So I went through the motions of trying to print 4×5 negatives, The only option I had was to use a negative carrier that severely cropped the negative. These images especially on the edges are flawed by light leaks and some of the film probably has moisture damage from being in the refrigerator for seven years, The expiration date was 2020, so you can imagine what the film has been through. Up until now I have’t a clue as to what is really going on, It might be the camera but I doubt it, there’s a uniform distortion of blob like over exposure on the image plane. Now if someone were smooth with photoshop, a scanned negative could be normalized and perhaps electronically impressed on a negative for further darkroom printing. It’s not really a big deal, In some ways, bad negatives are hounding me due to photographic neglect. The last 50 foot roll of tri x has been sitting for five years. There’s an inherent fog on the film which leads to flat negatives, At to the negative a 1939 leica summar 50mm lens and this only exacerbates the condition. The soft glow and lack of contrast and or sharpness gives an ethereal quality un fathomed in this digital day and age. Cinematographers add filtration to emulate these effects while employing costly hand polished glass that cost in rent, multiple times over what the antiquated glass from yesteryears screw mount systems command on the used market. It’s have yet to see if another recently opened 50 foot trip x roll of out dated film is less foggy. I have also for consideration a bilk loader I found in a thrift store probably 20 years ago, a roll of panatomic x. There’s an out of date bottle of HC110 in the fridge, I know, I know everyone is calling out in unison, What are you waiting for? Bust out the panatomic x and make some tests. I’d love to, it’s just so much more of an immediate thrill to write words on a screen for all the lovely people on the internet. Patience is the #1 rule in photography. Digital has to be instant.

it’s hit or miss.

I keep trying to use 4×5 film backs with a crown graphic Graflex rig from 1951, I know everyone is saying, “you talk a lot about photographs, but I never see any.” Anyway recently, I’ll throw the back into the camera pull out the slide and when I put the slide back in it buckles the film some way and I just throw it out. (the film not the back) One film popped in-between where the back goes, lodged between the back and the lens where the bellows reside. I couldn’t focus. Film blocking the through the lens view. I took off the lens and threw out the film. Get this, I thought well maybe, some backs are bad and other’s are fine, I don’t think that’s the case. ( one back that was being bad worked fine a second time around,) It probably has to do with impatience when loading the film in a light tight bag. Not to mention laziness, or thinking that is other than photography imagining, instead of keeping my eye on the ball. And that’s the big if. How to stay focused in photography when there’s so much distraction. Odd memories, other peoples thoughts, a whole maelstrom of indignation, participle clouding, of the vernal cyclops, what? It’s not easy, Then there’s the game, If you cannot manage a 4×5 size film, how’s it going to work with 16mm cinema stock? A lot of people are developing their own 16mm in makeshift contraptions with success and you lose films to negligence in preparing a 4×5 film back. Oh by the way, I discovered the iiiC leica needs to see a shop, I was exposing nothing, maybe just a broken spool film sliver slowing down the shutter mechanism. It wasn’t exposing the 1000 of a second several years ago, this phenomena encroached on the 500 second ratio, as such I thought I’d had all these stellar images of scenes enveloping while I was plodding along with the 4×5, only to come up blank, well not exactly, there are six or seven images on the roll. Funnily, that day, the 4×5 worked perfectly. no miss loads and all except one picture perfectly exposed, the one that got away way is double exposed and kinda strange. It’s only when I lose a meditative process, lose track of the ball, that things get iffy. Yesterday I blew threw about twelve exposures obtaining may six images, I guess I was all in a bunch mentally, I had a camera with me that had been lying dormant for five years, I processed it, ( I nearly gave up on loading the film onto the developing real because half the film had been spun around backwards so long it was counter spooled to the turn of the stainless steel film wires, I patiently coaxed it into a closer to usual form factor and managed to obtain good negatives,) with some surprising images of relatives all dead in the last four years. I made some more 4×5’s last evening losing two or three films to maladjusted loading syndrome? Funny, I just blasted through the film from yesterday, totally underexposed or, FP4 require full strength d76 of id11.

