Paris flea market finds (2)

Plate camera box and plateholders

One of my first posts on this blog was describing what I'd found in the Porte de Vanves flea market in Paris five years ago; the weekend before last I revisited this flea market on my way through Paris to the south. There were a few cameras of interest to me, but none without one problem or another. However, I did find a stall which had a couple of plate camera boxes containing plate holders. These were 9x12cm-size plate holders, which, having a few cameras in the size, such as the Ica Trona and the Kodak Recomar, it's always useful to have more. The stallholder wanted €25 for six holders; I did try to barter down to €20, but he wouldn't move on the price. I then asked for the box too, and was told the price was €10 for the box alone, but he gave me the box and plate holders for €30. If my French had been better, I'd have asked him how often he sells glass plate holders, as I don't imagine these items sell which any frequency in the flea market. The plate holders are all stamped AP Paris, some with a craquelure finish on the darkslide; none had film sheathes inside, but one did contain a glass plate negative, shown below.

Found glass plate

A few days later, in Toulouse, a window display of a shop on the Rue Pargaminières drew my attention, with, amongst other secondhand cameras, a Contax IIIa. The shop was Photos Signe Des Temps - the website is limited, but the shop itself had a good stock of film, and film cameras, including a whole cabinet of classic SLRs, and a glass case of all kinds of old cameras. One camera which caught my eye was a folding plate camera with a 165mm lens.

Photo-Plait branded 9x12cm plate camera

Typically, for a camera of this age, the 165mm focal length would denote a 10x15cm plate size, and at a glance, it looked as though it was larger than a typical 9x12cm camera - which it turned out to be - due to the wooden body. The lens itself was a Berthiot Olor Series IIa, reputedly a Tessar clone, with a maximum aperture of f5.7 in an Ibso shutter - the eight-speed version with 1/150th, rather than the more common seven-speed shutter, up to 1/100th. The shutter gave some indication of the camera's date: according to Camera-Wiki, the Ibso was made by Gauthier between 1908-1926. However, I suspect that the lens and shutter unit may not be original to the body, and not simply due to it being an unusual focal length for the negative format. Some of the features are clearly missing, such as the focus scale, and, at infinity, the 165mm lens is drawn out so much that the metal indicator at the base of the lens standard is beyond where the focus scale would need to be in order to read this. It is also missing a wire frame finder, and a brilliant finder: the latter appears as though it may have been carefully sawn away, with the metal cut into a continuation of the curve around the lens standard. As a typical mid-range folding plate camera, it has rise and cross movements, and rack and pinion focus with double extension bellows - a necessity given the focal length. The bellows were in good condition, and the ground glass intact. The lens was dirty but appeared otherwise good, and, by ear, the shutter fired at all speeds fairly close to each setting.

Berthiot Olor Series IIa lens in Ibso shutter

The camera was priced at €40, and although it did have some missing features, the serendipity of having found the plate holders and camera box in the flea market earlier in the week prompted me to buy it. Needless to say, the plate holders did fit, and the camera itself fitted into the box with the six plate holders too. Even if the lens and shutter were original, there was little on the body to identify the camera, except for a metal plaque with 'Photo-Plait Paris'. This Paris-based dealer would have affixed this small plaque to the cameras that they sold (including, in this discussion thread, a Leica), but it appears that some cameras were manufactured for Photo-Plait and sold under their own name. The distinctive thumb-grips on the two locking levers for the base board were some help in getting close to an identification: French cameras are something of a lacuna for me, but after a detailed trawl through www.collection-appareils.fr, with a different lens, and some removed features, it looks closest to the Photo-Plait Splendor model.

More Glass Plates

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Metallographic Glass Plates

Following the successful results exposing and developing old Ilford R.10 glass plates, I wanted to test another box, again previously opened. These are Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Metallographic Glass Plates and, according to the Early Photography website, Kodak's Rapid Ortho emulsion was only available in plates. These are 6.5x9cm plates, slightly larger than the imperial size of the Ilford plates (the small handwritten label on the box states: "Do not fit 3 1/2x2 1/2 single slides"). The box is also inscribed with a marker pen '28/6/62'. The plates in this box, unlike the Ilford plates, are wrapped in fours, with the central pair held together by paper runners. It wasn't clear which way around the plates were facing: whether the central pair were facing, and the other two facing outwards, which was the choice I made when loading the plate holders. This turned out to be the wrong decision, as the emulsion on the central pair faces outwards, the outer plates facing inwards. As a result, in the plate holders, the anti-halation backing faced the lens. I shot these plates at the same rating as the Ilford plates, roughly 12 ISO. The plates do not have a speed rating other than the name O.250, but looking at the information on Early Photography, it looks as though these plates may have been as slow as 16 ISO originally.

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Plate, loaded back to front, shot in Icarette L

When I took the plates out of the holders in the darkroom under the safelights (these plates being orthographic) I realised my mistake. However, I went on to develop the plates, using the same method as the Ilford R.10 plates, using Rodinal diluted 1:100, stand developing for an hour. The results show that the anti-halation backing transmits enough light to give a fairly good image on the emulsion, but the backing wasn't a smooth, even layer (which I could see before developing), with the effect of creating mottled patches which also diffuse the focus in these areas. The negatives are quite thin but the plates are clearly usable, and perhaps shot the right way around the negatives would be sufficiently dense to use at 12 ISO.

