truth I may just take them both.

[*I am of course, most men are to be fair]

Looking Down On Life - An Adams & Co Viewfinder

Another day, another Viewfinder to look into. A particularly nice one at that, proper solid Brass with no less than three glass lenses, and a bona fide antique as far as I can tell. They certainly knew how to build these things back then, though I have to say this was clearly not built for a 35mm compact camera.

How do I know this? Well, Adams & Co, the London company that made these patented viewfinders, doesn’t seem to have survived as a significant manufacturing company into the era of compact cameras. Their forte was building high-end Plate Cameras in the early days of photography, which is presumably what this Viewfinder was designed for. The big giveaway though is the mounting ‘foot’ which is clearly not designed to fit a standard cold shoe, and one of the reasons I decided on the risky move of disassembling my example. Another reason is that I like disassembling things, and maybe the optics would benefit from a bit of a clean and polish.

As it was, all three of the Viewfinder’s glass optics were fine, even the 100+ year old mirror was merely showing its age in that rather attractive way old mirrors do, perfectly useable with just a few spots where the mirroring has perished over the years. Needless to say the brass case is missing one of its teeny-tiny screws, a screw I'll probably never find a replacement for. Why do these things always have a screw missing?

So all that really needed doing was some serious adjustment to the steel foot so it would sit comfortably into a Cold Shoe, ideally somewhat proud of the camera’s body so it wouldn’t interfere with the Shutter Dial. I’d like to say this was a precision job, fully respecting the age of a delicate antique instrument. In truth it was a 'bend-and-hope' job with a pair of old pliers, because the even tinier screws holding the steel strip to the bottom of the brass casing couldn’t be shifted so I had to do it in situ, not ideal!

Mission accomplished though, albeit that the whole thing rocks a little on the cold shoe so needs a little finessing yet. The image is satisfyingly bright and clear and gives approximately the same 50mm view as the FED’s own viewer. It also looks OK on the camera.

Best of all though, those technical wizards at Adams & Co designed their Viewfinder with a mask that can be rotated to show the field of view in Portrait (left), or more handily from the perspective of my cameras, Landscape (below). It's a bit stiff but it works, and means that unlike my other Waist Level Viewer, I shouldn't have to add my own framing lines to a lens

Kodak - Who Loves Ya Baby?

So, the final 'final' expired film, which of course means the point has now been reached where I run out of excuses and need to start delivering competent images on fresh new film stock...

This Kodak Colour Plus 200 is a mere 16 years past it's 'Develop By' date, so after the total fail of the previous ancient roll I was feeling reasonably optimistic about this one. Optimistic and a little more confident with the camera it has to be said. Some of the learning of the last few weeks include a sneaking suspicion that the FED's Shutter Speeds may be a smidge slower than advertised. I'm finding that the negatives appear slightly over-exposed to my eye. Better than under-exposed of course, most of the information is there, it just needs 'tweaking' out with the editing software. Nevertheless, it's annoying, and may go some way to explain the slightly less than sharp results on some of these photos (below).

More often than not I've been shooting at my personal favourite shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, often the best I can manage without the use of a tripod on less sunny days. If this speed is in fact a bit sluggish, camera shake when shooting could be an issue, particularly given that the shutter itself on this old Soviet camera is hardly the smooth and quiet type. So with the bright days of Summer 2026 approaching I'll likely start using 1/100th as my minimum hand-held setting for this camera, and may have to start squeezing the Aperture in a half-stop or so to compensate for any potentially lazy shutter speeds. 

Another thing is a better understanding of what this camera is actually good for. My understanding is that the original Leica II camera that this FED-1 aimed to copy was marketed as a camera suitable for 'Architectural' photography, which I guess also includes Landscapes, and what we now know as Street Photography aka. Social Documentary. Portraiture, indoor subjects, sporting and other 'action' shots are entirely possible on a camera like this, but perhaps not ideal subjects, and of course macro photography with the standard 50mm lens is totally out of the question.

