Photo-Analogue

Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Rollei 16

Franke & Heidecke, best known for the medium format Rolleiflex and Rolleicord cameras, before producing their first 35mm camera, brought out the Rollei 16, a subminiature camera using single perforated 16mm film. The Rollei 16 was made between 1963-1967 and was followed by the Rollei 16S, essentially the same camera with minor changes, made until 1972 - the year that Kodak introduced the 110 cartridge format. Three years after the Rollei 16, the Rollei 35 appeared, an extremely compact full-frame 35mm camera. The popularity of high-specification 16mm subminiature cameras no doubt suffered from the emergence of compact 35mm cameras, while, in general terms, the cheaper type of 16mm cameras were supplanted by the 110 format.

Beautifully designed, constructed, and finished, the Rollei 16 has two major drawbacks for continued, contemporary use, designed into the camera. The first of these, common to subminiature cameras before the 110 format cartridge, is that the Rollei 16 uses a particular type of cassette, sometimes called the Rada 16 (the format itself appear to have been referred to as Super 16), which, unusually, included the facility to rewind the film. Negative size is 12x17mm; the camera takes 18 exposures on a roll (the cassette takes about 50cm of 16mm film). The same cassette was also used for Wirgin's subminiature camera, the Edixa 16 and its Franka and Alca named variants. This cassette is now rare: the last online auction I followed topped out at €25 for just one cassette. Secondly, the film advance requires perforations to advance the film. Restricting the Rollei 16 to perforated 16mm film ensures that cut down or unperforated film can't be used, unlike almost every other 16mm subminiature camera that I am aware of (the design of the Kodak 110 cartridge being a separate case). The Edixa 16, which shared the same cassette design as the Rollei 16 (but which can take unperforated film), came to market a year earlier than the Rollei 16; perhaps Franke & Heidecke took the decision to design their subminiature camera to fit this existing camera. Intriguingly, the Edixa 16 was designed for Wirgin by Heinz Waaske, who later joined Franke & Heidecke; Waaske was the designer behind the Rollei 35, and the Rollei 110 and 126 format cameras.

Rollei 16 closed

The Rollei 16 is relatively large for a subminiature camera - 110mm wide when in the closed position, by 43mm deep at its bayonet mount, and 35mm high at its shutter release (when open the camera is 135mm wide). The camera boasts a focussing f2.8 25mm Tessar, reputedly one of the very best lenses for subminiature photography (according to Cameraquest). Part of the camera's length is taken up by the built-in Gossen-branded selenium light meter, this provides the Rollei 16 with automatic exposure, still a fairly advanced feature for 1963. The light meter has a range from 12 to 200 ASA; the dial is also marked with DIN, unsurprisingly for a 1960s German-made camera. The dial includes an adjustment wheel inside this with minus adjustments for filters (or for backlit exposures - there are no corresponding 'plus' adjustments, although this can be done with changing the film speed setting where possible within the existing range). The adjustments are marked -1 -2 -3. The programmed exposure works at a range from 1/30th at f2.8 to 1/500th at f22 (exposure values 8-18). The manual has a diagram showing the exposure values divided into half steps, and the automatic exposure is designed to achieve faster shutter speeds with increasing brightness before then reducing the aperture. Next to the lens is a small 'signal window' - which appears to be a tiny, second selenium meter that powers a green LED to indicate exposure which shows in a small prism in the viewfinder.

The light meter still works well enough after more than fifty years; using black and white film, there's enough tolerance in the film to ensure well-exposed negatives. 200 ISO as maximum film speed does seem a little slow for the time of production, although, due to only using perforated 16mm, the fastest film I've used with the Rollei 16 is Eastman Double-X. By contrast, the Mamiya-16 Automatic from 1959 has a meter with a highest film speed setting of 1600 (at a time when I believe that the fastest film available would have been the 800-speed Ilford HPS); perhaps the Rollei 16's top film speed reflects that the small size of the negative dissuades one from using too fast a film.

