Picked up some equipment today.. included amongst it was an RR Beard 20×16 easel and an Ilford SL1. The RRB needs some TLC, the arms are bent & flaking paint, with a little corrosion. I have straightened the arms and will have them acid dipped & powder coated, the chrome & rusted steel screws have been replaced with Stainless Steel. The Ilford safelight will join the other one in my darkroom.
Picked up another orphan, a Junghans Stop-Timer. Pretty unloved, but surprisingly it worked all the way home in the car. So now for a strip down & clean up, re-lubrication and reassemble with the knobs the right way round, and hopefully without any electrical tape on the red one.
Interior isn’t to bad, and will clean up nicely.
Knob repaired, all of them have gone through the sonic cleaner, and now installed on the correct thread, internals lubricated, casing cleaned inside and out as well as the glass (which is actually glass, unlike the Smiths timers. May think about getting it chemically dipped and powder coated, but for now it will stay with its scars.
Seeing as I have dived back in to shooting film for some personal projects and I have set up a darkroom, I am also scanning the negatives for online use…. although using a Canon EOS 5DS for online maybe a little over kill…..
The quality of the scans is however, really very very good. I have included a sample below. These were shot on a Canon F1n, with Canon FDn 15mm F2.8 or 20-35mm F3.5 L on Agfa 400ISO film dev’d in Ilfosol3.
Managed to get some film shot during the weekend, only the one roll, but also got into the darkroom on Sunday afternoon and processed and printed a number of frames. Mainly shooting some test photos with the Canon New-F1 and FDn 15mm F2.8, FDn 20-35mm F3.5, I still need to do some tests with a recently acquired FDn 35-70mm F2.8/3.5.
The photos were shot in Burton-on-Sea, Bognor Regis and Guildford. Ilford FP4 Plus, dev’d in Ilfosol3. The images below were scanned with a Canon EOS 5DS on an Bowens Illumitran. (I did also some 9½x12 Multigrade prints on some paper that I was given a couple of months ago, which is currently my favourite print size.)
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This one has seen better days, but it will be cleaned up & probably repainted as the rust is well entrenched. Plastic front is quite scratched & requires polishing, so complete disassembly, clean, re-lubricate and rebuild.
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I had a Billingham bag back in the 1980s, along with a Tenba P211 as a walk around bag. Having used Domke & Think-Tank bags since the late 1990s and early 2000s, I thought I’d take a look at the new Billingham bags, however before I pulled the trigger on a new 455 mkII I found a new/old stock 455 . I had forgotten just how spacious & well made these bags are. Anyhooo within minutes of the postman arriving the bag is loaded with my 35mm Film kit. Currently it is filled with two F1 bodies with Drive FNs, FDn 15mm F2.8, FDn 20-35mm F3.5L, FDn 35-70mm F2.8/3.5, FDn 80-200mm F4, FDn 24mm F2.0, FDn 50mm F1.4, FDn 100mm F2.8, Canon Speed-lite 199a, 10 rolls of film and a Sekonic meter.
Having not been used for years, probably sometime back in the 1980s, I decided that I would get my old Lunasix light meter working again, I was slightly surprised to find a pair of PX625 batteries in the thing & even more surprised that a) it worked & b) the batteries hadn’t leaked. I threw them out anyway & ordered a battery replacement, only you can’t order the old PX625 batteries anymore as they contained Mercury & were banned back in 2000ish. Some quick research revealed that Gossen had produced an adaptor to use modern 1.5v batteries, with a voltage regulator diode to bring the voltage down to the required 2.7v.
The only time I generally use a meter is in the studio, however shooting with some old 35mm film cameras I may sling it in the Domke and use it.
I have acquired a number of these old Smiths darkroom timers over the past year or so, mostly for free & the most expensive one was £12 plus postage. All of them worked, to varying degrees, all needed deep cleaning & some required the plastic clock front machine polished to remove scratches and chemical stains.
Some required a chemical dip to remove years of grime, and all of them required a re-lubrication of the mechanicals to get them to run for more than a few seconds. Fortunately these clocks are quite simple and dismantling cleaning and lubrication only takes half an hour, the cleaning of the cases usually takes considerably longer. Some have even required the application of wet & dry. My aim is not to make these like new, I prefer them to wear their battle scars earned through years of use. Even the newest ones of these are over 40 years old.
