The #FrugalFilmProject, March 2024: In Aveiro with the 1920s Generic Folding Camera.

The #FrugalFilmProject, March 2024: In Aveiro with the 1920s Generic Folding Camera.

Last month I used the guides drawn on the ground glass by a previous owner of the 1920s generic folding camera to frame images on Instax Wide film and dabbled with using neutral density filters to cut down the amount of light hitting the film and make exposures more manageable. 

Learning from this I loaded the three film holders with Instax Wide film and headed out to Aveiro. With the camera mounted on a tripod and using the dark cloth to shelter the ground glass image from the sunlight I exposed three images of graffiti tags near Aveiro railway station, using an aperture reading for 1/100s at ISO 800 and factoring in the change of aperture using the ND4 filter.

With electrical tape on the ground glass screen the framing of all of the images was ideal. This time I managed to expose all of the films properly, but I found that they were all a little overexposed and there were light leaks with two of the photographs. With the overexposure issue I suspect that the shutter speed is not actually 1/100s, and with the light leaks I think that two of the film holders are not sitting securely in the back of the camera.

I attempted to measure the shutter speed with a smartphone app called, unsurprisingly, Shutter Speed. Ideally this should be used with an accessory called PhotoPlug, a small light-sensitive diode but I don't have one of these so I used it by measuring the duration of the shutter sound. After taking several measurements it looks like the shutter speed of the 1920s generic folding camera is actually about 1/25s. Fortunately, I have an ND8 neutral density filter, so on sunny days I hope that I can still get a decent exposure. 

This afternoon I received three more film holders for the folding camera. Two of them were perfect, even better than the ones that came with the camera, though the third was a little short. So now I have five good frames that I can take on my next outing for the Frugal Film Project. 

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