Rollei 16 opened for loading

The back of the camera has a small pivoting lock; opening this shows a long pressure plate inside the camera back. The camera does not have a take-up spool of any kind: the film simply coils upon itself into the chamber on the right hand side, guided by two curved pieces of plastic. The push-pull film advance works by a sliding claw engaging with the perforations: when loading, the film is placed under two small round 'buttons' and the camera back then closed.

Excluding 110 cartridge cameras, the Rollei 16 is the only subminiature camera I am aware of that needs perforations to advance film. This means that it could be used without a cartridge: a length of 16mm could be loaded into the camera's supply-side chamber in the dark. However, I used cut-down supply-side Kiev cassettes. These fit inside the Rollei 16, but cannot be rewound, meaning that I had to remove the film from the camera in the dark and then manually wind the film back into the cassette. Without the right cassettes, this limits using the Rollei 16 to a single roll of film at a time, unless one carries a changing bag around for the purposes of reloading the camera.

Rollei 16 loaded with cut-down Kiev subminiature cartridge

The push-pull action only advances the film after an exposure has been made. The viewfinder is released with a small lock on its underneath. The rear portion of the viewfinder has an ingenious folding design for closing it against the camera body; the front section pushes in to create a cover for the lens (and, it appears, the signal window too). The shutter release button is the same size as that for a much larger camera, centrally located on the camera body and threaded for a cable release. Focus is by estimation in metres and feet, with a small geared wheel above the lens for setting focus: according to the manual, the range of values which appear in the window indicates minimum depth of field, which logically must be for the maximum aperture of f2.8. The setting 4m/14ft is picked out in red as a hyperfocal distance for snapshots. The Rollei 16's parallax correction, rather than simply providing additional frame lines, actually tilts the front part of the viewfinder to change the position of the reflected frame lines in accordance with the subject distance.

Rollei 16 viewfinder detail

As well as a parallax-corrected viewfinder, the Rollei 16 also has what amounts to an exposure lock, achieved by partly depressing the shutter button - the manual states: "Do not touch the button too soon. The slightest pressure on the button selects the measured exposure value." This suggests a 'trap-needle' construction to the camera's automatic exposure.

For this post, the photographs illustrating it are all scanned from prints made in darkroom: given the assertion that the Rollei 16's Tessar is one of the best lenses on a subminiature camera, rather than use a flat bed scanner on the negatives, I wanted to see how good the results might be. Given the small size of the negatives, grain is of course pronounced, however, and the slowest film that I shot with the Rollei 16 was Plus-X. The prints were made around 5x7 inches, big enough for the negative size. The two examples below were chosen to make a fairly obvious comparison: the Double-X film is by no means inherently fine-grained, but the Eastman 4-X film, originally 500 ASA, must be around thirty years old, if not older, and this shows.

Eastman Double-X at EI 125 developed in Ilfotec LC29

Eastman 4-X at EI 20 developed in R09 One Shot

The 25mm Tessar lens has a close focus of 0.4m or 1.3 ft - not quite as close as the Mamiya-16 Automatic's 1 foot distance, but excellent nonetheless. One of the accessories for the Rollei 16 was a measuring chain, useful for calculating near focus. The viewfinder's parallax correction is a genuine help here too, far better than a typical set of extra lines in the viewfinder to indicate the framing of a close subject. In the second of the two images below, the focus was set to 0.4m and the central framing was almost perfectly represented in the viewfinder.

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X film

Rollei 16 with Kodak Plus-X

The Rollei 16 has two sets of viewfinder lines: a solid outline; inside this outline are four corner marks indicating a smaller, central frame. This central frame is used with one of the accessories made for the Rollei 16, the Tele-Mutar supplementary lens; the wide-angle Mutar utilises the entire viewfinder frame, i.e. that outside the solid frame lines for the 25mm lens. Like the Rollei 16's lens, these accessory lenses were also made by Zeiss. The Mutars fix to the bayonet fitting around the lens (also used for a number of filters), with a black dot to indicate the correct position to attach these. The Mutars also have cut-out indents so as not to block the signal window. Shortly after acquiring my Rollei 16, I found both Mutars on a well-known auction site, but lost out on the wide-angle version. Attaching the Mutar lenses significantly increases the weight and bulk of the Rollei 16, making the camera very front heavy.

