Way back in Texas, right after graduate school, and lacking any opportunities for gainful employment, some friends in equally precarious situations decided to open a photo art gallery, school and studio.
Since we were only the fourth or fifth in this little oil/cowtown of 150,000 or so, the local paper decided to do a story on us. When it was published we were besieged with calls from local widows trying to dump hordes of photo equipment that was left in the attic/garage/workshop by their deceased husbands. They wanted nothing for it, just that it be gone from their homes!
Among the many treasures we were gifted was an old folding camera that used sheet film. Thanks to the internet, we were able to identify it as a 1914-1920 era Voigtlander Avus that used 6.5x9 cm sheet film. One of the partners wanted to dump it, because there was no film being produced for it, but as it had 3 sheet film holders, I insisted on saving it.
Fast-forward three years. Even though the gallery/school/studio was a success in that it made us a living and earned us a bit of infamy in the business, one of my partners left to be a full time mom, the other for the green-dollar fields of Dallas society wedding photography. After a year, preferring to go out on top, I closed shop and decamped for Oregon.
At the end of the first year in Oregon, I fell victim to the great H1N1 epidemic of 2009-2010. During this period of forced confinement, I pulled the little Voigtlander camera off the curio shelf and opened the brown leather case. The bellows were in good shape, the ground glass wasn't broken and the shutter and aperture seemed in reasonably good working order. A bit of WD-40 (what else?) and machine oil cleaned up the film holders and lubricated the spring timing device on the Compur shutter.
Film was an issue. A few measurements confirmed that a piece of 120 film was roughly 0.4 cm narrower than the 6.5 width. The 120 roll film could be cut to length. After a few experiments, I succeeded in mounting two cut strips of film into film holders. It was then time to take pictures.
The first frame we took was a mechanical failure. The film wasn't cut quite square (remember this had to be done in the dark!) and a corner had slipped out of the top edge of the film holder. When I reinserted the dark slide, it caught behind the film sheet and peeled it off the holder and into the camera body. I wasn't aware of this until I removed the film holder and the curled up sheet of film fell onto the floor.
The second and last sheet was mechanically successful. Metered with my Nikon D70, the only thing left to see was if the exposure mechanisms on the Voigtlander were close to accurate.
One nice thing about the 120 sheet of film is that it can be developed in a stainless tank on a reel. (I decided on a 13 minute time since the film is HP5 and the chemistry is D-76.) True 6.5x9 flim would need tray development. Another advantage, in my book, is that the film is exposed to the edges and over the frame numbers, with a funky black edge top and bottom of the vertical sheet of film. A purist could easily cut a mask for the viewfinder to compensate for this if they desired.
Ok, the development process is over. Time to pull the film. As it comes out of the fixer, I see a dark square, very dark. To my dismay- horror, even! I discover that the film is not Ilford HP5, but Kodak T-Max, which I only use when the store is out of HP5! I have over-developed the film! How did this happen?
When I was determining how best to cut the film with no waste, I determined that I could wind a roll through my Mamiya C330 with the lens cap on. Since the lead edge of the film is taped to the paper backing, when I finished the winding I would have the end, or loose edge of the film as the lead edge. I could then spool off what I needed and roll up the rest for use another day. See, doing the math says you can get maybe 8 sheets off of a 120 roll. I had a half-exposed roll of 120 in the camera, so I decided to sacrifice the rest of the film on the roll and wind it on out. Fortunately, I stopped just short of cutting the last of the 6x6 images! I developed these in the tank with the one sheet negative. Point is, the film had been in the camera so long I had forgotten what it was. And rushing it into the darkroom, I failed to notice the film name on the wrapper. Silly photographer.
...but holding the one negative to the light, I could see the image of the spy with two of her cats crawling on her! All wasn't lost at all!. A quick scan of the negative revealed a very interesting image. A bit of burning to compensate for the hot-single source lighting produced the picture you see here.
Next time, solving the film dilemma...
(Find my photos here)
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