A New Year’s Intention
At this time of year for the last couple of years I’ve published a post looking back at my favourite cameras of the year. This time it’s going to be different in that I’m not only going to be looking backwards, but will cast my gaze towards the coming year as well. For the first time I’m going to try to outline my intentions for 2025. I would have called this post my New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m notoriously bad at keeping to that sort of thing, and my Resolutions rarely last to the end of January. So this year I thought that I would jot down a few ideas of the things that I really want to do over the coming twelve months.
It all came about from the realisation that I’ve got more than enough cameras, probably far too many. Back in March, after finally getting my hands on a Polaroid Big Shot, I posted on social media that I had just bought the last camera I would ever want. But that didn’t last long, and soon after I started collecting really vintage cameras. Dusty and dirty relics from the dawn of the twentieth century, like the Vest Pocket Kodak and the Kodak 1A Autographic Jr folding cameras, or the Agfa Billy-Clack strut-folding camera, or a whole group of large format 9×12 folding cameras (including the smelly old ICA Sirene — which still has a lingering odour). But many of these remain unused, and it pains me that although I’ve restored them back to working condition, I haven’t actually produced any images with them yet. So this year I’m going to put that right.
The Bencini Koroll 2, a half-frame medium format camera.
A few days ago, over on BlueSky where there’s a Shitty Camera Challenge running at the moment, someone posted an image from a Koroll half-frame medium format camera. And it reminded me that I have one of these. I came across a Bencini Koroll 2, a half-frame camera that uses medium format film, on the OLX website, a kind of classified ad website that is quite popular over here in Portugal. I wasn’t looking for it, but I was immediately smitten and had to have it.
The Purma Special, an English made 127 film format camera.
Similarly, back in 2021 when I was looking for film cameras to kick-start my ‘return’ to wanting to use film again, I came across a whole range of wonderful devices. One of these, an English made camera that looked and performed really strangely, instantly made its way onto my ‘must have’ list. The Purma Special is a 127 film format camera with a single aperture and a really unique method of selecting the shutter speed. Inside the Purma Special is a weight that changes the shutter speed depending on its orientation, either ‘slow’ (1/25s), ‘regular’ (1/150s), or ‘fast’ (1/450s). The only snag with this camera is that it has a curved film frame so I’m not sure if I can use 35mm film spooled into a home-made 127 paper backing. However, the plan is to either find a lab that will process black and white in 127 format, or get some colour 127 film. Somehow.
The First World War era Vest Pocket Kodak camera.
That’s not such an issue with the next camera on my ‘to do’ list, the Vest Pocket Kodak (VPK). I’ve had this disassembled in a box for a while, but just this past month I’ve reassembled it and am actively planning on getting some 120 paper rolls to cut them and make 127 spools in which to roll 35mm film. The advantage of the VPK is that it has a lovely flat film plane, so I’m really looking forward to using that with some Lomochrome Turquoise, or a similar colour shifting emulsion.
The Kodak 3A folding camera. Hopefully this will produce lovely panoramic images with 120 film and an adapter.
The Kodak 1A and 3A folding cameras are other film cameras that I plan to use this year. I already have some 120 adapters on the way for these two cameras, and even a 118 adapter for the roll film back that came with my Patent Etui 9×12 folding camera. The thing I like about these is that with 120 films they should give a lovely panoramic image. I have to make some masks to stop the film from curling at the edges, so I’m waiting for the adapters to arrive before I start making these, but all being well I’ll have them ready before the Shitty Camera Challenge ends in January.
The Welta Penti II (the ‘Golden Wonder’), a 35mm half-frame camera that uses Agfa Rapid cassettes.
Another thing that I’m really wanting to try this year is using the Agfa Rapid film system. A month or so ago I picked up some Agfa Iso-Rapid IF cameras, and more recently a Welta Penti ii half-frame camera (the ‘Golden Wonder’), that I’ve already picked to use with the Frugal Film Project. I’m hoping that I can use these Rapid film cameras with some colour shifting emulsions, such as Lomochrome Turquoise or Harman Phoenix. When I ordered the Agfa cameras I expected to have just a couple of Rapid cassettes, so I bought an expired roll from eBay, but it turns out that I have several now and so there are plenty of options I can try, including redscaling some film in the Rapid cassettes and even trying some EBS photography, or exposing both sides of the emulsion.
The back of an Agfa IsoRapid IF showing two Rapid cassettes.
The last part of my ‘resolution’ for 2025 is not film based but digital, even though the idea started from my reading about film experimentation. I had always fancied trying ‘souping’, soaking films in various chemicals that would denature the emulsion and give a unique and sometimes abstract image. Sadly, I’m not in a position to develop my own films, and since most film processing labs won’t develop souped films, for fear of ruining their chemistry, it’s not really an option for me.
A digital image that has been glitched by ‘editing’ it with Audacity audio editor.
That’s when I came across ‘glitch art’. Put simply, glitching is taking a perfectly good digital image and corrupting the data contained in it. Examples include using a Hex Editor to alter details of the individual pixels in an image, processing a digital photograph in a program not intended for editing image files, or running the image through a program language that corrupts the file. This is known as databending, but there is also circuit bending that either takes an image and corrupts it using a specially made image processor, or using a camera where the hardware within the camera has been physically altered so that the image saved to the card is corrupted.
A telegraph pole taken with a circuit-bent children’s digital camera.
I already have one circuit bent camera, and also a couple of failing cameras that produce lovely glitchy images, but I’ve also recently obtained a digital video camera that I hope will allow me to use a circuit bent device called the Mismatcher Petite to corrupt digital images and videos.
A photograph from a Holga that has been corrupted using a script written with the Processing programming language
So these are my intentions for 2025. Odds are that I’ll make a start with it then it’ll fall by the wayside as I get sidetracked with more cameras that accidentally fall through the letterbox. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll be experimenting with vintage cameras, extinct film formats, and glitching away, and not buying so many cameras.
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