Rollei 16 with 1.7x Mutar

The Mutars can be attached to the bayonet fitting in two orientations: one way up, the Mutar's focus scale is in meters (in red), read from the top of the camera; attached the other way, the scale in feet (in green, seen below) is on top. The scale is used to convert focus distances: the coloured numbers indicate the focus setting with the Mutar lens which is then translated to the white number to be set on the camera; the depth of field is indicated between three white lines, or more accurately, between the two white lines either side of the line that the focus is set to. Close focus with the 1.7x Mutar is limited to 1 meter or 3.5 feet. The 1.7x Mutar makes an equivalent focal length of 42mm, an angle of view of 27º (by comparison, the 0.6x Mutar has an equivalent focal length of 16mm and an angle of view of 65º - the 25mm Tessar on its own has a 45º angle of view). The manual also instructs the user to reduce the film speed setting by 'one step' or 1 DIN value, something that I didn't adhere to when using the Mutar for the photographs on this post.

Rollei 16 with 1.7x Mutar

The two pairs of images below give some indication of the changing angle of view, first with and then without the Tele-Mutar lens. It's possibly just discernible in the prints that the supplementary lens reduces the effective aperture by a small amount, something not entirely compensated for in the printing of the negatives, but this wasn't something I especially noticed; no doubt the film's latitude compensated for this.

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X film at EI 125

Rollei 16 with Tele-Mutar and Eastman Double-X film at EI 125

The second pair of images below appear to show some flare in both shots, with and without the Mutar; this might be exaggerated thanks to the subject, with a dark foreground, with the shade giving way to bright reflected light behind. Being heavy and awkward, and needing to convert focus distances when using the Mutars, does take away some of the benefits of using a subminiature camera in the first place (carrying both around in their cases with the camera itself starts to make the Rollei 16 less than pocketable - and one can add the tripod and flash adaptors too, as well as a range of filters), yet these can be a useful addition to the Rollei 16, designed as it was to be a subminiature system as a whole.

Rollei 16 with Kodak Photo Instrumentation film

Rollei 16 with Tele-Mutar lens and Kodak Photo Instrumentation film

Although the Rollei 16 has does have fully automatic exposure, controlled by its light meter, what is also not often mentioned about the camera is that it is possible to use the flash settings for manual exposure, albeit at a single shutter speed, 1/30th.

Rollei 16 bottom plate with flash/B aperture selection and frame counter

The dial on the camera's bottom plate rotates through 360º (it has a small lock switch), with two 'A' (for automatic) positions; with aperture settings on each side of the dial, one set of apertures is for use with flash, the other set is marked 'B' for bulb setting. Therefore, it is possible to have some form of override, by using the flash setting for shutter speed and then selecting the appropriate aperture. The image below was shot using the flash setting (without a flash) at the maximum aperture of f2.8. On the A setting, if the green LED does not appear, the shutter will still fire (there's no red flag as with the Olympus Pen); I assume that the shutter and aperture will be set to provide maximum exposure possible, 1/30th at f2.8.

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X film at EI 125

I also shot the camera in 'B' mode for long exposures. The Rollei 16 doesn't have a tripod socket (a separate tripod adaptor was available); with the flash/B setting wheel and the frame number window both protruding from the bottom of the camera, without a flat base, it's harder to balance the camera on a flat surface for long exposures (it might be easier in portrait orientation, with the viewfinder end of the camera being quite flat, but then the pressure on the shutter button relative to how the camera is rested might still move the camera anyway). For the photograph below, I balanced the camera for a few seconds on the rounded top of a bollard while the shutter release was depressed.

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X film at EI 125

The film advance stops when the frame counter reaches 18, which means that it isn't possible to load a longer length of film into the camera (the frame counter resets on opening the back of the camera; by contrast, the Mamiya-16 Automatic's frame counter simply rotates around again after 18 shots and I've often got frames of mid- to high twenties while the Kiev-30M's frame counter stops at 25 but the film can be advanced further). It's just possible to get more than 18 shots on a roll however, squeezing in one, two or even three shots before the frame counter reads 1, but there's always a risk that these shots may be partly or wholly obscured.

