Ten Years On

A year ago, thinking ahead to February 2021, I decided that I wanted to mark the ten years since I began this blog in February 2011. I've written a number of posts, not every year, but at various intervals using the anniversary to take stock of the state of film photography, writing about new films appearing on the market and some disappearing, and, locally, the closing of shops that I'd patronised over the years. One notable factor in shooting film in 2021 is the price of secondhand equipment: I began the blog around the time that prices of used cameras was low, with the preceding decade seeing digital take over from film, and the smartphone taking the place of most peoples' camera. Part of the reason for starting the blog was due to having bought a few secondhand cameras in the previous three or four years while these were cheap, which coincided with getting a job in which I had access to a darkroom, and the convenience of developing my own negatives for the first time since I had been at college in the mid-1990s, and then subsequently acquiring the necessary kit to develop at home.

During the decade that I've being writing the blog, I've been surprised at how I've taken to obscure formats, mainly 127 rollfilm and subminiature cameras; similarly, the stubborn resilience of the double-8 or 2x8mm ciné film format in the 2020s is also surprising, Super-8's 'foolproof' drop in cartridge system having supposed to have killed it off in the 1960s. Although I've mostly used decades-old 2x8mm film, I have bought some new film from the Film Photography Project, from which I'd buy more if import duties weren't a consideration. I have done much less printing than perhaps I would have wanted (the darkroom print is the ultimate expression of a photographic negative), spending a lot of time scanning negatives instead. I have shown physical prints only on a couple of occasions over this time, in the Documents and Undertow exhibitions; both of these instances have been quite tied to work on and around this blog. Over the past ten years I have gradually turned to more theoretical or philosophical aspects (for want of a better description) of film photography: this has been partly due to starting a part-time PhD half-way through the life of this blog, which is still ongoing, and perhaps moving its focus away from film photography as it develops. This has meant that I have written less than I thought I might in recent years.

Olympus Pen EE-3 35mm half-frame camera

Specifically, to mark ten years of this blog, I decided that I should revisit the subject of my initial post: the Olympus Pen EE-3 35mm half-frame camera. I planned to use the Pen EE-3 over the course of the year, from February 2020, and write a new post. The original piece was not as detailed as some of my posts on cameras have become, and I didn't write that much about the camera in use, and only provided one example image. I did write a little on my own personal history with the Pen EE-3, mentioning how it was inspired in part by the work of Mick Williamson - and just discovering the half-frame format itself, the serendipity of the Olympus Pen EE-3 showing up in the local camera shop window. In 1997, the secondhand Pen EE-3 cost around the same as my weekly rent as a student, although this wouldn't be a good example of the relative costs of secondhand prices then, as inflation in UK housing costs has outstripped any other aspects of household expenditure that I can think of.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus (first roll through the camera?)

I was taken by the idea of Mick Williamson's half-frame diary project (of which I can barely have seen a handful of images from at the time - but it was the idea of it as much as any example), and, although I wouldn't want to compare my work with his, for a number of years after I bought the camera, I carried it with me everywhere. It documented the end of my degree, and then the 'ghostworld' years immediately after graduating, which covered a period of being unemployed through to moving back to London in 1999, and then a few years getting to know more of London than the areas where I grew up and studied in before I'd moved away for my degree. I seem to have used the camera less after 2001, and, absent from my first post, the camera was stolen in a burglary in 2003. I bought another Olympus Pen EE-3 shortly afterwards to replace it and notably used this when travelling, to Copenhagen, to Zagreb, where I took just the Pen EE-3 and a 6x9 medium format folding camera. It also came with me to Paris, Berlin, St Petersburg in subsequent years, but my interest in the Olympus Pen EE-3 waned as I began to use other cameras - subminiature cameras, the Agat 18K - to fulfil the EE-3's 'snapshot' function.