It may be Spring….but fook it was miserable yesterday, anyways a regular client wanted photographs and was prepared to pay so who am I to argue? Day started promisingly enough, but by 0900hrs it was raining, by 1100hrs it was blowing a gale, pretty miserable in the middle of an airfield with zero shelter. To fill in some time during a lull in the action, I got some film cameras out & did some old school processing & printing today.
I have to say that I am really loving the new Ilfolab 1250RC, absolutely glossy dry prints in seconds.
Awful 400 mile round trip to Derbyshire yesterday, but the end result was worth it. I have wanted an Ilford print dryer for years, I originally had a Polysales RC print dryer back in the day, which was adequate, from memory it could dry 6 12″x16″ prints at a time. But I always hankered for a proper print dryer.
Anyway, this one had been advertised on Facebook market place for quite a few weeks, so I made a low ball offer & went to see it. For the price I’d offered it was always going to be coming with me. Now installed in the darkroom & it has been tested & found to be working perfectly. Happy days.
It was supplied complete with the original Ilford Wet Tray, Print Receive Tray & instructions.
Had to take the old Golf out for a run, as it hadn’t been used for a couple of weeks, so chucked the 35mm kit bag in the boot & headed out, no plan or destination in mind, and ended up at Hayling Island. I wanted to shoot some pictures with the recently acquired FDn 15mm F2.8 and the FDn 20-35mm F3.5L on my F-1 AE bodies.
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Having started shooting film again, after many years being digital (circa 1996 with the DCS3) I have recently gone back to my roots, not just shooting film, but B&W only, and processing and printing ‘old school’, I have added a couple of bits of glass recently that were really quite exceptional in their day (and indeed I owned the EOS versions of both). The latest acquisitions include a 20-35mm F3.5L and the newest one is the 15mm F2.8.
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Selling one of my Leitz V-35 enlargers, so decided that it needed a clean up before posting on ebay. Most of it is pretty much immaculate, however the colour module was really a bit grimy, so a quick strip down and clean, there even appeared to be a bit of haze on the dichroic filters, so they were given a spruce up as well.
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Picked up a new enlarger a couple of days ago, it was last seen at the Leica Camera Head Office in Milton Keynes, was sold and not been used, but had been transported through a couple of house moves & ended up in Poole. In really nice condition, it also came with a brand new RR Beard 12×16 masking frame, loads of dev kit, a lot of paper and other darkroom gear. This one and the RRB will be kept, meaning that I have another Leitz V-35 to sell, which is in nice condition as well as a newer RRB 12×16 Masking Frame. Some of the timers etc will also be sold. Have a look here.
Since being digital, I have not had to worry about light seals, which means that a Canon F1 that hasn’t been used for over 30 years was in dire need of some TLC, not only a service to remove some seriously dried out lubricant, but also some rotting light seals. Upon inspection it seems as if half of the light seal material was actually stuck to the film door, which was great, it meant less material to remove from the channels.
Anyway, ordered some light seal foam, and set about the dirty job of cleaning the rest of the crud from the channels and installing fresh foam and mirror box foam as well.
All done, that was definitely a three beer job, now I just need to do the New F-1, which fortunately is in much better condition, the trouble is there is a film in it at the moment.
Negative scanned with a Canon D5S, looks clean enough. Went to wet print it, there were issues, the spots on the lightbox/condenser had returned. A quick clean with lighter petrol and good to go. It seems that the contamination reappears, so will have to investigate where it is coming from, seems strange that it is on a downwards facing part, that is nowhere near anything that is lubricated.
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Having solved the issue with dust bunnies and fibres, now to tackle these spots that keep turning up, I thought that they may have been caused by cross contamination, but fresh dev & fix didn’t cure it. Looking on the negative in the neg carrier with a loupe showed nothing. Where the hell were they coming from? So out with the lightbox, nothing visible even with the loupe…. cleaned it anyway, and the spots had moved. Swapped lightboxes with another Leitz v35 that I have, same issue, different places.
