The Polaroid I-2 and my ups and downs.

 Last Christmas, I bought a Polaroid I-2 camera. There was an offer on, drink was involved and the big boys made me do it (you know who you are!).  I started the year, 2025, with my new I-2 and resolve to become the best instant photographer in the world. A plan with no downsides, I thought.  And it would have gone like that too, if talent and the small matter of temperature hadn't got in the way.

The astute reader may remember that I have a LomoGraflok, Instax Wide back for my Chroma cameras and have had some success with that. In fact, I have never given temperature a second thought while using Instax Wide film. Middle of winter, no problem! Mojave desert in summer, also no issue. No color shifts or delays in developing happened.

There is a reason that Polaroid discounts it's cameras in the middle of winter, because while the cameras work just fine, the film packs do not. Polaroid film packs work over a narrower range of temperatures than Instax Wide. Too cold and the results show a green/blue color cast, too hot and you'll get a red/orange cast.  Cold temperatures mean really long development times with polaroid too.

Let me also tell you that the ISO of polaroid film is a moveable feast, depending on temperature, prevailing winds and the shipping forecast for Dogger. It's written on the film packaging. "ASA 640. Film speed may vary, allow for (plus or minus) 1/3 stops"

Using the first half dozen packs of film with my Polaroid I-2, I fell foul of the less than consistent results from the Polaroid film.  Given that you only get 8 photo's from a pack of Polaroid film, if you get a couple of frames that don't work, it's an issue.  For me also the Black and White film is less consistent than the color film. So my start with my brand new and shiny, flagship, Polaroid I-2 was marred by the experience and made the camera seem like a bit of a white elephant.

Film speed, ISO or ASA, is the element,  that as photographers, we require to be a constant. If you are going to use a manual camera and need to use a meter, you need to input the film speed so that the meter can give you a reading.  Generally speaking, the meter reading will give you a set of parameters (shutter speed and aperture size) that when transferred to the camera, will produce an acceptable result in the negative. This is even more important when using positive (slide) film.  Spot on metering is required to get decent results, but the ISO or ASA is the constant. Yes you can experiment with the settings to optimize the result but the point at which you start is the film speed being consistent from roll to roll.

The I-2 has a manual mode where you can set aperture and shutter speed. This is touted by Polaroid as being a Pro feature but my experience with the inconsistent film meant that the confidence, that comes with trusting your film and equipment, evaporated.  If the ASA of Polaroid film is not consistent the manual mode is pointless in my opinion. I am not alone in thinking this either. More illustrious Polaroid users than I have agreed with my findings and even made a YouTube video or two about the issue.  The camera is fine, it's the film that is inconsistent.

So the Polaroid I-2 was returned to it's packaging for a few months while I waited for warmer weather. Winter turned to Spring and Spring turned to Summer. And the weather went from baltic to sweltering in the blink of an eye.

The Polaroid I-2 was given a run out during the late Spring but the results from using the camera in manual mode were less than encouraging.

And then I discovered multiple exposures using the I-2 and that's where things started to look up.

The Holga gods are displeased.

 The Holga is a cheap camera, some might say it is manufactured like a toy, that is made in Hong Kong and has become something of minor obsession for me over the last 20 years. The Holga is made of the kind of plastic that is normally reserved for scale models of aircraft such as Spitfires or Hurricanes. People will tell you that they are terrible cameras, not worth your time and don't produce good results.  Those people are tweaking the ear of the Holga gods and no good will come of it.

Recently, I have neglected my Holga and it has sat on a shelf and gathered dust.  That was until Dave Whenham decided to take his Holga, affectionately known as the "AndyCam" as I gifted it to him, for a walk and he produced a roll of nice negatives.  Spurred on by this effort,  I loaded my own Holga and sallied forth to expose the film.  The results were encouraging and so a second film was loaded and on a warm February afternoon, I went out again with the Holga.

The problem was that I had caused consternation in the Holga heavens by my long lay up of my Holga and so the Holga gods plotted to teach me a lesson.