19th February 2020. Olympus Pen EE-3 with Eastman Double-X

Resolving to use the Pen EE-3 for a year from February 2020, the first intimations of the seriousness of Covid-19 were then making themselves apparent. The first roll I used was Double-X, and among the shots on that roll was one of a mannequin in Berwick Street that, retrospectively, feels prescient. For a second roll, I shot a 36-exposure roll of Agfaphoto APX400, which I began in February, which documented something of the UCU strike that affected my studies, into early March, and then the UK went into lockdown. I didn't finish this second roll until May, mostly then shooting on my allowed daily exercise, usually cycling around my local area; in the middle there was a gap during which I wasn't taking many photos other than the lockdown projects. I subsequently shot a roll of Kentmere Pan 100, and Ilford FP4 Plus during the summer, when coronavirus cases were low, and restrictions were being lifted, although I personally took little advantage of this at the time.

22nd February 2020. Olympus Pen EE-3 with Agfaphoto APX400

My plan for shooting with the Olympus Pen EE-3 for the year was curtailed when the camera developed a fault: I had noticed that when advancing the film, there was occasionally a grinding sensation, different from the usual 'ratchet' feel to winding on the film; while out on the Bank Holiday in August, this was much worse, and the cause became apparent. The lens-shutter unit had worked itself loose - the shutter still fired, but advancing the film caused uneven frame spacing - without the lens held tightly against the body, the film would just keep winding. I wasn't aware at the time, but this looseness of the lens also meant that the focus was now off. I did think that perhaps I could repair the camera, or replace it to continue my year of using the Pen EE-3, but I was back to work the very next day, in person for the first time since March, then my enthusiasm waned with the disappointing results from this roll once developed, the pressures of work during the pandemic and the rising second wave, and then contracting Covid-19 itself, and experiencing various symptoms for many weeks afterwards disrupted many plans. Shooting a year with the Olympus Pen EE-3 was one of these.

I had intended to write 'In Praise of the Olympus Pen Part 2' but this problem with the EE-3 complicated matters. I would have said that the Pen EE-3 was generally a reliable camera: I had my first secondhand Pen EE-3 for six years without any issues; the second one lasted more than double that time, both being decades old to begin with. It may have been the vibrations of cycling with the Pen EE-3 in a case attached to my belt over the course of the few months I used it last year that caused the lens-shutter unit to work loose; there are four screws visible inside the camera behind the lens which would appear to hold the lens-shutter assembly but all four of these are tight, so presumably the problem lies elsewhere, and I have yet to investigate further.

However, having shot with the camera for six months, and having explored a few aspects of using the Pen EE-3 which I had wanted to do to write a fuller post, it's worth making a few comments on a few specific aspects that I had wanted to write about. When I began to draft a post on the camera, I was unable to find a manual for the EE-3 online, which seemed odd for a camera produced for at least ten years, and in relatively high volume. The manual for the Olympus Pen EE2 is available; the EE-3 differed from the EE-2 only in the settings for the dedicated GN14 flash, in distance markings from 1 to 4 metres around the lens in a sequence that mirrors the aperture settings for a non-dedicated flash. I haven't used a flash with the camera very often, so it was not one aspect that I wanted to explore. Instead, one function of the camera that I wanted to test was that, due to how the 'electric-eye' exposure system works, it's possible to use this as an 'exposure lock': partially depressing the shutter release opens the aperture blades for the designated exposure before the shutter fires with the release pressed further. The three shots below in sequence demonstrate this: the first exposed for the sky, then the second shot with the camera pointed in the same direction, partially depressing and holding the shutter button before moving the camera down to take the shot, and then the third shot taken normally.