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Having spent the afternoon in the darkroom, I have some real issue with dust & fibres on the negative carriers for the Leitz V-35 enlarger that I have, no matter what I have tried all I have managed to do is move the dust & fibres from one part of the image to another. Bloody annoying! So I packed it in for the day & sat down to give the negative carriers a thorough cleaning. Back in the day I used glassless negative carriers, which meant I only needed to worry about cleaning the negs. However, the V-35 Negative carriers have an anti-newton glass on the top part of the carrier. I tried cleaning with compressed air, Isopropyl Alcohol a microfibre cloth, without any noticeable improvement.
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Found a rather tired Hancocks A3 lightbox on Facebook market, bargain at only a tenner, had a couple of heavy scratches (seems like someone used a really sharp knife on it) in the perspex, however a polish with a heavy cutting polish and flip the perspex and a deep clean of the case & it looks like new. Will investigate replacing the fluorescent tubes with LED lamps in due course.
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Picked up the panels from the workshop (https://www.aurorapowdercoating.co.uk) who have done a brilliant job, (they also do my RR Beard easels/Masking Frames) now just need to clean & assemble with the new stainless screws & cup washers. It certainly looks a bit better than it did, also free from corrosion. So I reckon I have dragged it from the 1970s into what? Maybe the 1980s or 1990s?
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Picked up a cheap & very nice condition. Canon T-90, I used one of these for a number of years, before the EOS kit took over. However I had forgotten just how compact they are compared to the A-1 & new F-1 with motor drives attached, & the T-90 nearly matched them in speed, with about 4.5FPS with only 4 AA batteries, rather than the A-1 with 5FPS, but needed 12 AA batteries.
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Another addition to the darkroom, a 1980s vintage RC print dryer. Damned huge, about 75cm square & 30cm tall and weighing in at well over 20 kilos…. It will be serviced & maybe have a colour change, most of the panels are pressed steel so may have them stripped and re-powder coated to something more modern, I am thinking maybe Burgundy and Grey…… OK joking, probably would go black & grey, which along with the chrome would bring it into the 1990s. Anyway it’s still in the boot of the car until a mate turns up to help lift it into the house.
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Picked up a Leitz V35 Vario-Contrast, however the filter assembly was borked, caused in part due to storage in poor condition, but also possibly because it may have subsequently poorly handled as it would require more effort to change the filtration. This resulted in some damage to the filter holder and the cam which drives the filter holder.
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Years ago I had a 3 foot lightbox in my darkroom, unfortunately I don’t have that kind of space anymore. Not really any room for a lightbox at all. Until I found the Kenro KNSLO1 it is tiny, but it is big enough for me, for the moment. The light panel itself is 5×4 inches, ideal if you shoot 5×4 probably not so much if you shoot 10×8. But perfect for checking 35mm negatives, runs on AAA batteries so it doesn’t have to be plugged in, the downside is that I will probably lose it in the darkroom many times, I may stick some luminous stickers on it, and dayglo stickers now I think about it. Good thing is that it was cheap (less than 1/2 RRP), it came from Kenro Direct via their ebay shop.
I was hoping to find a used one of these, but they seem to be pretty rare so I hit the RH Designs website, debit card in hand. I have heard only good things about these, so I am really looking forward to getting in to the darkroom this weekend. I have already programmed the analyser with the Multigrade V settings (ex-factory defaults are Multigrade IV) an I am itching to go, they also sent FOC a safelight torch, which was nice.
Running an old Mac causes lots of fun, opportunities to pull your hair out & uncontrolled fits of rage. I can’t complain, the machine is 14 years old, however Apple did abandon it quite some time ago, meaning that my main office machine needed to be upgraded to a £10k plus machine, with optional wheels for £600. F**k that, fortunately there are a great number of tech wizards who agree. So my machine that last ran an Apple supported OS some years ago is now running MacOS Monterey, I am not going to say it was all plain sailing, but in the next few weeks I will be upgrading to the latest OS. I was running Big Sur (another bent installation, using an Open Source software to fake the install) which worked perfectly, but that OS is now running out of time, with IT giants no longer supporting Apple’s Safari, requiring updates that Apple will no longer produce, so compromising security, so upgrading was necessary.