The Holga gods did their worst

Now the thing is that it would be easy to work with the Holga, with it's single shutter speed and aperture to produce some artistic, if not good, images.  It would be further exciting to understand how to use development to give control to the photographer.  Even better would be to use filters  to modify how light is captured.  At this point it would be only to easy to proclaim oneself a "Master" of the Holga.

To do so would be folly of the highest degree.

You see every film that one shoots in a Holga is subject to the agreement of the Holga gods and it is they who decide if a frame is going to be good or not.  Moreover it is they who will decide if the whole roll is to be a right off or whether you will have a couple or more of good exposures.  It really has nothing to do with the photographer and it would be good to bear that in mind.

The Holga gods are also able to interfere in the film processing department to either allow or foil any attempt at compensating for the shortcomings of the camera.  In short they get into your mind and interfere with your thought processes in the same way as they invisibly guided the photographers hand during the taking of a shot.

How many times have Holga users looked at the film and couldn't remember a frame or two being shot?  This is because the Holga gods have taken over and are using the photographer as a puppet.

Blurred and Overexposed, Ye gods!

So displeasing the Holga gods isn't a clever thing to do if you'd like some reasonable photographs from the little plastic camera.

Now to my tale...

Last Saturday I needed to collect a relative from the coach station in Swansea at 12:30. As coach arrival times are something of an elastic concept, the waiting time for collecting people is only 10 minutes and enforced by cameras, I decided to arrive early and park at Swansea Marina.  As the coach arrived I would receive a text message and drive over to the collection point.  Excellent a plan was made!

But the Holga gods had not forgotten my, almost two years, neglect of the Holga and they had nearly missed seeing me pick the camera back up and start using it again.  Worse, I started dishing out tips and advice to others and setting myself up as something of a Holga guru. The Holga gods decided this would not do, it would not do at all.

Before leaving home, I loaded a roll of FP4 Plus into my Holga and in doing so checked the camera over. Getting in the car, I nonchalantly threw the Holga onto the passenger seat along with my hat, a neck warmer and a magnifying glass. My causal handling of the camera did not go unnoticed by the Holga gods and so incensed were they that they decided something had to be done immediately.

As I drove towards Swansea Marina, the traffic got really bad and I inexplicably found myself constantly in the wrong lane.  Eventually I arrived at the car park and had to try every ticket machine until I found one that worked.

Then, after I put the parking ticket on the dashboard, I set off on foot to shoot 12 exposures before collecting the relative.  It was a lovely, bright and warm sunny day and I was pointing my camera here and there, using the magnifying glass as a close up lens when the shot called for it.  The familiar snick of the shutter operating was comforting and it was not long before I has just one more frame to expose.

There was a private charter embarking and the gang plank offered a unique view of the front of an old rusting ship.  I enquired if I could go down and make my exposure? Permission granted I went down the gang plank and it was the work of a moment to raise the Holga to my eye and operate the shutter.  Job done.

A normally inaccessible shot.

I wound on the film and packed the camera away as my phone was buzzing and my collection was ready to be picked up.

And so it was.

When I got home, and following luncheon of sausage and chips from the chip shop, I set about processing the film. I used semi stand development for an hour so I had some time to spare.  It was then that, to my horror, I noticed that the button on the bottom of the camera had been set to bulb. All those lovely shots would now be ruined. Oh my, the Holga gods had struck again!

As I pulled the processed film from the developing tank, my worst fears were confirmed, really dense negatives and evidence of blur due to the long exposure cause by camera shake.

I hung the negatives to dry and tried to forget the experience.

It wasn't until yesterday, Sunday, that I looked at the negatives, by now dry, hanging sadly.  I took them down and decided to scan them for the laughs, as they say.

While many of the pictures were in fact dreadful and unusable, some were not that bad and a deal better than I had any right to expect.

The Holga gods had done it again!  They had taught me a lesson that I'd thought I'd learned long ago.

Better than I could have expected!

The lesson is this; The photographs that you get from your Holga is subject to the good graces of the Holga gods and don't forget it!

You have been warned!

2024 and answering the age old conundrum?

It'll soon be the end of 2023 and the new year, 2024, will start. As is customary at this time of the year we look at the outgoing year and look forward to what the new year will bring.