Ideally, for a subminiature camera, to best show off what's possible with the Rollei 16, I would have liked to have shot a slow, fine grain film, but for this post, limited to perforated 16mm film (and having an innate preference for black and white over colour) I shot four different film stocks: Eastman Kodak currently produces just one black and white film stock, Double-X, in 16mm, while of the three other Eastman Kodak stocks, two are discontinued, and the third is a 'special order' stock. This, as much as the proprietary cassette, severely limits using the Rollei 16 today (it might be possible to reverse engineer a rewinding cassette for the camera, with some ingenuity but accurately perforating 16mm film is a problem with a different order of magnitude). Cassette and perforation issues notwithstanding, using the Rollei 16 itself - and being able to compare the experience with that of other subminiature cameras - makes one appreciate its conception, the quality of its design and construction, its easy to use controls, the automatic exposure, push-pull film advance, and the large, clear viewfinder with its parallax correction.

Rollei 16 with Eastman 4-X

Rollei 16 with Kodak Plus-X

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X at EI 125

Rollei 16 with Eastman Double-X at EI 200

Edit 18/4/19: See also Rollei 16 Cassettes

Sources/further reading
Rollei 16 on Submin.com
Rollei 16 Manual
Kameramuseum's page on the Rollei 16 (German)
Cameraquest's review of the Rollei 16S
Rollei 16 on Camera-Wiki

Sunday, 12 November 2017

116 Day November 2017

Agfa Standard with HP5 Plus

Last Monday, the 6th November, I shot two rolls of film for a Winter '116 Day'. Working all day, I was only able to take photographs on the way to and from work, and a couple of shots during my lunch break. I used an Agfa Standard folding camera, rather than either the Cocarette or No.2A Brownie I've used perviously: the Agfa Standard was available in a range of plate and rollfilm sizes; the 116 format Standard was designated the Model 255 to distinguish it within the range. Using original 116 backing paper, I shot Ilford HP5 Plus, and pushed the film one stop when developing. The Standard's Gauthier shutter has five speeds, as well as B and T; all the 'instant' speeds appear to be the same now. The daylight shots were over exposed: I calculated that the shutter was firing at about 1/100th, but I think it's probably much slower than that. With the clocks going back it was dark leaving work; I had better results at night, with long exposures on the T setting, balancing the camera on any convenient flat surface. There appear to have been a few problems with film flatness, and again the long exposures perhaps show this less, as I used smaller apertures than the hand-held shots. The final shot on the second roll (the last image on this post) shows the end of the 120 film curling up inside the camera and casting a shadow upon itself during the exposure.

Agfa Standard with Ilford HP5 Plus

Sunday, 22 October 2017

World Toy Camera Day 2017/Halina 110 Auto-Flip

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with Kodak Photo Instrumentation film

For yesterday's World Toy Camera Day, I chose a Halina 110 Auto-Flip as my camera for the day. After having used a relatively sophisticated 110 format camera recently in the Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor, it was instructive to compare that camera to what would have been the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of price and quality. Although what precisely defines a 'toy' camera is subjective and debatable, the 110 Auto-Flip has many qualifying characteristics: it is almost entirely constructed from plastic, fixed-focus, and, other than the shutter release and film advance wheel, the only user control that affects results is a sliding switch for the film's ASA setting, which simply changes between two apertures. The camera is also brightly coloured, a sure denotation that it is not to be taken seriously.

Halina 110 Auto-Flip

The camera has a single shutter speed, not marked, but probably around 1/60th. There are two apertures, again not defined; the switch on the top slides a plate with a smaller aperture behind the lens. The larger aperture setting is marked for flash or full sun for 100/200 ASA, and flash or cloudy conditions for 400 ASA; the smaller aperture is marked for full sun at 400 ASA. On the top of the camera is a socket for a flip-flash, with distance settings for the flash printed on the transparent window that also functions as the catch to open the door for the film chamber (distance settings are given as 4-9 feet for 100 ASA, or 5-15 feet for 400 ASA). The flip cover is easily detachable; it pivots to an acute angle in relation to the camera itself and supposedly functions as a handle to steady the camera: although the top of the cover has a ruled, grip-like top, the ergonomics are pretty poor. The camera also has a wrist strap.

