Week 61 - Kodak Instamatic 500

Kodak Instamatic 500, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

My dad gave me this camera recently, he got it for next to nothing at a car boot sale several years ago.
The Kodak Instamatic range is normally associated with very basic point and shoot cameras, but there were a handful of more high spec models, and this one is the top of the range. It has a Xenar lens and a Compur shutter, with a built in coupled Selenium cell exposure meter which still seems to work.
The main problem with using these cameras is that the 126 cartridge format is long obsolete, and one has to rely on using old film. There was an unopened film in my dad's garage, which expired in 1993, and I've loaded that into the camera, it remains to be seen whether there is any life left in it!

photo from week 60 - Leidox Ia

oranges are not the only fruit, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

Taken in Chesterfield market, this was the brightest day pf the week, even so this was a full aperture, to allow for the faulty shutter, which only fires at around 1/200th second.
This film, which I have never used before, is extremely curly, some of the softness is probably due to the film not being flat during scanning, though the limited depth of field is also a factor.

photo from week 60 - Leidox Ia

reflected self-portrait with Leidox camera and silly hat, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

I used the camera on the "B" setting to take this, my assistant fired a hend held flash gun as soon as I opened the shutter, there were also a couple of homemade slave flash units involved.

photos from week 60 - Leidox Ia

in memoriam, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

These two were taken within a few minutes of each other on a very dull February day. This camera's shutter only works at around 1/200th of a second, so even at full aperture I knew these would be underexposed, hence the noise in the shadows.

photo from week 59 - Wray Stereo Graphic

light trails and filling station, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

Finishing off the film on my evening walk, these were several second time exposures with the camera resting an walls or railings. Three adjacent frames.

photo from week 59 - Wray Stereo Graphic

stereo-pair reflected self-portrait with Wray Stereo Graphic camera and Turkish hat, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

This camera has a single shutter speed (approx 1/50th second) and "B". To use it indoors requires a tripod and a several second exposure, I set the aperture to the minimum, f16, and use the "B" setting to make an exposure of around 6 seconds.

photo from week 59 - Wray Stereo Graphic

Riace Bronzes, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.

This camera takes stereo pairs, on the negatives, each pair is two frames apart, so between each pair there are two other single frames, this is three adjacent frames.