New acquisition

Last weekend I travelled to Oporto, a town in the North of Portugal to meet someone who offered me an old camera he got from the parents and manufactured about the 1926. It is a nice piece from the house Zeiss-Ikon, in very good working condition, 9x12cm plate size. And it costs me just a 'thank you'. Ok, I had to pay the train and taxi to get to the person's house, but a lot less than the same piece costs at ebay, I already searched a similar one. It has a 135mm lens on a Compur shutter that works like a clock. A german clock.

9x12cm Zeiss-Ikon from about 1926

Photo made with the camera above

I bought some photo paper of the size 13x18, I cut it to 9x13 and feed into the plate holder that came with the camera. The picture above was made at 1/50 s and f/11. This means that the photo paper must be considered as having as much as 25 ASA because at f/16, the speed would be 1/25 (the f/16 rule). I was a little surprised with this, never expected that high but it is like this. I was thinking about purchasing film but I don't need anymore if the paper is that sensible. Increasing speed to 1/100 s allows the use of f/8 or larger for less iluminated scenes. At this speed no tripod is needed. Difficult is to get the image foccused, every small difference is important. The marks of distance on the camera don't give a sharp image, I had to use a ground glass and a magnifying lens to achieve a more or less sharp image. But can be better, I think. Next time, I hope. I need more practice.

The paper was developed in 1+10 dilluted parodinal made with paracetamol, sodium metabissulfite and sodium hydroxide. Development takes 2 minutes only. Fixer of sodium thiosulfate. The sepia tone was given by the software used.