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with open cover

The lens would appear to be a simple meniscus type; in a number of the photographs taken with the Auto-Flip, some pincushion distortion is evident, with moderate sharpness in the centre. The apertures are relatively small, perhaps f11 and f16, providing reasonable depth of field to the fixed focus lens. The shutter release button is stiff, depressing it gives quite a hard 'click', which must risk some camera shake. The viewfinder, in an odd design quirk is square, despite the 110 negative format being clearly rectangular. However, with the limitations of the Auto-Flip, the main consideration of the viewfinder is simply to ensure the subject is centred, as no accurate framing is possible. As I shot two cartridges reloaded with 16mm film, rather than new 110 stock, as I've written about before, the lack of preprinted frames on the film allows the whole negative area to be used. With the Auto-Flip, the negative is approximately 23mm wide - much wider than the preprinted frame size of around 17mm. However, the image is severely vignetted on the right hand side, which no doubt would be entirely covered by the 110 preprinted frame.

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with Kodak Photo Instrumention film showing overlapping frames

As with the Agfa Optima 6000, the Auto-Flip relies on an internal pin locating the 110 perforations to reset the shutter when advancing the film; unlike the Optima 6000, the pin connects with every 16mm perforation (as in the image above): instead of shooting one blank frame to advance the reloaded film the correct distance, I found it necessary to release the shutter twice after each shot, covering the lens, and even then, thanks to width of the Auto-Flip frame, the frame edges were still butted against each other, although the vignetting at one side of the frame generally made this less noticeable. I shot almost all the photographs on the wider aperture setting; of the two films I used, I've found that the Kodak Photo Instrumentation film gives the best results at an exposure index of 100; subsequently shooting a cartridge reloaded with Eastman Double-X as it was beginning to get dark meant the conditions mitigated against using the smaller aperture setting. The weather conditions were not ideal yesterday, but the Photo Instrumentation film's latitude helped to compensate for this.

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with cover closed

The Halina 110 Auto-Flip is entirely typical of a cheap point-and-shoot snapshot model that would be an archetypal 'first camera' from the late 1970s through to the 1980s (indeed, while I first took photographs with a 126 Instamatic, one of my brothers had a 110 'Pocket Instamatic' very much like the Auto-Flip as his first camera). Cheap to buy and very simple to use, the camera would have produced passable results in good lighting conditions on small-scale photo-lab prints; retrospectively, it's sometimes a wonder that such photos, not very sharp, grainy, often underexposed, from a first camera, didn't put people off photography, but the fact that these cameras were designed to be so easy to use, and, that they did simply produce results, was enough to satisfy the desire to take the photographs in the first place.

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with Kodak Photo Instrumentation film

Halina 110 Auto-Flip with Eastman Kodak Double-X film

Sources/further reading
Haking_Grip-C/Halina 110 Auto-Flip on Camera-Wiki

Sunday, 1 October 2017

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor

Agfa enthusiastically embraced the 110 format when Kodak introduced the small drop-in cartridge system in 1972, despite not previously manufacturing any 16mm subminiature cameras during the brief period when these had a certain limited popularity. The Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor was first produced in 1975, by which time Agfa had a fairly large range of 110 format cameras, from the most basic to the relatively sophisticated. It was then Agfa's top-of-the-range model, only bettered the next year by the Agfamatic 6008 Makro Pocket, a revision of the 6000, which featured an additional close-up supplementary lens (Agfa's models ending in '8' had flipflash sockets instead those for the magicube). Most of Agfa's 110 cameras used the 'Agfamatic' name, clearly borrowing from Kodak's Instamatic, and indeed also taking the 'Pocket' suffix that Kodak also used to distinguish their 110 cameras from the earlier 126 format Instamatics. 'Pocket' obviously trades on the small size of the 110 cameras, though not all 110 cameras were all that pocketable. The Optima 6000 is approximately 13.2x5.6x2.6cm when closed, and its smooth corners and lack of projection make it easier to pocket than some cameras; simpler Agfa 110 cameras were smaller still. The 5000 and 6000 models were clearly thought worth distinguishing from the simpler models by using the Optima name, borrowed from from Agfa's long-running range of automatic exposure compact 35mm cameras; the Sensor in the camera's name also derives from Agfa's unique shutter release, the large, slightly domed orange button, intended to produce a smooth action when pressed, compared to other shutter releases. The Optima 5000 and 6000 models were all black, constructed from plastic, with some metal, notably with the front sliding panel. As with their other models of the 1970s, Agfa's 110 range demonstrate the attention to detail that their design department invested in: there's a good interview with Julian Schlagheck, the son of one part of Agfa's design team, Schlagheck Schultes Design, about the Agfamatic cameras, which gives a good background into their development.