Olympus Pen EE-3 exposure lock test

Of course, it's also possible to override the automatic exposure by choosing a different ASA setting to over- or underexpose a shot, but knowing that the EE-3 essentially has an exposure lock may be useful in a number of scenarios. I also wanted to explore the limits of the fixed-focus lens. This is a D. Zuiko f3.5 28mm lens, which should give a reasonable depth of field at most aperture settings, dependent on the lighting conditions and the speed of the film. It is, however, set at a nominally hyperfocal distance, not at infinity. The manual to the EE-2 states that focus is from 1.5m/5 feet to infinity. At the time the Olympus Pen EE-3 was produced, most users would be receiving 6x4-inch lab prints from their negatives, and any softness to the focus would be within acceptable limits at this scale. In revisiting the Olympus Pen EE-3, looking through photographs taken with both cameras I've used, I did wonder whether the current camera I have had started to develop problems sooner than I realised; when I had my first EE-3 in the late 1990s, I almost entirely relied on lab prints (I did develop a few rolls myself when I first bought the camera, but only printed contacts in the darkroom). Having developed the first roll of film from the EE-3 in February 2020, having not used the camera for a few years, I was a little more circumspect about the subjects I was photographing, and did choose to photograph things a bit closer to the camera than I might otherwise have done (of course, this wasn't exclusively the case, but it did make me consider taking a step or two closer in a number of circumstances). Aside from any focus issues the camera may have had, when using the camera last year, I bought a close-up filter for the camera, which halved the set focus distance to essentially 0.75m or a little under three feet. Apart from a couple of tests, I didn't have time to utilise the close up filter, but this may be a useful accessory to have.

Top frame with close up filter; bottom frame without

In preparing this post, I did scan a number of negatives shot with my first EE-3; comparing the scans, and being aware of the limitations of the resolution of flat bed scans, perhaps the second EE-3 was always a little off in its focus before the lens became loose: notably, the four screws inside the camera behind the lens look to have been painted black by hand, which suggests the camera may have been worked on in some time in the past before I bought it. However, my appreciation of the results from my second camera have always relied on scans from negatives in comparison with physical prints from the first camera, and seeing these enlarged on a computer screen invites greater scrutiny than a 6x4 print. At the time, most labs coped fine with the half-frame format; I did make sure to inform them that the film was half-frame when handing it in, and almost always got full-sized prints: on just a couple of occasions, with the very first colour film, and one other, the labs returned two frames to a print (the first lab then guillotined the prints in half, making a stack of seventy-plus small 3x4-inch prints). In scanning the negatives, there were a few examples when keeping two frames together as a diptych made some kind of sense, and it's a popular form for half-frame scans online.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unbranded colour negative film

Although the use of the half-frame format was economical with film, I seem to remember most labs charging per print on their standard processing charges over 40 prints (allowing, I imagine, for the vagaries of 36-exposure films, with some cameras able to squeeze in a few extra frames); this was probably still cheaper overall than the cost of two 36-exposure films and their development in order to get 72 frames. I mostly seem to have used Fuji Superia 200, occasionally 400. Some of the negatives do not appear to have a brand name in the film rebate, and possibly came from Boots or Superdrug rather than a named manufacturer.

With my first Olympus Pen EE-3, generally using colour film and lab processing, I don't remember being concerned with the photograph's grain being more pronounced on the smaller negative size; with my second camera, choice of film and developer became a consideration. Last year's first roll through the camera, Double-X, is a relatively fast film, nominally 250 ISO in daylight, and when I first used Double-X I did find it to be quite grainy for its speed. However, the film I shot in the EE-3 last year was developed in D96 which gave a much smoother appearance to the grain than other developers I've used. For much of the time I shot with the EE-3 last year, I had a roll of Agfaphoto APX400 in the camera; the fact that the EE-3 stops down to f16 in automatic does mean that even a 400 ISO film is unlikely to be overexposed at 1/200th, unless in especially bright conditions, unlike earlier models of the EE range - the original Pen EE in its first iteration had a single shutter speed of 1/60th and a more limited range of ASA settings (although for most films excepting transparency, this would still be within a reasonable range of latitude); as far as I'm aware, unlike the red flag that prevents exposure at low light, the EE cameras do not have overexposure prevention (as an aside, the underexposure prevention means that when the camera is in its case, this works as an effective lock against accidental exposure). Curiously, the EE-3 does have an f22 aperture setting, but this is not used in automatic mode according to the Olympus Compact Cameras brochure, which gives the EV Range at ASA 100 from "EV 8.32 (f2.8, 1/40 second)" through to "EV 17.14 (f16, 1/200 second)."

