Zodel Baldalux*

Baldalux 6x9 folding camera

The Baldalux is a mid-range workaday 6x9 format folding camera, and I hadn't previously thought about writing a blog post about it until recent results from scanning a number of negatives I had shot while in Berlin last summer (although the posts on Delta 3200 and Verichrome were illustrated with images shot using the camera). The images made me re-evaluate the camera. I often like to have a 6x9 folding camera with me when travelling for landscape shots, and I've used my Agfa Record I camera for this purpose in the past, but the Baldalux has features to make me favour it over the Record. Some of these features are pretty mundane, such as having the original ever-ready case, and the fact I've got a yellow push-on filter that fits the lens; it does have a better shutter though, and although I haven't done any meaningful comparisons, the Baldalux's Radionar lens seems to perform better than the Record's Agnar.

The Baldalux was manufactured by Balda-Werk Bünde, the West German company arising from the pre-war Balda, which was based in Dresden (the East German plant became Belca). Like a number of German camera makers, Balda-Werk Bünde products were often rebranded for sale by other distributors and export to other markets, and so appear under different names. This is the case here, although the camera model being called Baldalux clearly points to its origins. My camera has 'Zodel reg.' stamped on the leatherette on the front of the camera (I've seen other examples on the web where the lettering here is Baldalux - one wonders whether the superfluous 'reg.' was just added to make the text a better visual fit). It also has a fading water-slide transfer label for Wallace Heaton, obscuring the Balda-Werk Bünde branding. Zodel was a brand name used by Wallace Heaton, a London based distributor, to rebadge their cameras. I also have a 6.5x9 plate camera from the 1930s with the Zodel brand.

Wallace Heaton label covering Balda-Werk Bünde stamp

Looking at examples on the web, there are some production variations, although all seem to have a Schneider Kreuznach 105mm Radionar lens in either a Prontor-S or Prontor SVS shutter. Some have differences in the plate around the lens, with examples having a depth of field scale. My camera by comparison has a very plain front plate. It also came with the original 6x4.5 mask, allowing for 16 exposures on a roll of film. Some websites mention a 6x6 mask, although this would require a different arrangement of red windows on the back of the camera. It has frame lines in the viewfinder to indicate the 6x4.5 format, which are actually rather thick and do intrude on the viewfinder, which is very small, even for a camera of this age. I did remove the top plate to clean the viewfinder (as suggested by Flickr member fulvue) making it slightly easier to use. There is also a brilliant finder mounted to the lens, which can be rotated 90 degrees for both horizontal and vertical pictures, which seems to be quite a late date for this kind of finder, being more common on pre-war cameras.

A piece of card stops the double exposure prevention from working

Another feature is the double exposure prevention, with a window on the top plate indicating 'O' for unexposed, and 'E' for exposed. However I have disabled the double exposure prevention. Shortly after I started using the camera, this began not to work very well: after winding on, it would spring back to the 'exposed' setting, preventing the shutter release on the camera from being depressed (although the shutter can always be tripped by the lever around the lens). I taped a small piece of card inside the mechanism to block it, making a non-destructive alteration to the camera. I've yet to accidentally double-expose a frame, but I'm sure that this will happen.

Roadworks, Berlin, shot on Ilford Delta 100

The first photographs I'd taken with the Baldalux I had shot with the 6x4.5 mask, and I was impressed by the sharpness of the image. The Radionar lens is a triplet design (I believe the red triangle on the lens mount denotes coating), and while the centre of the image is very sharp, towards the edges of the full 6x9 frame there is a noticeable softness, however this does perhaps add to its vintage character.

View from the Teufelsberg, Ilford HP5 with yellow filter

Klosterstraße, Berlin, shot on Ilford HP5

Bahnhof Berlin Oranienburger Straße, Ilford Delta 3200 with 6x4.5 mask

*I'm not actually sure that the camera was referred to as 'Zodel Baldalux', I've been searching online to no avail for old Wallace Heaton Blue Books which might show the camera.

Edit 28/2/18: more samples added.

