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...