Brave Art - An Italian In Corby

So the big day arrived to take the little Bencini Comet II camera out for a spin, this year's annual Corby Highland Gathering for choice. A colour saturated jamboree of Tartan Kilts and gently swinging Sporrans just made for a roll of Kodak Colour 200, and usually blessed with very fine weather so ideal for a camera with very limited exposure settings.

Every precaution had been taken to ensure that only the light I wanted would find its way into the nether-regions of the camera, and I’m pleased to say that all that messing around with Viewfinder Attachments earlier in the year has finally paid off. The German made Prazisa I Rangefinder not only fits snuggly on the Italian Cold Shoe, but it's also calibrated for the same European standard 'foot' as the camera's lens. A triumph of post-war European cooperation I'd say! It also looks the part, almost as if it were made for the camera, although it does get in the way of the Shutter Release slightly so not all good. So how did the camera perform on the day...

The beauty of a fully manual camera with fixed shutter speed and just the two aperture settings, is there’s little to be gained from fiddling around with a Light Meter. On such a bright and sunny day I stuck with the f16 setting, and assumed the shutter speed was reasonably accurate at the stated speed of 1/50th sec, all the better to ensure that most subjects would be in focus. However, the position of the dial for the aperture setting on the bottom of the lens means I almost certainly moved it at some point, so some of these are more likely to have been at f9.

Another big plus on this simple little camera is the shutter release will only work when the Collapsible Lens has been fully extended. I do wish the FED had this facility because despite my very best efforts, not one of the precious 14 or so exposures on this cheap 24 exposure film was wasted by forgetting to extend the lens. I even managed to remember to unscrew the Lens Cap throughout the day, which is probably a first for me. All this lack of adjustment makes for fun-fun-fun photography, so much so that I'll probably repeat the experiment at some point.

I finished the roll on a walk later in the week, re-rolled the film back into it's canister, in the dark, and dropped the film into my preferred developer, who despite being a man down and rushed off his feet was almost as keen to see the results as I was. In fact he got straight to the job whilst I was distracting him with talk of much needed holidays, and the scans arrived later that day. Great service as ever!

First thoughts were, phew, not a total fail then. In fact I’m moderately delighted with the results, flaws and all. Focussing seems to be ok on most shots, and I’m putting those that are not quite as sharp as they could be down to me getting all excited and rushing the job, and/or the shutter speed being quite slow leading to camera shake. As for the focussing, here's a Top Tip: When using a Rangefinder Attachment with a Viewfinder Camera, don’t forget to actually transfer the actual range indicated to the actual lens of the camera… 🤦‍♂️!

As you can see I concentrated on all the Kilts, and the camera/film has given some lovely ‘vintage’ colouring that seems right for the occasion. The camera has also given some attractive Lens Flare (I’m not sure whether the lens is coated), and in one or two cases some inexplicable Leaky Light (above), which I’ll need to examine further when I get the negatives back.

So, decent focus? Probably. Over-exposed? Undoubtedly. All the horse in the frame?… Well, here we see the limitations of shooting 35mm film in a 127 camera. I recall stepping back a bit to get most of this horse in the frame, but until I get my negatives back I won’t know exactly how much horse there is across the whole 35mm negative. So what we have on all of these scans is the best fit for a normal 35mm exposure, so some of the image I framed in the viewfinder will be beyond the scope of the film, and much that did make it onto the negatives will be outside the scope of the scan.