In my initial post, I summarised the Olympus Pen EE-3's specifications thus:

The Pen EE3 model came out in 1973 and was produced for a decade. It has a fixed-focus 28mm f1:3.5 Zuiko lens, which equates to 40mm in full-frame 35mm format. Exposure is controlled by a selenium cell meter surrounding the lens that matches aperture to one of two shutter speeds, either 1/40th or 1/200th. ASA (ISO) settings run from 25 to 400, and the camera has a hot shoe and PC socket for use with an external flash. If there is insufficient light, a red indicator appears in the viewfinder, and the shutter won't fire. There isn't much scope for manually overriding the automatic exposure, except by turning the film speed ring away from the ASA settings: there are distance markings from 1 to 4 metres for the dedicated GN14 flash, or aperture numbers for a generic flash. Without a film speed selected, the shutter defaults to 1/40th of a second for flash sync.

As mentioned earlier, but not noticed at the time I wrote my original post, it is also possible to override the automatic exposure by using the effective exposure lock function. Having researched further into the EE-3, there is more information online now than in 2011, but I've seen as a result that some inaccuracies appear to circulate, specifically with regards to the shutter speed setting: there are statements that the shutter is set to 1/200th when the ASA settings are used, and the 1/40th speed is only used when turned to the aperture settings for flash. Although I haven't been able to find a manual for the EE-3, the EE-2 manual states that on Auto (the ASA settings), the programmed EE system gives 1/40th or 1/200th depending on the available light. Further, there is a scan of a brochure showing the then-current range of Olympus compact cameras which features the EE-3: this explicitly states "1/40 or 1/200 on AUTO, 1/40 on MANUAL"; presumably, there is a tendency for incorrect information to be copied from one online instance to another, both in how the automatic shutter speeds work, and also what these speeds are.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unnamed colour negative film

When looking through the colour negatives from using the camera when I first had it, I was surprised at how well the camera performed in low light; I mostly used 200-speed negative film, which would have good latitude, and some of these were no doubt shot either with making sure there was a bright light source within the frame to enable the shutter to fire, or simply using the flash setting at 1/40th on the widest aperture setting, f3.5, and hoping the film's latitude would provide an image on the negative. With 72 shots on a roll of 36 exposures, it hardly feels a waste of film to try this.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 400

In summary, I still consider the Olympus Pen EE-3 to be ideally suited to the function of a snap-shot film camera, with all the economies of the half-frame format, perhaps more pertinent now with film prices, the battery-less 'electric-eye' selenium meter controlling the exposure, and the fixed-focus lens, that, for most situations, means that using the camera is, as I wrote ten years ago, simply about framing. In addition, with a little careful consideration of the camera's quirks and limitations, it's possible to use the Olympus Pen EE-3 with a bit more control over its (admittedly simple and effective) near-fifty-year-old automatic nature.

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Kentmere Pan 100

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus rated 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford FP4 Plus rated 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Eastman Double-X film

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 200

Olympus Pen EE-3 with unbranded colour negative film

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Fuji Superia 400

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Konica 400

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Olympus Pen EE-3 with Ilford XP2 Super

Sources/further reading:

The Olympus Pen series on Camera-Wiki

Olympus Compact Cameras brochure (PDF)

Olympus Pen EE-2 manual

Olympus Pen EE-3 review on Imaging Pixel

Olympus Pen EE-3: The Pen-o-tastic Half-Frame Camera

Olympus Pen EE-3 review on 35mmc

The photo-diaries of Mick Williamson

Magazine article on Mick Williamson from 1993

Revisiting the 'Wide Pic' Panoramic Camera

Wide Pic Panoramic Camera with Ilford FP4 Plus

After using the Coronet 66 last month for the #shittycamerachallenge, I decided to revisit a camera used previously for the challenge - the Wide Pic Panoramic Camera. I made little concession to the lighting conditions when shooting with it - I only had a couple of part-used rolls of Ilford FP4 Plus, and even shooting on days when it was sunny, on a couple of convalescent walks, the light was still not bright enough. I could have pushed the FP4, although the main issue was lack of shadow detail, so this may not have helped much. When using the camera before, I'd used 400 ISO film in the summer, which was fine for the single speed, single aperture plastic camera; ideally I would have used HP5 Plus perhaps, and developed it in such a way as to try to get as much shadow detail as I could, but, such is the contingent nature of the #shittycamerachallenge that the photographs will have to suffice for the last post of the year.

