Argus 75

Hello again!

I am starting a new rotation tomorrow so I probably won't be able to update for a little while. Here is my Argus 75, with my zoom groom and Generation X (any Coupland fans? I don't really get the appeal.)

This is a wonderful, beautiful camera, and I absolutely love it. It's also known as the Argoflex 75. Although this has a second lens, like a TLR, it is technically still just a box camera. See here for clarification. It only has two shutter speeds (instant/time) and you can't control the aperture or focus.

Also, the 75 is supposed to take 620 film, but it is very easy to load it with 120 without having to respool it. I just clipped the edges of the plastic spool so that it would fit the camera. It sounds sketchy but it worked fine... the only thing is that you have to be careful when unloading because the paper needs to be extra tightly wound to protect it from the light. It would be wise to store  the exposed film in the foil it came in after unloading until you get it to a lab. You'll see in my photos below that the frame numbers were imprinted on my negatives, but I think this is a symptom of thin lomography backing paper rather than clipping the spool, since this also occurred with my Agfa Clack.

Here is a video showing how to load the camera, although he seems to use an unclipped 120 spool.

One really amazing thing about this camera is the beautiful viewfinder. Because it's not a true TLR the viewfinder is incredibly bright. However, it's also not as accurate as a true TLR, and I think parallax may be an issue. My pictures turned out pretty alright despite that, though. The most difficult thing about using this camera was framing up and keeping the framing consistent while releasing the shutter (which takes a lot of pressure).

just look at how bright this is!

And here are the photos, taken with 100 ISO lomography film.

Agfa Clack

Why, hello! This post is about the Agfa Clack, which I saw once on Craigslist, missed out, and then hunted down on ebay because it is just too cute.

Camerapedia has a lot of good info on this camera. To paraphrase, it was cleverly designed with a curved back to get sharper photos despite its simple lens, so it was an inexpensive but good quality camera.

This was the first medium format camera I ever tried! It's a lot of fun and I want to do more... Maybe one day I'll get a big kid 120 camera and get the most out of the larger frame size. However, it has its complications like anything else.

Being cheap and lazy, I decided to buy lomography 120 film from Urban Outfitters instead of ordering some big kid film off the internet. That was a mistake. You'll see in my examples that the frame numbers got imprinted on the negatives. Since this didn't happen with my efke 127 film and I've read that it's a lomography-specific problem I think it's safe to assume that it's because the backing paper on the film is too thin. I've read that lomography 120 film is just rebranded film from other producers but they must put different backing paper on it, so let that be a lesson.

As for the camera's performance, I am really quite pleased with it. When you take the picture, just like with other box cameras, there's no fanfare or hurrah when you release the shutter. So when I got the pictures back I was pleasantly surprised that the photos were pretty sharp, pretty interesting, and maybe there was a little hurrah, just a little quiet one I couldn't hear. And NO I am not on drugs. It's really too bad about the backing paper though.

The Clack has a shutter speed of around 1/30 so 50 ISO film is best. Use a tripod! I took these with 100 ISO lomography film. Not sure what producer makes the film; sorry.

holy lens flare!