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...

Straw Inspiring - Whittlesey 2026

Before we get on to the second of three films that were very much showing their age, some light relief in the form of the one that actually came out well. As we know, expired film can be a bit of a lottery, you wouldn't use it for the important shoots in life, but a trip to the annual Straw Bear shenanigans in Whittlesey-on-the-Fens is just what this camera was made for.

First a few shots around Stamford that demonstrate some of the limitations of this camera and its user. A rare overcast but rain-free day, certainly nothing like sunshine to break the monotony of grey Winter tones. Even the colour splash this old pub window brings to the town (right) has struggled to escape from its dull surround. There is colour to be found though, within the jolly environs of the Kings Head, if only I could capture it in focus.

I've not had much success with taking film photos inside the pub (above), dark spaces that are full of interest but... dark. A flash is out of the question for all kinds of reasons, but principally because this camera doesn't have a flash trigger, the way I'd have to do it would be intrusive and give poor results without decent equipment set up. Besides, the FED has a fully working 'Z' (aka. 'B') shutter speed setting, and I've had very good results from long exposures with the old Olympus PEN over the years. A slow-ish lens on this camera means that exposures can be quite long though. Long enough that I should probably use a tripod and cable release but I'm not one for setting up tripods in busy pubs. I'll be looking out for a cable release though, because balancing the camera on a pint glass may by an acceptable solution for stability, holding the shutter release down for several shaky seconds clearly isn't.

Here's another photo that displays the limits of the FED as a handheld camera. I was keen to get a photo of this Ghost Sign, located in one of the many narrow alleyways between Broad Street and High Street in Stamford. This was the best angle on the sign that I could achieve with a 50mm lens, and the low light of a narrow alleyway is once again not my friend. Neither is the wide-open aperture required to get anywhere near a reasonable hand-held shutter speed. Hence some of this is in focus, most of it not so much. Ho-hum!

Straw Bear day dawned bright, wonderfully sunny, and not nearly as 'Fenland' cold as I've experienced in previous years. A truly wonderful day of Morris, Molly, Sword, Clog, and Garland dancing. There's something of a 'Pagan' feel to the Saturday of this annual 'Tuesday following Plough Monday' event, helped in part by the copious amount of beer consumed on the day. I got good pictures of the Bears, but not on the film camera as they were moving fast through the town and my camera work was necessarily slow. On balance though, reasonably pleased with this old roll of film, nice colour, sharp enough when correctly focussed, a good subject for faster shutter speeds on a sunny day.

Cocked this one up a bit, and really bad scratching too.

Lomography - A Warning From The Past!

Three expired films went in to be developed, just one of which delivered good results, which on the face of it sounds like very poor odds. In truth one of them was at least 30 years past its develop-by date, and had been shot on one of the cheapest cameras I’ve ever used, the infamous Lomography ActionSampler (right).

I’m not going to admit to buying this 'camera', I’m pretty certain it was a gift. One of those gifts that don’t in fact keep giving because I only used it the one time, shooting off the gaudy film that came with the camera at a bouncy castle party and a sunny beach holiday at Ingoldmells. The camera was consigned to the dusty recesses of the Bits'n'Bobs Box, but I never fully forgot about the film, albeit I'd entirely forgotten what was on it. In fact this roll of film has been haunting me for decades, so what harm getting it developed now...

The scan shown here (left) is a good example of what I got back, and here I have to stick-up for the camera to some degree. For what it's worth, the four fixed focus plastic lenses, and fixed everything else, have captured most of the photos reasonably well. If anything I feel the camera has out-performed its novel design and frankly ridiculous appearance, and in truth I've mostly missed the point of the 'Action' facility, there's really not a lot of action in my shots.

The film though! 30+ years of hot Summers have clearly taken their toll on what was already a cheap 'Lomography' roll, hence we get every colour of the spectrum, so long as it's purply, foggy blue. Thankfully we live in a time of unprecedented access to powerful image editing software, which means half-decent 'artistic' images (below) can be cobbled together with ease, even when the negatives are as terrible as these. Stay tuned for another knackered film roll, this time put through the coated glass lens of the FED...

Cold Shoe Shuffle - Accessorising For Pleasure & Profit

FED-1 Camera with Gnome Rangefinder accessory fitted to the Cold Shoe

You know that thing with a new purchase where you check the online reviews, discuss it with experts in the field, run it past your family and friends, leave nothing to chance. Of course you do, but by now you’re so loved-up about the thing it makes total sense to filter out the negative reviews, ignore the sensible advice, throw caution to the wind and just buy the damn thing. Because, well it’s me, I’m different, those big issues are what other people have, it’ll be different for me…

Vintage cameras are not, by definition ‘new’. They’ve lived a life, often suffered neglect. They have wear, faults, damage, Mould! They come with... baggage, and they will absolutely screw your life up if you let them. In the case of vintage Soviet-era Leica clones like mine, they will, absolutely, 100%, definitely scratch the lenses of your designer glasses. You know this, you’ve read all about it, it’s a widely known and oft' reported issue, but of course you know better...