127 Day December 2020

Rolleiflex 4x4 with Fomapan 400

Still recovering from Covid-19, last week's 127 Day coincided with one of the better days when I felt well enough to go for a short walk on a very grey day, but not early enough for the mist to make it interesting. I took the Rolleiflex 4x4, loaded with a roll of cut-down Fomapan 400. Inevitably, or so it felt, the one roll I shot was beset with issues. The start of the roll had some odd spots, visible in areas of the sky, possibly due to some developing problem (although I'm unclear what caused this); then a number of the shots had out-of-focus areas in the frame, which must be due to the film not laying flat inside the camera. This might be down to using cut-down film, possibly cut slightly too wide, and as a result, bowing out in the middle. Then the film got stuck after nine exposures; I couldn't work out why this happened, but after removing the film in a changing bag and developing it, some of the shots have light leaks at the sides, suggestive of a 'fat roll' (although I didn't really notice this at the time): however, if the film was cut just a little wide, this is no surprise. Somehow the unexpected inadequacy of the results feels fitting.

Three Colour 8mm Film

Three-colour process still

In writing a blog about film-based photography, there is always an unacknowledged (or perhaps underacknowledged) implicit understanding that any results are, by the nature of being shared digitally, a hybrid form. For some reason, I find this to be most acute in the moving image: the presence of the sheer physicality involved in projecting moving film becomes utterly absent once transferred into a digital form. The difference between a flat photographic print from a negative, and a screen-based display of that negative (whether scanned direct, or from a darkroom print) is great of course, but there is much recognisably the same about the experience of viewing (which, equally, is not to dismiss the real differences too). With physical moving images, the very apparatus of display plays a part in the viewer's experience; in the cinema, this is hidden from view, but in many other instances, the presence of the projector, screen, the sheer amount of material - reels of film, needed to kept, controlled as reels - impinges, bodily, on the viewer. This physicality has become somewhat fetishised in the visual arts: when shown in art galleries, films projected on 16mm or 35mm usually depend on the projector (and all the mechanisms for looping the film too) being present in the viewer's space.

A different kind of fetish is present when displaying such films in a digital form (something I am not immune from): the signs of the film's materiality, frame edges, perforations, dust and scratches - indeed, the very instability of the image, revealing that the apparent movement is comprised from numerous still images - are there as a guarantor of that materiality. I had been thinking of a way to use this digital hybridity in a playful way, that, in creating a digital version of a physical artefact, there was something more to use this for other than its convenience.  Last year, my interest in the three-colour process had been reawakened after assisting a student in creating images using the method, making colour images from three separate black and white negatives, shot through red, green, and blue process filters. I shot some still images with the Mycro IIIA a year ago using the technique (not posted to this blog), but also shot a short length of 8mm ciné film using the three colour filters.

Canon Cine Zoom 512 - Middlesex Filter Beds; Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X film

For this, I finished the end of the roll of Orwo UP15 film that I had used for a number of other, very short films (Heatwave, Swinging Light), spooling off the shorter lengths as needed for each of these (I had also used a fair amount of the film for still photographs with subminiature cameras, notably the Mamiya 16 Automatic). This had a 'develop before' date of March 1976; using the film previously, I found an exposure index of 10 provided good results. I shot the film with the Canon Cine Zoom 512. Using a tripod, and a full wind of the motor, I framed the shot, depressed and locked the shutter release, and then held the red, green, and blue three-colour separation filters in front of the lens, for about 8 seconds each as the film ran through the camera continuously. I think that I may have shot the film at 8 frames per second in order to provide a slower shutter speed for the light needed to expose the film through the filters; the digitised footage itself plays at 12 fps. To compensate for the reduction in the transmission of the light through the filters, I metered the scene, then opened the aperture two stops. This meant that the sections of the footage in between the filters is over-exposed, and the section with the blue filter is underexposed, as the process blue filter transmits less light than the red and green filters.

