Using a $5 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash

The 50's version of a point and shoot.

I got my hands on this beat up 1950 something Kodak Brownie Hawkeye flash this week. A pretty simple little camera that has seen better days. It came with the flash holder but I don't have any bulbs right now, so I used it with film only.

One good thing and one bad thing about this camera. the good thing is altough it was made to use 620 film which is discontinued, if you still have the original 620 spool in the take up position, a 120 film will fit in the feeder side. The bad thing is that it is fixed at aperture f/11 and 1/30th of a second for shutter speed.

I shot a roll of Ilford HP4 125 on a very sunny day, so that meant the entire roll would be over exposed. Normal setting for this type of condition would have been f/16 at 1/125. So I had to reduce the processing time in order to compensate. 3 minutes in the developer instead of 4.

The results are pretty good considering that there is no focus adjustment and you shoot through a plastic lens. It's a good thing that I took the time to clean it.

I don't think I'll be using it much but it's handy to have in the arsenal.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Trooper #2 Day 20

"Stargate sucks!"

A public announcement from your favorite clone.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Trooper #2 Day 19

"Mommy?"

Better late than never! Clone melting pot.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Trooper #2 Day 18

"If I move my legs enough maybe I can turn this into butter and walk out."

Trooper has ended up in a bit of a jam...or pint!

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Film or Analog Macro Photography

Minolta X-570: $30, Zoom/Macro lens: $30, remote trigger: $5, industrial tripod: $5, expired color film: $0.70, home processing: $1, making my own macro shots from start to finish: priceless!

So I had the itch to process some black and white film yesterday evening but it was dark and very cold outside. Then it hit me that I had recently bought a zoom lens that also did macro. So I pulled out an expired generic 400 ISO color film (Yes, color film can be processed in black and white) from the freezer and went ahead.

The clock is ticking.

Vintage bobble head. This shot was taken without the hood around the lens. You can see how the light is more diffused than in the other shots.

The results are very good with 20 good shots out of a possible 24. I'm real happy with that. I've learned a few things along the way. That big 3 pound lens works better when it's pointing in a horizontal fashion. It's so heavy that if it's pointing down, the shot will be out of focus by the time you shoot. The depth of field is very very narrow, no room for error.

Nothing like a macro shot to make you realize that your stuff is dirty! There's a clue here about the 1/2 shutter speed.  :)

Once in a blue moon you take a shot that makes you go "Wow"! This is such a shot for me.

I was also very happy about that big tripod and shutter release cable. Any kind of vibration will show in the end result. The stable tripod and cable permitted me to keep my hands off the camera and thus avoiding any kind of vibration. I could have used the timer but the cable is so cool!

An appearance from Trooper #2 in an unrelated post for him. I've taken more than a few shots of the guy during that session that will be posted in his regular feature.

I shot the expired film at 200 ISO settings for the light meter and developed it with Ilfosol 3 at 20 degrees Celsius for 6 minutes. I then digitized the negatives with my Nikon S8100 camera on copy and macro mode. The negative was then inverted in Gimp.

All and all a nice way to spend an evening at home.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Trooper #2 Day 17

"So you hang around here a lot?"

Trooper making a new friend.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)

Trooper #2 Day 16

"You guys suck for taking all of his attention away from me."

Trooper feels a bit neglected amongst my favorite toys.

Thanks for watching.

Gerry :)