Zodel Baldalux with Kodak Plus-X (develop before date 02/2007)

Zodel Baldalux with Ilford FP4 Plus

Zodel Baldalux with Agfa Superpan

Zodel Baldalux with Fujicolor Pro 400H

Zodel Baldalux with Rollei RPX400

Zodel Baldalux with Rollei RPX400 pushed to 1600

Zodel Baldalux with Ilford Delta 3200 pushed to 6400

'Take Your Box Camera To Work Day'

Lumiere Scout Box Camera

For today's 'Take Your Box Camera To Work Day' (see previous post), I took my Lumière Scout Box to work. The Lumière Scout Box is quite compact for a box camera, smaller than the No.2 Brownie that I used to have. The camera has a single aperture, and the shutter has two settings, 'I' for 'Instant' and 'P' for 'Pneumatique' (or bulb). The lens is a meniscus type, a 'Lumiere Objectif Rapide'. The camera has a single viewfinder which, unusually, rotates through 90 degrees for landscape format shots. Inside the camera is a label instructing the use of 'Lumière 49' film, and the spool which came with the camera looks identical to a 620 spool, though fortunately the camera will also accept 120 spools without the modifications that 620 cameras often require.

I managed to shoot just one roll of film. As it wasn't a sunny day, and I thought I might be able to shoot inside, I wanted to use a 400 ISO film, but the only film I had in stock was Ilford Delta 400 (the roll I used had an expiry date of January 2009). I would have much preferred HP5, but I'd been given a few rolls of expired Delta 400 and wanted to use it up. The film was developed in Rodinal 1:25, 11 minutes 15 seconds at 18 degrees C. The results are perhaps rather unprepossessing, but I did get a shot of Ben Spiers, one of the other painting tutors at college.

Kennington Rooftops

Bin Yard

Painting Studio

29th February is 'Take Your Box Camera To Work Day'

The Box Camera Revolution group on Flickr has announced that Wednesday 29th February is to be 'Take Your Box Camera To Work Day'. Like the 127 Days, it's an excuse to get people using box cameras. These were the snapshot cameras for much of the 20th century, only being supplanted by the Instamatic in the early 1960s; box cameras were produced in many millions, and unsurprisingly they are very easy to find today. Unless in exceptional condition or a rare model, they really should be dirt cheap.

The image below was taken with a Kodak No.2 Brownie, the camera first manufactured in 1901, for which the 120 roll film format was created. Despite very limited user controls (the No.2 Brownie had a single shutter speed and three apertures) and simple glass meniscus lenses, the size of the 6x9cm negatives, along with modern film emulsions, actually produces very credible results.

Southampton Central, shot with a Kodak No.2 Brownie on HP5 film

Kodak Retina IIa

Kodak Retina IIa

It seems rather apposite to be posting about Kodak's finest camera on the day that news is announced the company is filing for bankruptcy protection. If Kodak could be said to have had a philosophy, it would be that their goal was to democratise photography. This meant developing and nurturing a mass market for photography that hadn't existed before - and this was primarily done through cheap mass-produced cameras.  Karen Nakamura comments on her blog about hating Kodak cameras (a view I have sympathy with), but makes an exception for the Kodak Retina. She identifies the reason for this being that the Retina camera was designed and built in Germany by the Nagel cameraworks in Stuttgart, acquired by Kodak in 1931. The original Retina of 1934 was the first camera designed to use a daylight loading 35mm film canister, perhaps to capitalise on the success of the early Leicas (which did use 35mm film, but required the user to load film cassettes themselves from bulk film).

The Retina series comprised a number of different models of folding cameras produced by Kodak AG both before and after the Second World War. There are three main model numbers to differentiate the Retinas: Model I is a viewfinder camera; Model II has a coupled rangefinder; Model III has a rangefinder and a selenium cell lightmeter. Different specifications of the basic models are designated by lower-case letters after the Roman numerals, and to avoid confusion Retinas are often referred to by a factory number.

Kodak Retina IIa

My Kodak Retina is a Type 016 model IIa, which was produced from 1951-54. I bought it to replace a Balda Rigona 35mm folding camera, which had a slower lens, a shutter with less speeds, and also lacked a rangefinder. However, what I liked about the Balda camera was that it was a full frame 35mm camera with a 50mm lens, but it would easily fit into a pocket when folded. As a result of using this camera, I was on the look out for another folding 35mm camera with better specifications to replace it, and research led me to the Kodak Retina. The Retina is bigger than the Rigona, but not by much, and is still compact when folded. It is heavy for its size, a testament perhaps to how solidly built the camera is. In fact, everything about the way this camera is made exudes confidence in its precision engineering, from the moment the button is pressed to fold open the camera and the lens slides into place.

