I have got visits

An old friend of mine and his wife visited me this week and I showed them the place where I live and we took a small tour around. As first we visited one of the oldest paper factories of Europe, the factory is still working but only for demonstration to the visitors. It suffered a restauration under the advise of one of the most known portuguese architects, Siza Vieira.

After the short visit to the factory we walked to the antique center of Leiria and we entered its Cathedral. We were also in some other important places of the town like the Square Rodrigues Lobo and Park Camões and crossed the old narrow streets of the city.

After this short visit of Leiria town, we took a tour by car until the beach village of S. Pedro de Moel where we had lunch, looking to the Atlantic, «it was like we were on vacation». After lunch we went to the village of Nazaré, following south the «Atlantic Street». My friend told me he never uses GPS, we had a look to a paper map and we knew how to drive. I said to him that I prefer OWA instead of GPS. He asked me what OWA means and I answered: «Open the Window and Ask». All we laughed and were happy beeing together.

Old Paper Factory, built in 1411 in Leiria, Portugal

Dagmar and Hans

New pedestrian bridge over river Lis

Leiria Cathedral

During lunch at S. Pedro de Moel

At Nazaré, looking down to the village and beach

Once at home I developed the film and scanned to the computer.

My procedure is following:

Developer
Wash
Fixer
Wash
Bleach
Final Wash
Dry

As developer I am using Dignan NCF-41 -- Two-Bath C-41 Color Developer for a while, what means, for some months, with some slight modifications. As first bath I prepared following, because I could not find Sodium Bisulfite:

300 ml water
5,5 g CD4
5 g Sodium Sulfite
Water to make 500 ml

For the second bath I have allways a 5 liter jerrycan with a 5% solution of Sodium Carbonate and 0,05% Potassium Bromide, which means:

50 g/liter Sodium Carbonate
0,5 g/liter Potassium Bromide

In the Donald Qualls page it is recommended to use distilled water for the first bath and distilled or filtered water for the second bath.

About times, I use 10 minutes for the first bath, agitating continously during the first 2 minutes and then let stand. The second bath I stir for 5 minutes and let stand for more 15 minutes.

Between developer and fixer I wash very well for 5 minutes.

As fixer I use common commercial fixer from Foma, times and dilutions as prescribed. But because the fixer is not new and also there is no danger to overfix, I usually give 5 minutes fixing time.

As bleach bath I am using Iodopovidone, normally known as Betadyne that is sold at Pharmacies as disinfectant for wounds. Here you may control at light the degree of transparency you want, the film is already fixed and now the bleach will only remove the silver and the orange mask.


Finally I wash very well for at list one hour ant hang to dry.

My new Flintstone camera

This is my 5th selfmade camera, but all of them were different. The first 2 were 35mm Pinhole small cameras, I could sell one at ebay and the other I offered my smaller daugther who was very happy with it. The third one was a bellows camera with a binocular lens, without shutter or with hand shutter to expose paper. Later I adapted a guilhotine shutter made by my self but giving shaking images because it worked with rubbers horizontally. The camera is still here somewhere waiting for beeing repaired or used somehow.

In the 4th camera I used a Rollei back for 120 film and a Leica Leitz Elmar lens and a guillhotin shutter by gravity giving good images, only the Rollei back sticks a little, it needs some more tuning work. The camera is there more like a museum piece on a table in the corner. Works fine, only to return the guilhotine in the upper position you must close the lens and invert the whole camera and reset the trigger cable that when released, let the guilhotine fall. No shaking images at all, great shutter.

Now, my 5th camera started with a wooden box of the dimensions 12.7 x 8.8 x 8.1 cm with hinges and latch. I used a Vario shutter (which advantage is to have everything including flash synchronyzer). This shutter had no lens in it but looking in the box where I put all optic devices left over from other projects, I found a 100 mm lens that with some tuning in the distance to the film could serve. This is more or less easier to do if we use a lens board and regulate the distance by adding stuff between the box and the lens board. I choosed the size of the lens board so that I can use it in a professional Horseman 980 too.

The trickiest part is the back cover of the box that works perfectly to load a 120 film and take, not 6x6, but 5x5 pictures, due to the thickness of the used wood parts, mainly the frame which slides and is held in position by two small parts of nails on both sides. Well, for the rest just look the pictures, they are clear. I use in the first steps a kind of spring to prevent the roll to unwind during the loading process.

The Flintstone camera

Inside the Flintstone camera

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 1.st step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 2.nd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 3.rd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 4th step

Film loaded in the Flintstone camera.