For a subject, I shot the film at the Middlesex Filter Beds (a unintentional reference), with the thought that the three-colour process would record the autumnal colours. This was not entirely successful as I was probably shooting it too early in Autumn, in mid-October - and with the blue-filtered section underexposed, the colour record would not be very accurate (it might have been possible to open the aperture one stop further at this point, but not especially practical, doing the whole operation with one one pair of hands, passing filters one to the other after holding each one up in front of the lens). I then developed the film as negative in Ilfotec LC29 diluted 1+19 for 6m30s at 20ºC. This was over a year ago; only recently did I have the film scanned.

As 2x8mm film is 16mm-wide and run through the camera twice, I shot the sequence twice. However, I didn't use a changing back when removing the film spools and turning them over to shoot the second side (the 2x8mm film format is designed to be daylight loading, but this does mean sacrificing either end of the film on the spool in loading and reloading, not a problem when using a whole roll, and taken into account by the manufacturers of both film and camera; a different matter with a 'short end' such as I was using here). As I result, although I didn't realise it at the time of shooting, the first run of the film through the camera entirely lost the frames with the third filter in being exposed to the light. The second run of the film through the camera was more successful, but the section with the third filter was on the very end of the film, which includes the identification code of the film stock, punched through the film itself. This section of the film would usually have no images on, as it would be exposed on loading and reloading; I unloaded the film from the camera in the changing bag before developing.

In the resulting black and white film (above), on casual viewing the section with the red and green filters do not look especially different, except perhaps in the sky; the blue section is clearly darker, but also much lower in contrast. I composited frames from the scanned film in Photoshop, placing each black and white image into the red, green, and blue channels in the RGB colour mode.

RGB composite from the black and white negative scan

I had the 2x8mm film scanned as 16mm, i.e., the whole width of the film between the perforations, rather than having the film spit into two 8mm widths; as a negative, the film itself would not be projected anyway, so there is no need for it to be split as would be the case with film developed with the reversal process to make a positive transparency. As can be seen from the image above, the first run of the film through the camera, upside down on the right is a composite of incorrectly-filtered sections (the same colour filters do not align on each side of the film, and the blue-filter section on this run is also missing).

In creating a full-colour composite, I could have simply edited the film to a few seconds, aligning the three sections shot through the three different filters. Instead, I wanted to show the process as a set of logical steps, and, as the length of the whole film is just twenty-seven seconds when played back at 12fps, this could be repeated through each step. With the film was scanned as 16mm, as well as the width of image, the height is also over twice that of a standard 8mm frame, meaning that it shows two whole frames on both sides of the film. Repeating the film three times across the frame, I decided to keep the height of the original scan as this avoid making the proportions of the whole frame too long and narrow.

To show the process that achieved the colour image, I wanted to stage a set of logical progressions such as it might be possible to intuit how the colour image is created from a strip of black and white film without it necessarily needing an explanation (this particular post notwithstanding of course). The first repetition shows the film, in black and white, repeated in sync across the width of the screen (I could possibly have begun the series of repetitions as a black and white negative, but this seemed unnecessary); the second repetition, still in sync, shows the film in red, green, and blue. The next repeat then staggers the starting times of the red, green, and blue segments so that the point at which the correct colour filter appears in each coloured section is now aligned temporally. Repeated again staggered in time, the three colours spatially align on the the screen at that point to create the colour image. Remaining overlaid, each staggered coloured section runs to its end. The steps are then repeated in reverse, ending up back at the black and white footage, and in theory this could then be looped in on itself. 

A screen shot of the timeline in Premiere shows the way that the sequence of progressions is arranged. Although created in a digital form, it would be possible to recreate the result using three prints of the film, three projectors and the RGB colour filters in front of the right lenses; some of the earliest colour moving images used a not dissimilar concept, but on a single strip of film, with alternating frames shot through different colour filters, which would then be projected back through those filters to create an optical mix. The film (below) is essentially just an experiment intended to demonstrate - but also disclose - the technique itself.