I'm going to do something different and I'm going to answer the perennial question of which camera is the best?

2023 has been the year in which artificial intelligence or AI has become mainstream and has entered everyone's consciousness. Of course AI isn't new and the creators of AI software have been working for years on training their programs on big data provided by yourselves for free on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

All these social media platforms allow the posting of images or photographs as us oldies call them.  These images have been used to train the AI software so that if you want a photo of American GIs entering Berlin on a Segway, AI can produce a very convincing one.

For me the AI software remains just that, software.  It doesn't provide me with a mechanism for creativity where I can feel involved in the process.  After all AI photos could be created by using another AI program to come up with ideas for photos that don't exist yet and program the AI software that produces the photos.  No human intervention involved or required.

To return to the question posed above, the camera that is best for me in 2024 will be the camera that allows me full access to a number of tools that allow me to create photographs with full creative control.  

No AI involved. No Automation, no digital processing at the capture stage.

I recently took a holiday to Arizona in the USA. For that holiday I took my Chroma Camera Snapshot kitted out with a Topcon Super Topcor 90mm lens and a Lomography LomoGraflok Instax back.

This camera is a 4x5 sheet film camera that has an International  Graflok back to allow any accessories to be used with the camera like a rollfilm back or in my case a LomoGraflok  back.

The LomoGraflok back allows the use of Fujifilm Instax wide film.

Back in the early 1970s polaroid were busy bringing out cameras that were low cost and introduced instant photography to regular people.  My maternal Grandmother bought a Polaroid swinger camera that used peel apart pack film.  Back then it was like star trek and when my own daughter was old enough to want and use a camera I bought her a spice Girls badged Polaroid 600 camera, which she loved.

My instant photography genes run deep.

Using the Snapshot is fully manual and requires me to work out the exposure myself.

The camera only produces good results if I am involved. No auto focus, the camera is zone focussed, no auto exposure.

I took 10 packs of 10 exposures for the two weeks.  Not all were great but the ones that were really hit home.

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.

Photographic Paper as a cheap "Film"

When I was younger, every bus or railway station, airport, Woolworths, Boots, shopping centers and department stores all had a Photo booth.  These booths allowed the sitter to have 4 pictures taken, in return for a suitable deposit of coins, followed by the actual silver gelatin black and white photographs in a strip about 1.5 inches wide and 5 inches long.  The pictures were accepted by the passport office and were of great quality.

I used these machines to have my photo taken and the little strips of photos were prized treasures.

How did the booth work though? Well they used photographic paper and reversal processed it to produce the positive image. This process lends itself to automation and is consistent in finished photographs,

1. Expose photographic paper in camera,
2. Develop paper as a normal negative in B&W chems
3. Rinse paper
4. Bleach paper to remove negative
5. Rinse paper
6. Fog paper with light
7. Develop paper in B&W chems
8. Rinse paper
9. Fix paper
10. Final Rinse

I still have many of the photos that I had taken in a Photo booth and they are as fresh today as they always were.

So roll on 40 years or so and I now have a 4x5 camera.

Film for any camera is great when you have the time to give to it's shooting, development, scanning and loading film holders.  Large format is even better, beautiful negatives at 4x5 are a wonder to behold.

But what if you want to do a quick shoot to try something or you just don't have time to do the faffing about with film.  Well paper negatives are a cheaper method of shooting 4x5.  The Photographic Enlarging paper is sensitized like film, just with a much, much slower emulsion. The emulsion is also Orthochromatic rather than Panchromatic, which means that you can develop under safe light and see what goes on.

Paper negatives are cheaper but you are still left with a problem in that you still have to scan the neg or contact print to make a positive.

Hence the recollection about Photo Booths.  How did they work?  They were fast, great quality and produced a positive image all automatically.

A bit of googling produced some information and so I set to producing an old style positive photograph by hand.