So I’m beginning to tailor my subjects to things that interest me, obviously, but not so much capturing ‘movement’, or straightforward close detail ‘objects’. Shapes, patterns, geometry, subjects with context in the landscape, these are the kind of things I like and that the camera is good at.

It’s also quite a slow camera to operate, a major part of the appeal of a fully manual film camera of course, but I now have a second vintage camera (above), also a fully manual Rangefinder, but slightly better designed for faster use. All the better to capture those fast moving Morris Dancers…

The Judith Stone, a Glacial Erratic boulder in a field between Market Harborough and East Farndon village, believed to have been named after Countess Judith, niece of William the Conqueror who allocated land in Farndon to her following the Battle of Hastings.

These two 'monochromed' subjects are from a stroll around Kettering General Hospital. The ever-evolving architecture of older hospital sites are full of geometric 'shapes and angles' like this. 

Demolition work in the centre of Northampton Town is exposing hitherto difficult to frame subjects like this block of flats, previously obscured to long-range views. I would have liked to linger on this subject a bit longer, but shortly after I took this photo there was a cloudburst that sent everyone scuttling into nearby shops, and me to the car and back home.

Idle time in the pub is often a good time to play with the camera, but low light levels mean I've struggled to exploit these (many) opportunities. Shooting out of a 'branded' window on a greyish day in my local Beerhouse means there's plenty of light to play with, and a good opportunity to play with depth of field.

More 'shapes and angles' at Kettering Hospital

Ghost Signs are a favourite subject if you can frame them well with a 50mm lens. These two in Northampton have come out far better than my previous efforts in Bedford.

Undecent Exposure

The perils of using long-expired 35mm Film are well known to photographers, but probably worth the risk if the price is right. This one cost just a pound from a local flea market, expiry date unknown. Could have been stored in an oven for all I know, but just a pound, so even with the cost of developing factored in, probably worth the risk.

If your film roll comes without the original box however, as this one did, even a pound might be pushing it. Because I've now discovered to my dismay that the appearance of a tail of film stock protruding from the canister is no guarantee that the film hasn't already been exposed.

When I received these scans from my trusted local developer, my first reaction was that they'd sent me someone else's photos, an embarrassing mistake if true. But no, closer inspection revealed that this was the film I'd run through the FED, but sadly for me someone else had already run it through their camera first! Sad too for whoever took the original photos, a series of family snaps that I obviously won't be displaying on here, and the identity of which will probably never be known.

The three images I've chosen here, whilst clearly double exposed, don't feature anything recognisably personal from the original exposures. I'm quite pleased with the framing of Foxton Locks (above), but there appears to be a landscape with houses there too, definitely not Foxton Locks. The Oakham Peacock (below) has come out better than most, albeit with some strange architecture and lighting that shouldn't be there, but my atmospheric photo of the Skittles Table at the Alexandra Arms in Kettering (bottom) is just a bizarre collage of who knows what, where, or indeed why. Even the Skittles Pins are a bit shaky-camera! Oh well, I'm pleased to say that my final-final expired film has produced much better results...

Lilac Whine - The Penultimate Expired Film

Now that I'm getting slightly more confident with the camera, it's time to get more adventurous with the photos. Sadly the long-expired film I used for these pics didn't get the memo. This image (right) is of one of my favourite Modernist buildings, the Italian Church of St Frances Cabrini in Bedford. Now there's obviously a user mis-op issue here, one of many for this roll it has to be said, but I've included this as an example of the overall colour of most of these scans, and because I quite like it in a 'Cool Album Cover' kinda way. So we're in a rich Lilac area for these scans, occasionally interesting, generally not. I've turned to editing software to bring out their best, some of which I had high hopes for after a long walk through Rutland countryside. Ah well!...

Monochrome is often your saviour when the colours are so shot they're beyond repair, perhaps Sepia would suit this old Bakery Shop signage even better (above). Note the small 'speck' top right, more of which later.