I knew better. Top tip: You absolutely don’t know better! The lens-destroying culprits can be seem here (right), attractively cast eyepieces which are as sharp as a Parmesan grater. Being very small, you absolutely have to get your eye right up to the glass to focus and frame your shots accurately, and therein lies the problem, your glasses will be scratched as a result. My current workaround involves the liberal application of masking tape, which works but it's not exactly an elegant solution. Other options include a wide variety of potentially expensive vintage Viewfinder and Rangefinder accessories, which is much more fun, and it's what your Cold Shoe was made for.

Fashion enthusiasts are already well acquainted with the fun to be had from 'Accessorising', and I see no reason why camera enthusiasts shouldn't grab a piece of the accessory action. They'll also be well acquainted with how easy it is to get carried away with the expense of it, but fun can still be maintained by sticking rigidly to a budget.

This Meopta 24x36 Viewfinder (left) for example was just £15, and a lovely thing it is with clear optics and a cool looking knurled dial for parallax adjustment. Unfortunately it's designed to sit on the side of a Twin Lens Reflex camera, not a compact 35mm. It gets in the way of the Rangefinder on this camera and wobbles a bit in the Cold Shoe. More crucially it interferes with the working of the shutter speed dial, as indicated by the red arrow, which in turn interferes with the shutter. It could be raised a little with an adapter, but that makes it even more wobbly so whilst it remains a nice thing, it's sadly not the Viewfinder I'm looking for.

I figured if I was going to attach a separate Viewfinder to the camera, it might as well be a Rangefinder too, that way I'd be able to take both damaging eyepieces out of the equation. So what exactly is a Rangefinder, and how does it work.

A Rangefinder is an optical device for determining the distance to a subject, in this case the subject is something we'd like to photograph. Some cameras, such as this FED-1, have a built in Rangefinder that's mechanically coupled to the lens, that way when the Rangefinder is set to the correct distance, the lens will also be focussed at the correct distance.

To achieve this the Rangefinder has two lenses set a few inches apart, one delivering the view straight to the eyepiece, the other is bounced down the length of the instrument via mirrors and superimposed over the other. If these images appear out of sync (above) the Rangefinder is set to the wrong distance. A dial on the device can then be used to adjust the angle of one of the mirrors until both images line-up (left), at which point the dial will indicate the correct distance to the subject. If the Rangefinder device isn't coupled to the lens, this figure can then be used to set the focus on the camera lens. A bit fiddly yes, but before the advent of SLR cameras this was pretty much how everyone achieved good focus on their camera.

Rangefinders come in many varieties, though they all work in much the same way. This German made Prazisa Rangefinder (above) not only looks the part on the FED, but works well and sits clear of the shutter speed dial, so all good then. Well sadly not because whilst the camera lens is marked up for distances in metres, the Rangefinder is calibrated for feet. I could of course re-calibrate it for metres, and may well do at some point...

The Rangefinder shown on the camera at the top of this post was manufactured by the UK based Gnome company, better known for their enlargers. It's calibrated in metres, and looks a bit more space-age in brushed aluminium, but sadly it arrived with something rattling inside and zero Rangefinding capability. To the credit of the seller I received an immediate refund and was encouraged to keep the useless device. I like a challenge so dismantle it and managed to re-attach both of the mirrors (right), a fiddly job that had the bonus of revealing how these things actually work. Whilst the Gnome now works, and I even managed to calibrate it properly, the image is somewhat off-centre and even more difficult to use than the one on the camera, so...

On balance, and having tried these two accessories out for size, I think I'll end up sticking with the onboard Rangefinder for now. I'd still like a Viewfinder though, and they don't come any simpler than this Kodak Sports Finder, a marvel of glass-free folding German technology designed for their popular Retina range of cameras. This version is designed for (I think) 50mm and 80mm lenses, possibly also a 35mm lens depending on which of the rotating masks are selected. The 'eyepiece' part also slides up and down for parallax correction, and the whole thing sits clear of the shutter dial. Brilliant!