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Plate, loaded back to front, shot in Icarette L

Edit: 28/04/13

I recently bought another box of Kodak O.250 plates, and this had an information leaflet inside. It gives the speed of the plates as 8 ASA for daylight, and just 3 for tungsten, but it isn't clear whether the plates are from before or after the black & white speed rating change of 1960: if from before, then the original rating of the plates would have been 16 ISO. Either way, the plates have lost very little sensitivity despite being fifty years old. It provides filter factors and developing times for D61a and D76 (Ilford's ID11). The leaflet describes O.250 plates as being:

recommended for photographing biological sections, metallurgical and mineralogical work, spectography and macrography and clinical photography where neither red sensitivity nor high speed is necessary. It is also suitable for commercial, landscape and architectural photography and for studio portraiture by daylight.

Kodak O.250 Plate leaflet (front)

Kodak O.250 Plate leaflet (back)

Ilford R.10 Glass Plates - First Test

Ilford R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic Glass Plates

The first old films I had developed, or used and developed, I'd come across by accident, usually finding them in or with cameras I'd bought, found or been given. Having achieved results of varying success, I began to seek out expired films on occasion, when able to find them cheaply, and this then extended to glass plates. I have a few cameras which take plate holders, which I had previously used with film or paper.
 
Having accumulated a few boxes of glass plates, recent sunny weather provided me with the excuse to try some. A couple of the boxes had already been opened, and it made sense to use plates from one of these first. I chose Ilford R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic plates, which I'd bought in a lot with a box of unopened FP4 plates, not knowing whether the plates in the open box had been exposed to light or not. Both boxes have writing in pencil with the date 2/9/65 and 'Photo Centre'; the box of R.10 has "6 8 [crossed out] left". According to the Ilford chronology on the Photomemorabilia website, glass plate production by Ilford finished in 1975 (Ilford do still make photographic glass plates for specialised applications in the nuclear and particle physics industry; some other manufacturers still make plates for general photography, but these are very expensive and a number of photographers coat their own glass plates).

The box originally held 12 plates, 2 1/2x3 1/2 inch size. There are a number of standard plate sizes, both metric and imperial, and a confusion sometimes arises between the closeness of the different sizes: metric and imperial standards are sometimes treated as being interchangeable. There is a metric 6.5x9cm plate size, which is very close to the 2 1/2x3 1/2 imperial size (being 6.4x8.9cm; I have a box of 6.5x9cm plates which has a handwritten label "Do not fit 3 1/2x2 1/2 single slides"). I used 6.5x9cm plate holders, which the imperial size plates will fit, while metric plates of that size wouldn't fit into similarly sized imperial holders.

The camera I shot the plates in is an Ica Icarette L, a dual format camera from the 1920s that takes either 120 film, or 6.5x9cm plates. When I bought this, it came with a plate holder wallet containing four single plate holders, and the following leaflet:-

Ilford Plates leaflet - outside

Ilford Plates leaflet - inside

There's a code on the back of the leaflet, 'G57/D' - possibly referring to its date i.e. 1957. Under 'Packing' it explicitly states that "plates are packed in pairs with the emulsion sides face to face," something I had previously read on a forum, which was good to have confirmed. The pairs of plates are wrapped in black paper, with a thin paper 'runner' holding these together along the short edges. The glass is very thin, less than 2mm and the cut edges of the glass are still sharp.

The R.10 plates were originally rated 100 ISO (the label around the box gives 'Meter settings for minimum exposure ASA 100 DIN 21'). With my previous experience of using out of date film (see the posts about Verichrome and 127 Day), and knowing that the sensitivity would have decreased with time, I shot two plates, the first at 25 ISO, and a second at 12. Exposure was 1/50th at f5.6 and f4.5 respectively. I stand developed the plates in a Combi Plan tank using Rodinal diluted 1:100 for one hour, with 2 minutes pre-soak, and 3 inversions at the half hour mark. The first plate came out black - this one would have been at the top of the box, possibly this had been exposed to light with the box opened at some point, although I'm not ruling out making an error myself. The second plate has a small amount fogging at the left and bottom sides. Once fixed and washed I did not squeegee the plates, but even so the plates took a long time to dry. (Incidentally, I've been reading Ansel Adams' The Negative recently, and in a section on water bath development, Adams compares older thick emulsions favourably to modern thin ones, perhaps the emulsion on the R.10 plates is thicker, and so absorbs more water). The second plate came out well:-

Ilford R.10 glass plate, shot with Ica Icarette L

Aspects of framing and focus of the plate not withstanding, there is something precious and unique about holding a glass negative in one's hand: there's probably a longer essay to be written about how the ease of taking thousands of digital images, compared to dozens on a roll of film, or single sheets, plates and Polaroids, has devalued the photographic image; it may be something to do with the physicality of the image and its physical link (perhaps misconstrued) to authenticity.

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 R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic plates, dated to 1967. This provides additional information for the plates from the leaflet shown above. It gives the ASA setting for tungsten lighting as 64, against the daylight setting of 100. The table of development times gives further dilutions and times for both continuous and intermittent agitation.

Ilford R.10 development times

Ilford R.10 Curves

Berlin Flea Market Finds

 

From the Mauerpark flea market: Werra 35mm camera with ever-ready case containing part used Orwo NP20 film, €30.
From stalls opposite the Bode Museum: unbranded 9x12cm metal plate holder with film sheath, €5.
The Mauerpark Flohmarkt had a great number of German and specifically old East German cameras. The Werra has a f3.5 Novonar lens. The same stall also had a Werra with a f2.8 Tessar lens, but in much worse condition; the Werra with the Novonar lens appeared to be barely used and I haggled down from €40.
I also found a couple of 9x12 plate holders on a stall opposite the Bode Museum, one was in far better condition than the other, with a film sheath inside; for €5 it was worth adding to my stock of plate holders.