Wednesday 21 June 2017

International Brownie Camera Day 2017

Kodak No.2A Brownie with Ilford HP5 Plus
After posting about the 116 Day at the weekend, I hadn't intended to write another post with the Kodak No.2A Brownie so soon, but after scanning the negatives shot that day, the presence of scratches throughout the negatives (and the work needed to mitigate them once scanned) prompted me to attempt to rectify this. It seemed clear that these scratches were caused by the film passing over the rollers; the first test roll through the Brownie had be badly scratched, and I had given the rollers a clean then, thinking that the presence of a small amount of corrosion was causing this. Subsequently I also surmised that the scratches were also caused by the rollers not turning freely. I removed the two rollers from the camera entirely and I sanded them using the finest emery paper I had, followed by using metal polish on the rollers. Replacing the rollers, I tried to ensure that these turned freely, and wound some backing paper through the camera a couple of times. It so happened that I found myself doing this on 'International Brownie Camera Day', June 18th this year. I decided to put roll of film through the camera to see how effective this fix had been; the results were certainly better, without scratches the entire length of the film, but the scratches were still there. Generally the more dense the negative, the less obtrusive the scratches appear; in the final image below, shot for about a second and a half on the camera's 'T' setting, through both the denseness of the negative, and the profusion of detail, the scratches barely register.

Kodak No.2A Brownie with Ilford HP5 Plus
Kodak No.2A Brownie with Ilford HP5 Plus
Kodak No.2A Brownie with Ilford HP5 Plus
International Brownie Camera Day 2017 image gallery

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