The light seals arrived, it’s funny the first back I tried to open , the top righthand Screw wouldn’t budge,( this back must have gotten wet , the screws are rusted in, that one goes to a repair shop someday.) I nearly stripped it out. It’s a back with horrendous light leaks. Unusable negatives, from what I can see, It’s the only one I ran film through after two or three tries to test backs without film. I am so grateful for this experience. It’s kind of the same as when you keep your mouth shut, and no body has anything that they can use against you. The photography I was attempting without film is banal and perfunctory. A kind of a hodge podge walk in the park variety, ooh, speeding motorbike, cutesie graffiti, some sculpture, Smashed bud light can, flying birds, but what I noticed, I avoided things and places I might have thought to photograph, I did not attempt with the empty camera. Yesterday, Loaded and locked with a new seal, I came across a couple of images through the viewfinder,( I ran into Jay Maisel once and he said if you see it, it’s not on the film ,) First picture, a 50’s Porsche, a huge cement truck rolls through the frame mimicking the contours and lines of the sports car, after missing this juxtaposition, I hesitated to trip the shutter, I didn’t have the nerve to point the camera at an on coming Motorcycle that would have filled the frame perfectly. Rusty, Chicken? of afraid the film might not work? Subsequently, some of the photographs from the first test with sealed up back are gorgeous, sensitive little forays into the tiny brook that trickles down the dry creek bike walk , and other ancillary nuances of suburban life,” I’m just testing a back.” The second back, failed to fire with the camera, I wasted an image in the wind up, I kept fiddling with it though and eventually it came to life.

It’s funny, I went for a walk with a Hasselblad camera to finish out a roll, When I got home a couple hours later, I found there was no film in the camera. The next day I throw on another back that I thought had film in it on a camera that seemed to be skipping images. Same thing, the film back wasn’t loaded. The camera that’s skipping also has another problem, when I hit the mirror release button nothing happens. So I tried yet another film back on the camera, the one it came with, and lo and behold, the camera exposed three images on a twelve exposure roll. Something is going on, it’s been a lotta hit or miss with that camera. It’s as old as I am and could be due for a service, I think I’ll send it to Nippon in New York City. There’s some kinda craze going on in Colorado, several camera shops selling the old film based gear, this has caused the repair shop, I think there is only one, to have a year turn around. I may be exaggerating. When I began there were dozens of repair shops and film was available at the grocery store. I know my last post was about AI, maybe they can download a camera repairman into a robot and make an easy solution for the flooded market for camera service needs? Anyway, I tried another camera knowing the camera with mirror flip definitely needs an overhaul, and wouldn’t you know it, The back said it was on exposure three and there wasn’t any film in the camera. I also went to the mountains and got caught in a hailstorm, with the same camera and a different camera back that I thought had film innit, I was blasting images through the window, motorcycles trucking along drenched in water, hail and sleet, it was a major downpour, I was excited to see what the wide for a square camera 50mm lens I just had serviced locally with might turn up with. But alas, no film in the camera. So after four times spending countless hours hour photographing without film, I Think Diane Arbus told her students to tape up their cameras shiny parts and go out shoot all day without film, wait until you feel the picture in your gut before making an exposure. Well this isn’t that, but I saved at least forty dollars on film and chemistry by working without it. I’d be a hit at a wedding, I’m sorry but the cameras I thought that had film innit, didn’t and the one that did, missed four thirds of the exposures. So I try again this time with a film back I suspect might be loaded, or did I load it to make sure? I’ll have to ask him when he gets back, And what happened? I got back unloaded the actual film from the camera, Loaded into a developing tank, processed it and found out most of the pictures were destroyed because the light seals in the camera had dried up. So I jumped on eBay and ordered some light seals. This is a common thing with photography. Cameras have souls and when they’ve been neglected, Oh it’s the same with guitars, amps cars people, you need to take them out and exercise them, show them that they are loved, highly prized, valued and they will bring promising results. At this point judging from the negatives on about six rolls I was able to develop, several of the backs are showing signs of premature light leakage sure, A lens that was services 20 years ago but left unused needs another go at lubrication. And yes it’s basically a scene where if you wanna get the film rolling steadily in your cameras after plinking around with 35mm or whatever I’d been doing, there’s some mountains to hurdle. The other bag that I dropped about five years ago, I noticed this digging through older negatives is that, I was loading film into an old Barnack IIIc leica via the brass German film canisters, the cameras fuss and fight just as the backs had before, dislodging the tape used to adhere the film to the spool, coming out all foggy unless they approve of the subject matter. It’s a totally twisted world when dealing with cameras that are cranky because they’ve just been sitting around wanting to do what they were made for, but at the same time, it’s not really the cameras fault. Usually one has to embrace the age when these things were the predominant choice among photographers to engage in the world of image capture. Patience is key. A 1940’s German Leica ,probably made during the Marshall plan era, did not have the same robust spirit that say a 1936 leica A model had when Germanys economy was beginning to grow. Or as with the Mid Sixties Hasselblads, Victor Hasselblad made everything interchangeable so I might be riding 1980’s Glass on a 1960’s body all this intergenerational conglomeration got to be confusing for the film. Photography was Huge in the sixties, thousands of magazines and publications of every sort had a thirst for images. Luckily for these old tools there’s a bit of a resurgence. A mild pushback from the electronic camera vibe. The hipsters are using glass plates. The thing that’s missing is most everyone is still in a halfway house, IE, scanning the negatives, but to be positive in the darkroom, you need to print the negatives, Shine light through them onto paper. Then Scan the prints.