Detail of shutter speeds/depth of field scale/focus ring-

The Retina IIa has a fast Schneider-Kreuznach Retina-Xenon f.2 50mm lens in a Compur-Rapid shutter (which marks it out as an early Type 016, later in the production run this was changed to a Synchro-Compur shutter). A red delta symbol indicates lens coating. The focus lever sits neatly on the bottom corner of the front plate of the camera, and is coupled to the rangefinder, which is super-imposed as a rectangle inside the viewfinder. The lens focuses down to 3.5 feet, but must be set to infinity to close the camera.

The Retina IIa has a couple of quirks I've not encountered in other cameras. There is a second release button tucked behind the shutter release. Cameraquest states it is for unjamming the shutter - which it could well be, but equally perhaps this is for advancing the film without tripping the shutter, for example after loading, for which the camera doesn't need to be opened. The frame counter is set manually with a diamond mark to position it for the correct number of frames. This counts down as the camera is wound on, and stops at 0, preventing further photographs to be taken. Of course, it can be manually reset in order to take more photos (to get say 37, 38 frames from a roll of 36 - or if not set correctly when the camera was loaded).

Sample image from Kodak Retina IIa, shot on Rollei Retro 100

Sample image from Kodak Retina IIa, shot on HP5

Kodak Retina IIa sample image, shot on Delta 3200

Edit 30/11/17 - Further examples

Kodak Retina IIa with Ilford Ilfodata HS23

Kodak Retina IIa with Rollei RPX25

Kodak Retina IIa with Kodak Technical Pan

Kodak Retina IIa with Kodak Ektar 100

Kodak Retina IIa with Ilford FP4 Plus

Kodak Retina IIa with Rollei RPX400

Kodak Retina IIa with Agfa Vista 400

Kodak Retina IIa with Ilford HP5 Plus at EI 800

Kodak Retina IIa with Rollei RPX400 at EI 1600

Sources/further reading:
http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_Retina_IIa
http://www.cameraquest.com/retIIa.htm
http://dantestella.com/technical/retina.html
http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/KodakRetina.html
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/aa13/aa13pg2.shtml
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~Srawhiti/index.html

Verichrome Pan

Kodak Verichrome Pan 120 film, expiry date July 1964

Verichrome Pan was a black and white panchromatic film produced by Kodak from 1956 to c.2002. The film had a speed rating of 125 ISO, which would have been considered fast at the time it was introduced and replaced Verichrome, which was its orthochromatic predecessor. This advert for the original Verichrome lists its various unique qualities, including the fact that it was double coated, with two layers of photographic emulsion, both fast and slow, and also that it had enormous latitude, claiming an exposure range of 1 to 2,400. I haven't found any information as to whether Verichrome Pan kept these characteristics, but I doubt manufacturers would now claim such latitude for modern film emulsions (although I have used HP5 from 64 to 3200 ISO).

Verichrome Pan in 127 format, showing instructions for use on the paper backing

I shot a couple of rolls of out-of-date Verichrome Pan on the Summer 127 day in July. One of these had come from the box of a Kodak Brownie Starmite, with an expiry date of September 1975; the other was one of three films I bought from a certain auction site. The results from both sets of films were disappointing: the rolls bought online had evidently got damp at some point and the backing paper was stuck to the film: soaked and removed, the paper took some of the emulsion with it; the roll from the Starmite box came away cleanly from the backing paper, but nonetheless this seems to have left behind a textured pattern on the emulsion.