Coronet 6-6

Coronet 6-6 camera

The start of the new #shittycamerachallenge's 'holiday apocalypse' last month, running from November to January, almost neatly coincided with the new coronavirus lockdown restrictions coming into force in England on November 2nd. As with the previous period of 'lockdown' from March this year, the restrictions have not been as stringent as in many continental European countries: working in education, moving from the only then recently introduced tiered system to the lockdown had essentially no difference to my daily life, as I was still physically going to work, face-to-face, in the same way I had been since the start of September, while watching the rolling seven-day figures of cases, hospital admissions, and deaths, rise with what felt like inevitability, once schools and colleges opened at the start of term, and stayed open throughout. I was taking my photographs for the #shittycamerachallenge on my way to work, at lunchbreaks, and, on a couple of occasions, during exercise, alone, which was permitted. Despite taking all the precautions that were practical at work, again, with what felt like inevitability, I became ill halfway through the month, and a test confirmed that this was Covid-19. As a result, I finished my last roll of film while isolating at home.

The camera I had picked for the #shittycamerachallenge was the Coronet 6-6. I felt it fitted the spirit of the exercise due to being largely made from plastic, and with the most minimal user controls - and also that the camera had mould inside the body when I first opened it. The camera's name is sometimes written as the Coronet 66; above the lens, the two numerals are separated by the coronet logo, and, taking nominally 6x6cm images, no doubt the name would be said as "six-six" (it's also worth remarking that Coronet made a 127 format camera called the Coronet 4-4 from its negative size, and this is written on the camera as '4-4'). The Coronet 6-6 is a simple point-and-shoot Bakelite-bodied camera from the 1950s, using 120 medium format roll film, taking twelve 6x6cm images. This camera belongs to a class of mid-twentieth century cheap point-and-shoot models which can essentially be considered derivations of the box camera, and, as with the Coronet 6-6, not necessarily as well featured as many of those box cameras. These cameras also tend to reflect the availability of new materials: Kodak's Brownies began with cardboard bodies, before being replaced by metal; by the mid-twentieth century, many of these cameras were made from early plastics. The Coronet 6-6's body is made from Bakelite, one the most popular plastics of the era.

Coronet 6-6 camera

The Coronet 6-6 was manufactured by Coronet, a Birmingham-based company specialising in a broad range of cheap cameras, many of which share very similar features across different models. The Coronet 6-6 is clearly based on the body moulding of the Coronet Cadet and the Coronet Flashmaster, but with a different lens and shutter unit: the wider-angle lens of the Coronet 6-6 allows for a more compact camera. The Coronet 6-6 was also the basis for the Coronet Rapier, which uses an internal mask (and a different position of red window) to achieve sixteen 4x4 exposures on 120 film. (There is also a name variant of the Coronet 6-6 which has 'Flashmaster' on the name plate under the lens, but this is otherwise exactly the same model; there's also a variant of the Coronet Cadet which looks the same as the 6-6).

The Coronet 6-6 has fixed-focus meniscus lens, which looks and feels to be made from plastic. The focal length is reputedly 65mm, which gives a wide-angle image on the 6x6 format frame. Behind the lens and shutter is a metal plate with a smaller aperture punched into it, possibly around f11 or slightly smaller, such as a non-standard setting like f14. The shutter has a single speed, possibly around 1/30th to 1/50th, and is not provided with a bulb or time setting: it does have a flash sync for a proprietary flash, connecting to two metal ports on the side of the lens unit, as seen in the image above (an image of the flash here shows it to be almost as big as the camera). The viewfinder, placed directly above the lens, is of the reverse Galilean type. Frame advance is manual, by turning the large plastic knob to the side of the viewfinder, and using the red window on the back of the camera to follow the frame numbers on the film's backing paper.

Coronet 6-6 opened for loading

The back of the Coronet 6-6 is made from a piece of stamped metal with riveted spool holders and pressure springs. To load the camera, two catches either side of the camera, to which the carrying strap is attached, slide downwards, and the whole back slides off. Inside the camera, the Bakelite behind the lens is painted with a matte black, presumably to cut down on internal reflections from the smooth surface of the Bakelite. Loading film is simple: the take up spool is placed under the advance knob on the sprung spool holder, the new roll of film positioned in the other holder, and the backing paper stretched across to the take up spool. There is a serial number on the inside of the camera back, printed in very blotchy paint, a little hard to read.

