Visit to Chroma Camera

 Yesterday, 23rd Feb 2022, I made a visit to Chroma Camera HQ in Liverpool. I happened to be in the area for work and so it seemed an opportune moment to visit. 

For transparency, I am a big fan of Chroma Camera and the work that Steve Lloyd has done. I own a Snapshot that is a 4x5 camera primarily for handheld use. 

I also own a 679, modular medium format camera.

Steve and his assistant, Dave,  made me feel welcome and I felt privileged to be allowed into the secret world of R&D and production of these beautiful cameras.

I first became aware of Chroma when I was interested in buying a TravelWide camera, but discovering that the company producing the TravelWide wasn't trading anymore.  However Chroma Camera, a UK business, did have a similar though much more flexible product in the Snapshot.

The great thing about the Snapshot is that it has a bellows and set of spacer bars rather than a rigid plastic nose cone.  This means that it's fairy easy to swap to lenses of different focal lengths.

My Snapshot sports a Schneider Kreuznach 180mm Symmar and a Schneider Kreuznach 90mm Angulon. Also as the Snapshot has a Graflok or International back I can choose between 4x5 and 6x9 roll film as I have a Wista 4x5 roll film back that shoots 8 exposures per roll of film. I also have a LomoGraflok Instax back from lomography.  I can make beautifully sharp Instax Wide photos

When I bought my Snapshot, Chroma Camera also had two variants of Field Camera for 4x5 in the Advanced 4x5 and Carbon Adventurer. I was able to have a look and feel of the Carbon Adventurer camera yesterday.  Very light and beautifully engineered. Thats definitely on the wish list.

Given the initial focus on 4x5 large format cameras, I was surprised to see Chroma Camera embrace the pinhole fraternity.  The Chroma Cube is a beautiful little pinhole camera that allows 52 square photos on a single roll of 35mm film.  However the pinhole community have responded and bought the camera in significant numbers. It's very competitively priced and quite unique. It's been fun to see the results on social media that the users are getting from this tiny camera.

I'm at my core a medium format man and I have my 679. I have a Mamiya RB 67 SPro 220 back and a Topcon Topcor 90mm lens and shutter.  My results have been superb and equally on a par with an actual Mamiya camera.

The highlight of my visit to Chroma was seeing the Six9 and Six12 medium format cameras. These have been designed and produced following feedback from users trying to source 6x9 and 6x12 medium format backs in good working order.  Steve has designed the cameras to only need a Mamiya Press Lens or a large format lens, LF especially for the Six12 as coverage of the 12cm width of film by the lens is close to 5 inches). These are beautiful cameras.  

Steve and Dave showed me some Kosmo Foto Mono shots, created using the Six9 and developed in 510 Pyro.  The detail is absolutely amazing.

I shall be getting some 510 Pyro and more Kosmo Foto Mono in 120 to try this combo with my 679.

A wonderful visit to a company that is innovative and responsive to their customers, who they refer to as the "Chroma family". Great company, nice people and wonderful products.

Says it all really.

What's up with the chemicals, man!

When creating a photographic medium such a photographic paper you generally use a carrier such as gelatin and mix in Silver Nitrate and Potassium Bromide (Silver Bromide, AgBr) to produce a light sensitive coating containing silver halide grains.  The coating is applied to paper producing a light sensitive photographic material that can be used to capture an image. carried around in a dark film holder so that it can be exposed to light when the photographer wishes to do so.

 When the photographic paper is exposed to light the silver halide grains become tagged, for want of a better expression. So the image is still on the photographic paper but you can't see it.  In other words the image hasn't yet been formed but can be developed from the possibility of an image into something that we recognize as a physical picture.

The development uses a solution of chemicals that are able to target the tagged silver halide grains and convert only those silver halide grains that have been exposed to light to metallic silver.  The silver halide grains that have been converted to metallic silver are no longer light sensitive. Any silver halide grain that hasn't received any light and hence isn't tagged remains as silver bromide and is still light sensitive. Therefore to ensure permanence of the picture all remaining silver bromide must be removed.

The removal of silver bromide is carried out using a solution called a fixer.  The fixer has no effect on metallic silver but will dissolve silver halide grains and remove them, leaving only the permanent metallic silver grains, coloured black, behind.  This is a negative image.

Where light falls on a normal white surface would cause the light be reflected back as a white area and where there is no light there is no reflection of light and so that area remains dark. In this way we can see a positive image when we view the ground glass on a large format camera.  However in photography the opposite is true, in other words where light falls the silver halide grains are converted to metallic silver, coloured black.

To get a positive image you can use the negative to block light on another sheet of photographic paper, where there is metallic silver and where there is none light is let through, accurately reversing the negative into a positive.

Neat eh?  It's genuine magic. The picture included in this post was created on photographic paper using the chemical interactions as described above. It's a thing of beauty (Or at least I think so) created by nothing more than light and chemical targetting.