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor closed

The most notable feature of the Optima 6000 that elevates it above many 110 cameras is its fast lens, a Tessar-type Agfa Solinar S f2.7. As a fast lens, it also focusses; many other small format cameras rely on a smaller aperture with a short focal length fixed-focus lens to provide an acceptable depth of field from a relatively close distance. The focal length on the Solinar lens is not marked on the camera: some websites describe it as 26mm, others, 27mm. The focussing dial is located in the middle of the camera's top plate, with a standard set of pictograms (mountain, group, and half-length portrait), which have click-stops, as well as distances in both meters and feet. This has a grip with a toothed edge around it and the distance settings are read against two indicator marks at the top and bottom of the dial. The pictograms are visible in the camera's viewfinder with a red pointer to show the focal setting. The frame-lines inside the viewfinder also have parallax marks. Exposure is automatic, with a CDS cell visible on the front of the camera with the sliding cover open and closed, powered by three 625G batteries, still commonly available. These are located next to the film cartridge chamber, as in the image below. Partially depressing the orange sensor button lights LEDs inside the viewfinder (as well as a red LED on the camera's front), green for an exposure of 1/30th - 1/1000th, with a red LED as a long exposure warning. According to the manual, the camera is capable of exposures as long as 30 seconds, although I haven't found the shutter to stay open for longer than what sounds like a half second, if that, even when operated at night. One curiosity about the camera is that the shutter is in front of the lens, not behind it or between its elements. Next to the orange sensor button is a standard cable release socket, and on the underneath of the camera body is a small switch for a self-timer. The 6000 model was a small evolution of the Optima 5000: the self-timer is one of the improvements, along with the presence of symbols in the viewfinder, and the LED on the front. For using a flash, there is a socket on the top of the body for flashcubes, which rotates with the film advance, as well as a hot shoe on one end of the camera body for Agfa's dedicated 110 flash unit, the Optima Pocket Lux. Although taking the form of a typical hot shoe, this is rotated through 90 degrees, meaning a traditional flash unit would be facing downwards, instead of facing the front. There was an insert for the hot shoe, which my camera lacks, with a screw socket, doubling for use as a tripod mount or to attach a carrying chain; the Optima Pocket Lux has its own tripod socket.

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor with back open

Like many 110 cameras, the Optima 6000 has a push-pull frame advance (which also cocks the shutter) using the sliding cover, a mechanism derived from earlier 16mm cameras, such as the Minolta 16. There is a switch on the underneath of the camera to unlock the sliding cover which springs open; this switch can be moved to the closed position while the camera is still open, and the sliding cover will lock into the closed position when pushed in.

In testing the Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor I only used with reloaded 110 cassettes, which has both disadvantages and advantages with this particular camera. The Subclub website has a good page on reloading 110 cassettes, dividing cameras into type A and type B: type A cameras do not need the 110 format perforations on the film to cock the shutter, while type B do require this perforation. In type A cameras it is possible to use unperforated 16mm film; type B cameras need perforations to work. 110 film has one perforation per frame, whereas standard 16mm perforations are around three per 110 frame. In addition 16mm film comes in both single and double perforated. I've previously used reloaded 110 cassettes in a Pentax Auto 110, a camera which doesn't require perforations to work, and when using single perforated film, I aligned the perforations on the top edge of the film cassette when reloading, meaning that these appear in the bottom of the image, which seemed more aesthetically pleasing. With the Optima 6000, the camera does require the perforations to work, these perforations needing to be at the bottom of the cassette, and so show at the top of the image. The Subclub recommends advancing a 'type B' camera four times for each frame, based on the number of perforations. This assumes that the pin will register each perforation, which I found not to be the case. Instead, the Optima 6000 requires advancing twice per frame: the pin inside camera will prevent the film from advancing a whole frame, but appears not to locate every single perforation hole. Without advancing the camera twice, the images on the frame will overlap, as below.