There is a serious risk of “bricking” the machine, but then I could always use my much newer MacBook Pro. So I took a chance. Pleased to announce the 14 year old machine is now running MacOS Monterey, with no seeming side effects, in fact in some areas it seems better than before. So Sonoma will be the next upgrade, probably!
Did I really just buy another RR Beard easel in dire need of restoration? Damned right I did. This one whilst not as rusty as the last 10×12 RRB is in dire need of TLC. It will be chemically cleaned & powder coated, the only issue that I currently have is that the measurement scales on the easel are completely borked, so I will have to find a way of replicating them, fortunately I have a few mint easels knocking about as samples.
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I was looking for a film drying cabinet, but the prices put me off, £500 for a 40 year old rusty box with dodgy electrics or £200 for a Durst UT-100 just seemed a bit rich. So I decided that I would build one. Well not so much build but assemble. So some 4 inch pipe, a 4 inch to 6 inch reducing joint, a hydroponics fan & filter. I did initially try a 5v PC fan, it proved that what I was doing would work, but didn’t move enough air even without a filter.
So the pipe is the perfect size for Patterson reels, the stainless fittings are placed so that it will take two reels, if required I could move them to accommodate more reels, but currently 2 is sufficient.
I used it yesterday to dry a roll of Agfa APX 100 & I have to say it works perfectly, with very little curl on the negatives, certainly less than I used to get with the Durst UT-100 that I had 35 years ago. Film was dried in about 20-30 minutes & no dust.
The reducing joint has notches cut out to allow the air to escape, the fan is a Black Orchid Axial Flow In-line extractor with a Black Orchid Carbon Filter with a sock. Total cost, £50.00. If I ever feel that heat is required I will just stand it near a radiator.
Fan £20.00 (from Amazon), Filter £10 (from eBay), Ducting £20 (from Amazon)
Having started shooting film for the first time in years, with my old Canon F1n & Canon A1s and 35 year old lenses, it seem logical to fire up some darkroom gear, I decided that I wasn’t going to keep the 5×4 enlarger as 35mm negative stages are as rare as rocking horse dung, and sold it for a healthy profit along with some enlarging lenses, and purchased a Leitz V35 for a bargain price, it has a couple of issues which I will get around to sorting, but initial trials are good. I also pulled the trigger on an enlarger timer, which I have never had before (used them in other darkrooms, but never my own). A bargain priced Durst Labotim has been delivered, and I have to say it is so much easier than “One Elephant, Two Elephants”
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I have purchased a number of new/old stock FD lenshoods to replace my old worn out ones from the 1980s, but it seemed a shame to throw out the old ones which have served me well for over 30 years, so I thought that I should investigate why the became such a loose fit.
In each lenshood are 4 little plastic “nubbies”, that when new are white in appearance, however over time & use they breakdown, they usually discolour & disintegrate, leaving a horrible gooey mess. So I cleaned out the mess (as shown above) and looked for something to replace the “nubbies” with. Initially I thought some self adhesive silicon or plastic bumpers (the type used to cushion cabinet doors), but they were difficult to find in the right thickness, and required trimming, and then they preferred to stick to everything but the lenshood.
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First time in a darkroom for well over 20 years, and a darkroom of my own in closer to 30 years. Seeing as I have a number of enlargers, enlarging lenses, masking frames & other darkroom kit knocking about it seemed sensible to set some up & have a play. Wow many memories brought back, only managed about 5 prints in the hour that I played about, but enjoyed every minute of it. Not sure that I chose the right enlarger, having a frozen left shoulder & the focus being on the left (my old LPL C7700 & the 5×4 enlarger have dual focus controls) however the Meopta, with the Nikon 63mm F2.8 worked well enough along with an RRB 10×12 frame, & a box of Ilford MG.
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Probably the last upgrade for my MacPro 4,1, which has been flashed to 5,1 with an upgraded CPU, 64Gb RAM, SSD boot disk, twin SSD on AngelWings PCI card, upgraded to BigSur using a combination of Open Core & DOSDude scripts. Having run a 30″ and a 23″ screen I decided that I wanted to run dual 30″ monitors, which required an upgraded Graphics Card, I opted for an AMD RX580 8Gb card, which required a dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin power cord and as I have BigSur the boot screen is supported natively.