This terribly out of focus image of a Bedford Ghost Sign (left) shows what happens when for some inexplicable reason you forget to extend the lens before taking a shot. It doesn't matter how tight you screw down the aperture, it's never going to focus like that. Bedford has a number of truly impressive Ghost Signs, including the famous Bovril/Greys Cigarettes examples shown below. Once again the 50mm Lens made it difficult to get a good angle on this, but no excuses, this is without a doubt the worst photo I've ever taken of this gem, maybe go see it for yourself.

Slightly better for the Garlick Bros example, but that Speck again! The fact is I forgot to re-engage the re-wind release lever initially, so not only was the film advance not being assisted by sprockets, it also served to shred a small piece of the film that obviously hung around in the chamber. Ouch! All cleared now with no apparent damage to the shutter curtains or mechanism. Phew!

There now follows some accurately focussed and nicely framed images from my walk up hill and down valley in Rutland. These should have been so much better, but that's the risk of using expired film. There are other, even worse risks with expired film, as you’ll see with my next ‘£1 from a Flea Market’ roll…

What A Waist-Level Viewer

More cheap and cheerful Viewer fun, very cheap as it happens. Just £5 for the basic, optically compromised unit, and another couple of quid for a new mirror cannibalised from a Trinket box, and the cold shoe 'foot' from a broken Prinz Jupiter Flash Unit. I don’t charge for my time obvs'…

'Another Viewer', I hear you say. What's so special about this one that I need yet another unnecessary accessory, I hear you grumble. Well, this one offers the hitherto unavailable function of 'Waist-level Viewfinding', all the rage with today's Street Photography buffs, apparently.

In the days of early photography, when cameras were basically pieces of exotic wooden furniture with a lens, it wasn't practical to raise a camera to eye level without the aid of an assistant or heavyweight wooden tripod. Framing from a position crouched behind the photographic plate, and hidden underneath a black cloth, is familiar to us from old films, but with the introduction of Twin Lens Reflex cameras it became much easier to frame your view from above via the 45 degree mirror of a Waist Level Viewfinder. The introduction of 'compact' 35mm cameras changed all that of course, it became standard practice to shoot at eye-level using whatever viewfinder arrangement the camera had, but 35mm didn't entirely supersede these earlier, bulkier formats. Medium Format cameras still have a huge following for their superior image quality for example, and whilst they can be quite compact, the use of a waist-level viewer is pretty-much standard.

Some modern day 35mm SLR cameras come with an option to view-find from above like this, and whilst not nearly as common, Waist-level Viewfinders are also available as accessories, often quite old accessories, as is the case with my example which was presumably designed for use with a Medium Format camera.

My £5 got me a really nice example, missing a mounting foot, and with the kind of 'distressed' mirror (right) that antiques dealers love, but will get optics fans grinding their teeth. So the first job was to cut a new mirror, an easy enough job with a glass cutting tool (although the glass could have done with being a smidge thinner). Thankfully the lens is in much better shape, just as well because grinding and polishing lenses is beyond my skill. Superglue is our friend now, that and a set of those tiny jewellers screwdrivers, all the better to remove the four teeny-tiny screws holding it all together, one of which needless to say, has little in the way of a surviving 'slot'. (Grr!)

Next up, the tricky job of fitting the cannibalised steel mounting foot to the base of the pressed steel casing. First a bit of amputation (left), then an additional hole drilled in the right area to screw to the viewer body, allowing plenty of space for the rotating clamp that secures the foot to the camera's cold shoe to still work. Spoiler Alert: It didn't allow enough space, and after a Superglue incident that we won't talk about the rotating clamp had to be removed. (Bah!). So just another hour or so of precision screwing, bolting and swearing, and it all came together nicely.

The Foot sits a little too loosely in the Cold Shoe, but that's easily remedied, and the whole thing sits a little higher than I'd like, but well clear of the Shutter Dial which is a good thing. Of course keen eyed readers will note that the image is not the 36x24 'landscape' of the camera's field of view. So I'll need to spend some time with the camera bolted to a tripod, comparing the view from the camera's own viewfinder with that of the Waist-level Viewer, and carefully marking the correct field of view on the top lens. I can then take it for a spin...