I shot one roll of Ilford HP5 Plus with the Coronet 6-6, and two rolls of Fomapan 400. Although both are 400 ISO films, even on sunny days, due no doubt to the late time of year, these were not overexposed. I often read opinions online that, in box cameras (and the Coronet 6-6 can be considered a box camera here) one should use a slow film, as this is what these cameras were designed for. Indeed, the cameras were designed for films which might have been the equivalent of 25 ISO, but they were also intended to only be shot handheld, outside, in sunny weather in the summer months. Using a 400-speed film means being able to use the kind of simple camera that the Coronet 6-6 is in more conditions than those originally intended by the manufacturers, November in the northern hemisphere, with short days, sometimes sunny, sometimes very grey, embodying such conditions. The image below for example, looks like it was shot at dusk (helped, of course, in that interpretation by the lit streetlamp); it was actually taken around noon, but on a very overcast day; with a 100 ISO film it would have been quite underexposed. With a single shutter speed and aperture setting, when using the Coronet 6-6, to get acceptable results in a variety of the lighting conditions relies heavily on the latitude of whichever film is used; far better to use a faster film and potentially overexpose it for some shots, than a slower film and not take a shot because the sun isn't shining.

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

In use, I found the wideness of the lens occasionally surprised me: I'd see what I thought might make a fitting subject, raised the camera to my eye, then realised I had to get closer for a composition anything like what I had thought I'd get. I also hadn't anticipated how slow the shutter was - after developing the first roll from the Coronet, a number of exposures had camera shake. This is also partly due to the shutter button, a big plastic lever offset from the lens. There is a small amount of travel which evidently tensions the shutter, but then it gets quite stiff just before the shutter actually releases. It is also quite flimsy, and bends backwards, and on occasion got caught on a small protrusion on the moulding behind it, none of which made for a smooth release. I was more conscious of this as I shot more with the camera.

Coronet 6-6 with Ilford HP5 Plus

The lens displays all the classic aberrations one would expect from a plastic meniscus: the above image, from my first roll through the camera, does have some camera shake, but also clearly evident is pincushion distortion, seen in the verticals. Without camera shake, the lens is moderately sharp in the centre, but this falls off quickly towards the sides and corners. I haven't used colour film with the camera, but no doubt some chromatic aberration would be seen. Also discernible is astigmatism and coma, flare, and in a few shots what looks like internal reflections, despite the matte paint. Given the limitations of the lens, it's quite understandable that there would be a version of the camera which only used the central portion of the image in the guise of the Coronet Rapier. The fact that the Coronet 6-6 uses medium format film is somewhat negated by the qualities of the lens: unlike a Kodak Brownie (and there are simple box cameras with much better lenses), for example, here the larger negative format is lost on the poor definition of much of the image.

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Being aware of the limitations of the Coronet 6-6 meant I sought out subjects and compositions where these limitations either didn't matter, were less obvious, or even added something to the image. With the photograph above, some vignetting, and falling off of definition helps with the sense of depth recession, enhancing the concentration on the lit leaves in the middle of the frame. I also tended to avoid any compositions with clearly rectilinear subjects, choosing more oblique angles where appropriate.

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Sometimes none of these approaches really worked, and the photographs that resulted were just unsatisfactory, despite whatever impulses made me press the shutter at the time; frequently, the wide angle of the lens, the lack of definition towards the edges and other aspects just produced images which had a distracting 'busyness' to them. However, the pleasure in using a simple point-and-shoot camera like the Coronet 6-6 largely resides in the fact that the operation of the camera is entirely about the subject and composition with no other concerns in the taking of the photograph.

Coronet 6-6 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Coronet 6-6 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Coronet 6-6 with Ilford HP5 Plus

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Coronet 6-6 with Fomapan 400

Sources/further reading:

Coronet 6-6 on Camera-Wiki