The upgrade to Big Sur doesn’t appear to have negatively impacted the performance of the machine, only only upgrade left to me is to upgrade the RAM, but I am not sure that it will hugely improve things as I am rarely over about 50% of the RAM already installed (according to activity monitor). I have ran some video benchmarking software & under the same “standard” settings the improvement is an impressive doubling of the frame rate (not that the end result is impressive but it a great improvement) from around 25FPS to nearly 55FPS. The resulting video play back is considerably smoother, fewer dropped frames and even though I don’t play computer games likely to improve performance in other areas.
It has been a while since I have owned a 20″x16″ easel, and to be honest I had forgotten just how large they are, the one that I had previously was an LPL and was literally 21″x17″ inches. The RR Beard enlarging mask is is closer to 22″x26″ and will allow the printing of a 20″x16″ print on a sheet of 20″x24″ with a 2″ margin. Anyway I picked this one up in reasonable shape, the blades will be stripped & powder coated as there is a little rust, and the baseboard has already been stripped of some black vinyl that had rather amateurishly fitted over the white melamine. All of the fixtures and fittings are in great shape I will replace the starlock dome caps as they are showing signs of corrosion. I will probably keep this one, along with a 10″x12″ & a 12″x16″.
Three 12″x16″ frames will go onto eBay. The first one is already online now (click here to see). It has had the arms powder coated and new knobs & sliders fitted as well as new stainless steel fittings and new foam tape on the base..
The replacement compression springs arrived from China, the only issue is that they are simply cut from longer lengths of springs, meaning that the finish is crap, there are sharp edges & the springs will not sit flat, usually compression springs are flattened or ground to ensure that the top & bottom of the spring is level. So out came the hand file initially, but ultimately as I had a few to do I fired up the angle grinder.
Having restored a few of the RRB easels, I will be offering a few for sale, I will be keeping the 12×10 & one 12×16, but the rest will ultimately be sold, interested drop me a message.
Next job is to restore the Kodak 5×4 Camera that is a little tired, needs a few replacement thumbnuts and grub screws, most importantly it needs a new rack & gear for the rising front mechanism. I have started the strip down, removed the front uprights from the camera and started the hunt for the problem.
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I have a number of RR Beard or Beard/Photon masking frames/easels whatever you prefer to call them that I have kind of inherited, they all came with other purchases, either for free or next to nothing. One, a 12×16 was actually mint, with the exception of an incorrect knob, that was so obviously out of place that I had to replace it, in fact I replaced both so that they would match. However that is not as simple as it seems, the knobs screw into a bit of machined polyurethane (sliders) which has an imperial thread. So I had a friend knock up some metric replacements and that Beard is now ready for use in my darkroom.
The second RRB cost me £10, to be honest it was in a pretty awful state, rusty, bent & in dire need of a full restoration, so the first job was to strip it down & find out just how bad it was. As you can see in the first photograph it was awful. The worst of the rust was on the frame, and all of the screws, washers and finishers were either rusty or missing.
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So I went out today to collect a 12×16 RR Beard/Photon enlarging easel, to go with the other three that I am currently restoring, so met a splendid chap in Barking & came home with some other very interesting things, all of which need some restoration or a lot of restoration & some bits that will go into my darkroom set up. One of the unexpected items was a Kodak 5×4 monorail camera, which has a few bits missing (most of which can be sourced) and a broken rising front gear, I am not familiar with this particular camera, but I think that the rising front is done with a rack & gear, unfortunately it is inside part of the structure, so will have to wait until various other projects that I have on the go are completed. There were also some very nice enlarging lenses, and other bits that will get dealt with in due course. Hey Ho, as if I didn’t have enough to do.
If any one has any experience or knowledge of the Kodak No 3 Specialist camera please feel free to get in touch.
Went on a little trip to pick up some bits, mainly a couple of Manfrotto Autopoles, but also a very used 10×12 RR Beard Enlarging Easel. Having got the Easel home and examined, I have to wonder who looks after their kit like this? Same with the Autopoles, which had 5 Manfrotto 035 Clamps attached, most of which are covered in white emulsion, surely if you are painting the studio you take them down!