Agfa Optima 6000 overlapping test exposures with a single advance for each frame

In order to advance the film twice, the shutter needs to be tripped a second time, as the film does not advance until the shutter has fired. In practice, I made the second (blank) exposure by placing my thumb over the lens, small enough for this to be done relatively easily, and with the shutter in front of the lens, there is no danger of getting a fingerprint on the lens itself. Using reloaded cassettes with the original backing paper does mean that one can check the frame numbers on the paper itself to ensure that the film is advancing a whole frame at a time. Of course, this is quite unnecessary if shooting original factory loaded 110 cassettes, and not reloading them. One advantage in using reloaded 110 cassettes is that these do not have the preprinted 110 frames, thus providing a larger negative area: the negatives from the Optima 6000 measured roughly 13.6mm by 19.6mm. When using the Lomography Orca film in the past, the printed frames reduced the negative size to 12.7x17mm. Clearly the perforations intrude into the image area; to crop these out would mean losing some of the image at the top and/or the bottom of the frame, but the increased width of the negative would not be affected. In addition, with reloaded 16mm film, edge printing can show in the negative area, although not all 16mm film has printed codes. Inevitably, the reloaded cassettes did have some light leaks, as seen in the images above and below at the top edges of the frames.

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor with Kodak Photo Instrumentation film

I tested the Optima 6000 with three different 16mm films, two had double perforations, one with single. The Optima 6000 does not have a mechanism to sense the 110 cassette film speed tab, so all the films were shot at the slow speed setting; there's no information as to whether this speed is set at 100 ISO, or 80, or even 64. The best results were probably from a roll of Kodak Special Order Photo Instrumentation film. Originally 500 ISO, being fifteen years past the date on its box, the results gave a good tonal range and surprisingly low grain for the frame size. All the images on this post were scanned from the negatives; optical printing in a darkroom would have given a finer, sharper image. I also shot some Eastman Double-X, which was developed as if I'd shot it at an exposure index of 200; the camera would have exposed it at 100. This film I shot in some low-light conditions, to test the camera's fast lens, the results of which were mostly acceptable, as below, unless the available light levels were very low, in which conditions the camera's shutter seems to simply have not stayed open long enough for the exposure required. This might be due to the cameras age, or some other factors.

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor with Eastman Double-X

I also shot a cassette loaded with Eastman 4-X negative film. As Kodak stopped manufacturing this stock around 1990, I knew that the film, originally 400 ISO, would have lost a fair amount of sensitivity with age. As the camera would only expose it at around 100, any further compensation would have to be done in developing, hardly ideal. This, incidentally, is a limitation built into the design of Kodak's 110 cassette system. The shots from this roll were very grainy, with a prominent base level of age-related fog, the camera being unable to increase exposure to give a denser image against that fog.

Agfa Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor with Eastman 4-X

The Optima 6000 Pocket Sensor has all the convenience that the pocket instamatic format was intended to produce, while clearly being one of the better 110 cameras of the 1970s. The push-pull advance and sensor button are intuitive to use, while the camera body is just weighty enough to inspire some confidence, but not so small as to become difficult, fiddly for larger fingers. The Solinar lens is sharper than my scanning the negatives would disclose: as above, printing from the negatives would be a better assessment of this. The main issues that I had with the camera, apart from the performance in very low light that I've already mentioned, were to do with focus for some shots, in which I assumed that the lens would give greater depth of field than it did, and this would excuse a lack of accuracy in setting the focus dial correctly. The camera does not display what settings its automatic exposure has selected, and as I didn't shoot any of the images on bright, sunny days, it would have been safe to predict that the exposures generally required wider apertures. Using reloaded film, I also did not always remember to advance twice per frame; this issue wouldn't occur with new 110 film.