Sceaux Gardens, Bethnal Green: the black areas on the image are where the emulsion stuck to the backing paper

After the results with the 127 format film, I hadn't expected much from a roll in 120 format that had been inside the case of a Kinax folding camera that I bought. This roll of Verichrome Pan had an expiry date of July 1964. The box also contained a leaflet on Kodak films. I shot the roll in my Zodel Baldalux camera in Berlin during the summer, then stand processed it. Unlike the recent out-of-date FP4, I didn't take into account the loss of sensitivity with age, and exposed it at the box speed of 125 ISO. The resulting negatives are very thin, and while they have held the highlights well, the rendering of shadow detail is patchy, although the results are much better than the 127 format films. (All films were stand-developed in Rodinal, diluted 1:100, for 1 hour).

Pergamon Museum, Berlin, shot on Verichrome Pan, expiry date July 1964

Oranienburger Straße, Berlin, shot on Verichrome Pan, expiry date July 1964

127 Day - 7th December 2011

Cleaver Square Rooftops

127 Day is a calendrical encouragement to use 127 format cameras, on both 12th July (written 12/7 in little endian format) and 7th December (12/7 middle endian). Shooting with my Baby Ikonta, on the day I used a roll of FP4 with an expiry date of June 1976. Ilford no longer produce film in 127 format; my film was from a batch of three I bought online. I had used one of these rolls in my Foth Derby for the Summer 127 Day, and had been very pleased with the results from such an old film.  I rated the film at 64 ISO, half FP4's box speed of 125, to compensate for the loss of sensitivity with age, and stand developed the film in Rodinal at a dilution of 1:100 for one hour, with 30 seconds agitation at the start, and a couple of inversions at the half hour mark.

As I had been in July, I was working all day. With the limited amount of time I had to take photographs, especially given the short daylight hours, I took a number of night shots on my journey home from work to use the whole roll during the day. The daylight shots were metered with a Weston Master II; the night photographs were estimated.

London 2012 Olympic Site

Sutton Street, Stepney

A106 Eastway

See more photographs from 127 Day in the Flickr 127 Format Group Pool

Werra 1

Werra with 50mm Novonar f3.5 lens

The Werra is a unique 35mm compact camera produced by Carl Zeiss Jena. The version I bought at the Mauerpark flea market is the original olive green model with a 50mm Novonar f3.5 lens. This model is generally referred to as the Werra 1 to distinguish it from the subsequent versions, but at the time was simply called 'Werra'. Not knowing much about the Werra when I bought it, I had assumed that it dated from the 1960s, due to its streamlined design. However production began in 1954, and the serial number on my camera's lens dates it to 1955. Compare the look of the Werra with, for example, the Kodak Signet or the Baldessa, both 35mm viewfinder cameras contemporary to the Werra and it's easy to see how advanced its design was for the mid-1950s. One might speculate for the reason for this is that the Werra was made by Carl Zeiss Jena, principally a lens manufacturer, which made very few cameras. Perhaps it's a camera built around a lens, without being derived from any precedents. In keeping with the minimalist design, the camera is marked with just the name 'WERRA' embossed on the lens cap and rear of the body, 'Novonar' on the lens and the manufacturer's name is entirely absent.

Werra with lens cap/shade removed

The two most distinctive aspects of the Werra's design are its unusual film advance, which works by turning the aluminium bezel around the lens, and the combined lens cap and shade. The lens cap can be unscrewed from the shade, the shade removed, reversed and attached. The camera's controls are located around the lens, and, with the frame counter on the underside of the camera, which leaves just the shutter release for the top plate. The original Werra is a completely manual camera, without a meter. However there are figures around the lens picked out in red for optimum exposure and focus: 1/50th of a second on the shutter, f8 for the aperture, and 6m on the focus ring, which at f8 gives a depth of field from just beyond 3m to nearly infinity.

Detail of figures picked out in red around the lens

Obviously this depends on film speed and lighting conditions, but one can assume that these settings were designed to be used in fair daylight conditions with a film of medium speed. I used these settings to finish the film that was in the camera when I bought it. Raul M, in his blog post about the Werra, suggests that the shade can be left on covering the controls, effectively turning the Werra into a point and shoot camera. The entire back and bottom plate slides off to load the film, which travels from right to left, opposite to the direction 35mm film normally travels in a camera (although this is also true of the Agfa Optima Sensor), meaning that the frames on the developed film appear to be upside down, and also read in sequence right to left.

Sample image from the Werra, FP4 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100

Sample image from the Werra, FP4 stand developed in Rodinal 1:100