If you have been following Brian’s Epic Edits Weblog, you’re probably aware of his most recent project/contest, the $50 film camera.

As usual with his projects, Brian prompts us to get out of our comfort zone and expand our boundaries. This time the idea is to grab any film camera that is valued under $50, explore it, and of course, publish the results.

Background

On a visit to my parents’ house sometime near Christmas last year, I came across a couple hundred photos taken on a period of over 60 years by my father which were the last survivors of an unfortunate accident that destroyed thousands of prints and film.

He began taking some photos in the mid-forties with a "box" camera that he built himself and later, during the fifties, upgraded to an Agfa Billy I. This was the camera that he would use until he stopped photographing in the beginning of the eighties. The majority of the film he ever exposed was developed and printed by him, without enlargers, just contact.

I remember seeing this camera around the house, unused, when I was a kid. This past summer, on another visit, I decided to look for it and check its condition. A little worried here since this camera has not been used in over 25 years.

Brian’s project was the perfect excuse to grab a few rolls and give it a try. At first I thought about my Pentax P30t, it’s even loaded with film, but why make things easy, right?

You can get one of these for $10 to $15 on ebay. So, under $50: check.

Agfa Billy I – old but usable

From the outside, the camera looks very very used. The front lid has a few rusty spots and scratches and the covering material is missing around the edges. The back doesn’t look much better. But ok, just cosmetics.

My first step, even before putting any film inside was to clean it as best as I could. There was decades-old dust inside. The lens is not scratched but has some fungi inside. All the knobs and dials seemed to work with the exception of the self-timer (yes, it has one). This one it’s either stuck or the spring behind it is not working anymore.

I tried to see if there were holes on the bellows, a common problem in these old folding cameras, but could not find anything. Time to try it…

Agfa Billy I – Hands-on approach

I got a couple rolls of Ilford HP5 Plus 400 120 film and loaded it. As you can see in the photo above, this camera has a 6×9 frame. A 120 roll is good for 8 frames on this camera. Not for shutter-happy people.

Specs:

• Lens: Agfa Agnar 105mm f/6.3
• Shutter: Pronto (some models were released with a Vario shutter). Fires in bubble, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/200
• Focus: Has marks from 1 to 10 meters and infinity
• Aperture: 6.3 to 22 (5 steps)

A 105mm lens, with a normal 35mm frame, gives a good magnification. With a 6×9, it’s wide, and I mean wide. The portraits you’ll see bellow were taken at around 1,5 meters.

Next challenge, light. There’s no light meter inside, so I had to go back to the theory and use the Sunny 16 rule. With an ISO 400 film, having a shutter that only goes to 1/200 was a problem, specially if I wanted a shallower DoF. On the positive side, film has a much wider dynamic range, so even if I missed the calculations, not much detail was lost, although I have to say that some of the photos are quite overexposed.

Framing was not optimal, but not so bad either. The viewfinder is clear but the bellows get in the way. Since the viewfinder is not coupled to the lens, on close range, you get some degree of parallax error. Also, after looking more carefully at the photos, I’m almost sure that the viewfinder does not cover 100% of the frame.

Focus was another (big) challenge. The viewfinder won’t tell you anything and focusing is done by guesstimating distances. When your subject is more than 5 or 6 meters away, small mistakes won’t matter that much, but at close range and wide aperture, focusing at 1,2 or 1,5 meters is not the same thing. I’ve missed a lot on this one, and I think it was my biggest problem with the camera.

Since these were my first rolls (yes Brian 2 of them, at 8 frames a roll I think I’m allowed), I tried to test the camera under several light conditions and with subjects at different distances.

The results were better than I expected. Missed exposures and focus and either lots of lens flare or a tiny hole on the bellows, but aside that I’m happy with the first results. The films got scratched at some point (you’ll see the lines in the photos), I don’t know if during advancing the film or if the guy in the lab messed up. In any case, I’ll probably send the camera for some serious cleaning in the near future. It’s not a camera that I’ll use everyday but for some fun once in a while it’s perfect.

If you’re curious, the film was scanned with an Epson Perfection 4870 Photo at 2400 dpi. Each original file has an approximate resolution of 46 MP.

Finally, the photos

And here they are, 15 of them (the first frame of the second roll was black). I won’t give any comment on them here but some have some notes on Flickr.

And again, as I mentioned before, old cameras are fun to use and explore. Go get one and you’ll se what I mean.

Related posts:

1. Be creative with old cameras – Through the Viewfinder
2. Underwater Photography: the Basics
3. Are Digital Cameras destroying photography?
4. Understanding Lens Flare

by Snapr (flickr)

First of all, I have to tell you that I’m usually not much into photo competitions. Actually I can’t tell you why and I guess I don’t understand it very well myself, since competitions are a great way to break your own barriers and expand yourself in creativity. They are also, of course, a great way of gaining exposure to your work.

But I’m also not completely new to it. I’ve participated in several photo competitions and have won some prizes and honorable mentions.

Recently, photocritic.org published an article on How to win photography competitions which got me thinking a little bit more about it, specially the judging part of it.

Of course that judging a photography competition requires more than just the basic knowledge of the art. I think a deep emotional sensibility is also needed to interpret the photography not just on technical merits but also on the message the photographer wants to transmit. And this is all very well, but we are now in the digital photography era and the technical merits of a photography can be slightly blurred.

Times when what a judge saw on paper was what was achieved through the lens are gone. Computers play a big part on nowadays photography and virtually any image can be created in silico. How is a judge to deal with this?

Most photo competitions have guidelines and while some are very strict on what is or isn’t allowed others are more open. But even so, is there a way to see if a photo was overly manipulated or not? Having the photo submitted on paper is usually a requirement but it’s not helpful to the matter at hand. Moreover, if you are not required to submit on paper but are allowed to submit on file, some competitions started requiring that all files incorporate the EXIF info. It’s a start, but there are applications out there that allow for a user to modify the EXIF or even create one from scratch. So, this is also not the answer…

 Sincerely, I have no answer to the problem. Although I’ve heard of this problem coming up in several photography competitions, I don’t know to which extent it propagates.

Are photography competitions still clean or are we starting to see a new kind of competition doping?

What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you usually compete? Do you have any solutions to the problem?

Related posts:

1. Photo Competition: Environmental Photographer of the Year 2007

W.E. Day 2006 by Mornby

Similarly to the last three years, the CIWEM (The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) is hosting the competition.

Deadline: 31st of August 2007

Categories:

1. Social Environment
2. Urban Environment
3. Changing Climates
4. Technology and Innovation in the Environment
5. Conservation and Biodiversity
6. Arts and/in the Environment

If you are an environmental photographer, or have any good work on any of the categories, this is a good opportunity to show it.

Read more about it in the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2007 site.

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
2. The new monster – Sigma APO 200-500mm f/2.8 EX DG