Take Your Box Camera To Play Day 2017

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford Selochrome glass plate

To mark one hundred years since the first photographs that became known as the Cottingley Fairies were taken, I decided to use last weekend's 'Take Your Box Camera To Play Day' to make a homage to the young photographers of this hoax. A counterpart to 'Take Your Box Camera To Work Day', I had been thinking of using the Midg falling plate camera for this event; as Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths used a Midg camera for their first set of photographs, this appeared to be a fitting subject to shoot on the day. For the fairies, I went back to the source material that the girls had used for their first published photograph, known as 'Frances and the Fairies', figures taken from an illustration in Princess Mary's Gift Book, as pointed out by the debunker James Randi. I shot the scene at the bottom of the garden on glass plates, as would have originally been used in the Midg. I didn't have any glass plates from 1917; I used some Ilford Selochrome plates from a box which had a label inside dated to February 1945 (as a footnote to this date, the paper that the box was wrapped in had a cheaper, coarser feel than the more usual brown paper that Ilford used for wrapping plate boxes until the end of the 1950s, which might reflect on wartime paper shortages).

Ilford Selochrome plates

I had problems with the first set of glass plates that I shot not falling down cleanly inside the camera when released; some of these, such as the image below, fell flat against the inside of the front of the camera, and the large white circle on the right hand side is from the plate being exposed directly behind the lens. Other plates then had the shadow of the plates stuck at the front of the camera partially obscuring the projected image during exposure. It was also clear that the focus distance wasn't very accurate; when I had used the camera before I had discovered that the 3 feet setting was actually more like 4 feet: the image at the top of the post was much closer to this distance (as was the last shot on FP4 film at the bottom of this post). After developing the first set of glass plates, I then shot another set, with more success, but I did still have problems with the plates not falling down inside the camera as they should, anticipating that, I was able to open the camera in a black bag and manually place the exposed plates flat at the bottom of the camera. When writing about the Midg, I had used a quote describing how the mechanism would jam at critical moments; this seemed to be one such moment.

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford Selochrome glass plate

As well as the Selochrome plates, I also shot some Ilford G.30 Chromatic plates from the mid-1960s. I'd used a number of these plates over the past few years, mostly with a fair amount of success. The plates from this current box suffer from a large amount of fogging around the edges, something I've experienced with some glass plates. I rated these at 10 as well, but with the light fading in the late afternoon to early evening when I took a second set of photographs, the photographs probably needed more exposure then I gave them to mitigate the fogging; the lighting had been better earlier in the day: in the image above, softer light integrates the cut out into its surroundings better. Had I taken more time over the photographs, I would have also painted in the cut out figures to provide a better tonal range.

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford G.30 Chromatic glass plate

I also shot a magazine's worth of Ilford FP4 film, from a box with a handwritten date of 16/11/78 (a leaflet inside the box dates to December 1977). None of these photographs suffered from the mechanism failing, which might reflect using the camera in the hand, rather than the fairy photographs, for which I used a tripod, and had to tip up the camera while still on the tripod to tilt it forward to get the plates to fall. When I'd used the Midg previously, I had shot some FP3 film, dating back to around 1950, and rated it with an exposure index of around 12; with the more recent FP4, I wanted to use the Midg hand-held. One of the problems with the Midg is that its shutter only fires at one speed, as the adjustment mechanism does not appear to change the 'instant' setting at all. The shutter fires around 1/50th, so I shot all the film with the lens wide open at f8; lighting conditions were fairly overcast, so I gave the film a one-and-a-half stop push in development (although a couple of sheets were stand developed with the plates). Some of the negatives were very thin, but the results from most of the shots were surprisingly good, and an instructive comparison to many of the photographs taken two years ago when I first wrote about the Midg.

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Midg Falling Plate Camera with Ilford FP4 film

Ilford G.30 Plates

Ilford G.30 Chromatic backed plates

Following the first vintage glass plates I shot last year, I've been keen to use more, although I have only found time to do so recently. I bought a couple of previously unopened boxes of Ilford G.30 Chromatic glass plates in 4x5 size; one of the film holders for my MPP large format camera takes glass plates (it does also have film sheaths, which can be inserted to shoot film). As the label states 'Open in red light only', the word 'Chromatic' appears to mean orthochromatic; where the label continues onto the underside of the box it also states, "Meter settings for minimum exposure ASA 10 DIN 11". The design of the packaging suggests the plates are from the 1960s; the leaflet inside the box has a code number L.64/D, which might refer to the year of printing, 1964.

For the first test I metered for 10 ISO, and took three successive exposures on the same plate, progressively withdrawing the darkslide between each shot (although not very evenly). Viewed from left to right, this effectively achieved exposures indexes of 10, 5, and 2.5. The plate was stand-developed in R09 One Shot (Rodinal), at a dilution of 1:100 for one hour, with a couple of inversions at the half hour mark.

Ilford G.30 Plate test - three successive exposures at 10 EI

There is some blurring due to a small amount of movement between the multiple exposures, but in terms of a test to determine a working exposure, it's clear enough. The first exposure at 10 EI appears to be workable, and initially I did think that this might have meant that the plates hadn't lost any sensitivity over the 50 years since manufacture, but Flickr member richard314159 reminded me of the doubling of film speed by the ASA in 1960. This change in standards simply reduced the margin of error against under-exposure. Although I can't be sure that the plates are from before the revised ASA settings, if so the plates would have originally been 20 rather than 10 by modern standards, and so may have lost one stop in sensitivity. There's also not much background fog on this plate, probably not much more than I've got with some contemporary films; from my limited experience, slower emulsions do appear to age better.

I subsequently shot two plates at night with long exposures. On first inspection, these seemed like they might have been over-exposed, but, particularly with the second plate below, this was important to register the foreground detail, although at the expense of the clarity of the lit-up lettering. The haloes around the lights are somewhat unusual, this may be due to the fact it's shot on glass. It is also noticeable that there's a line of thicker emulsion at two of the adjacent edges where, as it was poured onto the plate, the emulsion collected as the excess was poured off.

Ilford G.30 Plate - 1 minute exposure at f5.6

Ilford G.30 Plate - 2mins exposure at f5.6

Edit: 29/04/13

As a result of my research into Ilford, I discovered the Ilford Technical Information Book, which contains a sheet on the G.30 Chromatic plates, dated to 1965. This provides additional information for the plates from the leaflet in the box. It describes the G.30 Plate as

widely used for the photo-micrography of metal specimens. It is particularly useful for green-corrected microscope lenses since it allows comparatively short exposures to be given when using a Tricolour Green filter.

Ilford G.30 Chromatic Plates are used in the graphic arts, copying and scientific fields. For graphic arts work the main use is in the preparation of continuous tone negatives.

It gives the ASA setting for tungsten lighting as 5, against the daylight setting of 10. The date of the technical information sheet disproves the idea above after my first test that the meter settings were from before the change in speed ratings for black & white emulsions, and so the plates have lost very little sensitivity since they were made nearly 50 years ago. The table of development times gives further dilutions and times for both continuous and intermittent agitation.

Ilford G.30 Chromatic Plate development times

Ilford G.30 Chromatic Plate sensitometric curves

I subsequently shot some more plates with my MPP Micro-Technical camera, the best of which is below, a difficult subject given the brightness of the fluorescent strip lights under the awning compared to the building above.

Ilford G.30 Plate, 12 seconds exposure at f4.5