Stuff you need

• Black and White Photo Paper (Ilford Multigrade Resin Coated)
• Black and white paper developer (Ilford PQ Universal)
• Potassium Permanganate
• Sodium Bisulphate
• Sodium Metabisulphite
• Rapid Fixer

Bleach

• 4g of Potassium Permanganate in 1 liter of water (part A), bottle for use
• 34.5g of Sodium Bisulphate in 1 liter of water (Part B), bottle for use

The bleach has a really short working life, so mix 500ml of bleach using 250ml of Part A and 250 ml of Part B just prior to starting the development work

Clearing Solution

The clearing solution removes the yellow and red tint added by the bleach.

• 30g of sodium Metabisulphite in 1 liter of water, bottle for use.

Use 500 ml per developing session.

Method

1. Expose photographic paper in camera, using ISO 1 as a base line for exposure
2. Develop paper as a normal negative in B&W chems. 2 minutes in Ilford PQ Universal 1+9
3. Rinse paper, 2 Minutes
4. Bleach paper to remove negative, 1 minute always use fresh bleach never reuse.
5. Rinse paper, 2 Minutes
6. Immerse paper into clearing solution, 30 seconds.
7. Fog paper with light, 1 minute
8. Develop paper in B&W chems, 2 minutes
9. Rinse paper, 2 Minutes
10. Fix paper, 2 Minutes
11. Final Rinse

I manage to do several exposures in series, so that when the first one is being rinsed the second one is in the developer.

The quality of photograph that is produced is as good as film and the speed with which a positive image can be produced is pretty fast.  You end up with a one of a kind, hand processed photo for which no negative exists.  A unique physical item.

Roll film

If I am to be brutally honest I think out of all the formats that are available for film photography, the one that I am drawn to is the roll film, known as 120 film due to a quirk in Kodak numbering schemes in the past.

When I was about 11 I went to camp on the Isle Of Wight with a boys organization. My Dad gave me his old Kodak Duaflex 620 TLR camera. I loaded a roll of 620 Kodak film and was astounded at the resulting pictures.

This might be where my love of medium format film started.  I kept that camera and used it regularly until 620 became unavailable. My next medium format camera was a Holga 120 S. The Holga came with a 6x4.5 mask and the selector on the back was glued to 16 pictures (newer ones come with both 6x6 and 6x4.5 masks with the selector unglued).

The best bit about roll film is that it supports a number of frame formats

• 6x4.5 centimeter, 16 pictures per roll, numbered on backing paper
• 6x6 centimeter, 12 pictures per roll, numbered on backing paper
• 6x7 centimeter, 10 pictures per roll
• 6x8 centimeter, 9 pictures per roll
• 6x9 centimeter, 8 pictures per roll, numbered on backing paper
• 6x12 centimeter, 6 pictures per roll
• 6x17 centimeter, 4 pictures per roll

I myself have a Chroma Camera Snapshot 4x5 camera that I couple with a 6x9 rollfilm back.  The larger frame size is wonderful. 

I find 4x5 sheet film a bit of a pain to process, if I'm honest. I use a mod54 sheet holder for a Paterson Tank. It needs a full litre of chemicals to process even one sheet of film. And while sheet film is capable of capturing great detail I'm not convinced that I'm able to make best use of it.

Whereas roll film, being more economic to use and a single roll has enough exposures to keep photography part of a walk without constantly snapping away. It's great I can talk to my girlfriend and take a few photos with her feeling left out. I can also nip out for an hour and shoot a quick roll of film while the weather holds.

Another advantage of roll film that shouldn't be overlooked is the fact that you can load more film while out if you need to. Sheet film is limited to the number of holders you can carry, whereas roll film is easier to carry.

I also have a Holga 120 GN (Glass Lens) in which I prefer to use the 6x4.5 mask. The 16 pictures per roll is great for walking around and the negative size is large enough for cute contact prints.

I have a Zero 2000 pinhole camera that shoots 6x6 format images.

I also have a Chroma Camera 679 with a Mamiya Pro S 6x7 back. so I'm covered with roll film. 

I can process them all in the same chemicals, even in the same tank. At the moment I'm using D76H, which is a simplification of the Kodak D76 formula.

I have hankered after a 6x12 roll film back for my snapshot, however they are ridiculously expensive and the 6x17 backs are extortionate. So they will have to wait for another day when my boat comes in.