Inevitably there are issues, not least of which is the way it turns a compact camera into a camera with an array of aerial-like attachments projecting from the top. The arrangement of masks shown below is the likely one for a 50mm lens, hardly a neat arrangement and I feel it would only be a matter of time before I broke something. The biggest issue though is that this device is designed to fit on a Cold Shoe that's significantly offset to the left, as is the case with the Retina range of cameras. The FED-1 Cold Shoe is central which means this Viewfinder sits to the right of the lens, not a huge problem for landscape photography, but the view becomes increasingly inaccurate the closer to the subject we get. I like this a lot and may give it a spin at some point, meanwhile another extremely inexpensive Viewfinder has caught my eye, more of which when I've got round to repairing it...

Roll #2 - Morris Dancers (Expired)

Fast moving Morris Dancers captured at the Bulls Head in Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire

It's doubtful I'll ever use a 70 year old Soviet camera as my primary tool for recording the truly important stuff in life, births, deaths, marriages, 'what's on my plate' pics etc. Pretty much everything else that falls within the scope of a slow-ish 50mm lens is fair game though, and I'm always carrying my phone camera for backup anyway.

I'm also using my phone for metering (and very occasionally phone calls), a much better solution I feel than the widely used, somewhat poke-and-hope 'Sunny 16' rule I used, quite successfully I think, for my very first roll of film.

Given that I may never know how accurate the shutter speeds are on this camera, I need to take as many variables out of the Aperture/Speed/Depth of Field equation as possible. I did briefly consider buying a matching Soviet-era Light Meter for the job, some of which look pretty cool and are often very cheap, but that means batteries and more importantly, questionable accuracy after all these years.

I'm carrying my phone anyway, and of course phones have light sensors, so I've decided to use the free Lightme app (right) for metering, which is as simple or complex as you want it to be (I very much like simple) and seems to do the job well enough.

The Market Buttercross in Oakham, conveniently not moving too fast and hence a decent image.

These two shots are the first fruits of proper light metering in bright sunlight, at least one of which, the impressive Sundial on St Dionysius Church in Market Harborough (left), is nicely focussed too. I think this is what this camera was designed for, static subjects, no human or animal life to spoil the vista with their unnecessary... err, movement.

The rest of the roll was exposed under the grey clouds and low light levels of midwinter, with subjects that just wouldn't stand still! There's also something else I should mention about these photos...

I'm ashamed to say that I currently have in my possession several rolls of Expired Film! Rather badly expired film as it happens. Film from the days before the rise and rise of digital photography. How old? Well think decades rather than years...

There's a lot that's been written about expired film and how to use it to best effect, but essentially it all comes down to knowing how the film was stored in the years prior to use. Needless to say I have absolutely no idea how these cartridges were stored, hence for the foreseeable future I'll be shooting not only in low light conditions, but also somewhat in the dark...

First up the traditional Mummers Play performed by Rutland Morris every year on Boxing Day. The main event occurs later outside The Vaults pub in Uppingham, but this year I fancied the early-bird dance-out at the Horse & Jockey in Manton for a bit of a change. A bigger crowd than I'd anticipated made photography difficult enough even without the hinderance of fast-moving Morris dancers, and here we find a recurring issue with focus (right), of which I suspect I know the cause.

More of that user mis-op I think. One of the key attractions of these cameras is the good quality collapsible lens which makes it just that bit slimmer in a leather case, and hence more pocketable. To set the lens to the correct focal distance involves pulling it out, twisting it round until it drops into the locking plane, then twisting it clockwise to lock the lens. I wasn't initially aware of this additional movement to lock the lens, so it’s possible that it may not have been fully extended on occasions. Only time will tell though...

Next up was the annual Plough Monday tradition of the Hinckley Bullockers, which involves pulling a decorated Plough around villages in South Leicestershire with regular stops for Beer and Molly Dancing. A gentle sedate English tradition that's just a little too fast-action for an old camera like this to capture on a grey overcast day. Many shots are out of focus again, many more a blur of low shutter speed, which sounds a bit like the workman blaming his tools so I'll say here and now that much of this was down to rushed user mis-op. Difficult conditions for sure, but they could and should have been much better. Note also the scratches on some, though not all of the negatives. I'm not entirely sure what's causing this but if it persists I may have to take the camera apart to investigate further.

So, what have we learned from this (long-expired) roll. First of all, taking the film to a more specialist developer was an interesting (ahem!) development. They were not in the least bit fazed by the expiry date and assured me it wouldn't be a problem, and sure enough it doesn't seem to have been. Most of the issues are clearly around my poor use of the camera, although I'd have to say it's becoming increasingly obvious that old slow-ish cameras like this one are better for static subjects than those with a tendency to move, and these Morris Dancers are a sight more lively than they're perhaps given credit for.

(Film was a Kodak something or other, ISO 200, developed by Classic Photo Supplies of Leicester)