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Found an old Nikon Loupe on-line looking rather sad for itself & quite cheap, other than Evri trying to lose it and a 2 day trip lasting closer to seven, it eventually made it home. Cleaning it has revealed some small cracks, but I have at least been able to polish out the name & “artroom” that was heavily scratched into the clear acrylic, it needs a little more work with the polish but is already 100% better than when it arrived.
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For sale, I would put it on eBay but it is a little exclusive and they don’t really have a category for it, some of my colleagues may be interested. A rain proof cover for 13″ laptops, can also be used as a sunscreen.
I have an iCap MinPRO for sale, used only a couple of times. make me an offer before it goes on ebay.
http://www.e.icap-shop.com/icap-pro/icap-min-pro.html
So I went to remove the tripod mount from my Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM lens today & I thought I was going potty, loosened the knurled knob, spun the ring to line up the red mark & off should come the tripod mount. Nah, not happening, so a quick check for the instructions, to make sure that I was doing it right, I was! but the ring wouldn’t shift.
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More stuff going on eBay.
Time to start clearing some bits & pieces, so everything will end up on eBay, just getting started, feel free to visit & buy stuff. Click Here
Yet another job ticked off, the Canon A-1 camera bodies had both developed a squeak & the battered one ceased to work, a quick clean up with a fibreglass contact cleaner & the battered A-1 started working, but with the squeak in all of its glory. One advantage of the A series is that the shutter speeds are electronically governed, so there are fewer issues with mechanical failures due to dirt & old lubricant than with the Old F1, FTBs and the such like.
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Yet another bloody job I didn’t ever expect to have to do, certainly one I never wanted to do. So I fished my 85mm F1.2L lens out of the bag the other day and the rear of the lens felt horribly sticky, so gave it a wipe down, but the stickiness remains. Canon have used a “soft touch” coating on the rear part of the lens body, which much like the soft touch material on VW dashboards/doors etc from the 1990s goes off & breaks down, leaving a sticky mess.
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Can you have too many tripods? I am starting to think so, however this one will probably only be mine for the short term. It’s a Benbo One and it is in dire need of a service, the head won’t lock on to the Tripod itself and is prone to rotating even when fully locked. The Ball head is sticky and the legs have a foot that needs replacing as it is cracked & has been glued back together very poorly & also glued to the leg itself. So I have ordered replacement feet, I have stripped the bent bolt mechanism and cleaned & re-lubricated, now all that remains is to strip down the head.
And the next project, seeing as I am going to keep the LPL 5×4 enlarger is to refurbish the RRB 12×16 enlarging easel. I love the design of these things and so much more substantial than the LPL easels that I used back in the day. First up will be a thorough clean, I have already ordered replacement knobs, as it was acquired with two different knobs, one original & the other a completely different & wrong sized knob. I may replace both as even though it would remove the branding, it would look better.
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First up an LPL C6700, dichroic colour enlarger with 35mm negative carrier, in great working order, only signs of use are a slight loss of paint on the base of the post, has been CLA’d as the old lubricant had dried out, now works like new. More photos below. Click on the photos to see a larger version.
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So having designed & had printed an uncut film holder for the Illumitran, which arrived on Thursday, I finally got a chance to sit down & have a play. I have successfully scanned mount transparencies without to much of an issue, so the next step was uncut transparencies & colour & B&W negatives. So after a trip out to buy yet another enlarger, primarily for the bits that it came with, I sat down and started.
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Purchased a new enlarger the other day, a very nice LPL 7451, 5×4 colour enlarger which is going to be kept, needs a little maintenance which will be tackled over the next few weeks. It also came with quite a few other bits & pieces, but was significantly for me missing 35mm negative carriers. It also came with a fantastic RRB easel, enlarger timer, an old but mint Ilford EM10, a colour analyser and various other bits.
Amongst the bits that will be sold off are a number of enlarging lenses, including two 150mm lenses (Schneider Companon & Astron), a Rokker 50mm (which along with another Rokker 50mm F4.5) and a AICO 75mm as I will never use them, unfortunately.
There are also a number of other bits that will be donated to any local darkroom clubs or disabled photographer societies. But most importantly the reason for this post, if you happen to know anyone that has 35mm & 6×6 & 6×7 negative carriers for this enlarger please let me know.
The ramblings of a press photographer 