A CASE HISTORY

By P. J. Marchment (Area 22).

In the year 1977 I read in the readers letters column of Practical Photography that there was a Club in existance that dealt with the home processing of transparencies and being interested in that sort of thing. I sat down and wrote off to a young fellow by the name of Bill Reid - who I am pleased to say is still with us and doing a sterling job - and I was referred to another sterling fellow, namely George Sparkes who was then - and still is - the Secretary of Area 22. I duly enrolled and became a member which is something I have never regretted.

I have always been interested in the home brewing of Photographic chemicals and started with the first reversal film that was manufactured especially for that purpose. It was called Ferannia CR50. It was a very good film with bright colours and was extremely easy to process, the colour developer consisted of just four chemicals which were Genochrome, Sodium Carb, Pot Brom, Sodium Sulphite; The bleach was good old Ferricyanide and the fix could be just a handful of Hypo if nothing else was to hand, and of course, it only required a temperature of 68F (20C) plus or minus a degree or two. How different from the present E6 process with its 100F and numerous long winded chemicals. That must have been well over 35 years ago and I still have slides which are as good today as when I first exposed them.

Even though the process was so simple, things still went wrong and mistakes were made. I remember once someone coming to the door as I was in the middle of processing a film. I had also exposed it to a photoflood - three minutes each side - and was about to insert the bleach into the tank when there was a knock at the door. I put down the bottle of bleach, dealt with the fellow at the front door and went back to proceed with the processing. I poured the contents of the bottle into the tank, looked at the lable and horrors of horrors, it read FIX. I cannot remember exactly what happened to the film but I do know that it did NO good.

Around that period I was using a Leica IIIa with a Canon lens and I part exchanged it for a ROBOT camera. This was an excellent little camera used by the German Luftwaffe during the war and it was very unusual in that it had a square format on 35mm film (24x24) and it also had a clockwork motor that set the shutter and advanced the film at he same time. When my trigger finger was in good working order I could shoot three frames a second with ease. It also had interchangable Schneider lenses of which I had the 30, 38, 40 (1.9) and 150mm versions. I paid just £15 for the camera and eventually sold the lot with extra accessories for £400 as it was by then a collectors piece or should I say pieces. Had I kept the Leica and is bits I feel that I might have realized an even greater price for that.

The reason for buying the ROBOT was economy which was a prime consideration in those days as I had a Wife and two small children to support and this camera gave me 55 shots on a normal 36 frame roll of film. It also had a marvellous two cassette system. One feed cassette and one take-up, which enabled me to cut off the exposed part of the film without losing more than one frame in the camera. Why the Japanese have not introduced something like this in their new range of cameras I cannot understand. I`m sure that it would be very popular.

I eventually retired my ROBOT and bought my first SLR which was, as with most amateurs of those days, a Zenith B. It was a very basic camera, cheap, entirely manual without a light meter and had a shutter that sounded like a 12 inch howitzer going off, but the lens was quite good.

By this time the best film that I have ever used, in my opinion, had arrived. It was Agfa 50S, and then came Sakurachrome and a host of others too numerous to mention. Having a Russian camera prompted me to buy a Russian 35mm UPA enlarger which was very good value for money being portable and completely contained in a small suitcase. The case served as the baseboard and the enlarger was fully automatic focus with an excellent flat field lens that gave supurb results with 35mm and the whole thing only cost £20 brand new.

From the Zenith I updated to a Nikkormat EL which I still use, quite often in preference to my Nikon FM, but in between these cameras I bought an English 2 & 1/4 square (6x6) Agiflex III. A good camera in its day but does not compare with my Bronica SQA. Having moved up to 6x6 I needed an enlarger with the new size of negative or transparency but as the cost was prohibitive and being an ardent Do It Yourselfer I decided to make one.

Up in the loft I had an old Goblin cylinder type vacuum cleaner which had long ago given up the ghost; (I never throw anything away that I think will come in useful). This I used as the main body. I then aquired quite cheaply from a jumble sale, a 4 inch double condenser and the metal column and arm came from a scrapyard. With the exception of the lamp socket and the focusing stage, the rest was fashioned from wood. A friend welded the lamp socket to a copper pipe, thereby enabling me to focus the enlarger light, and a young student turned the focusing stage on a lathe for a packet of cigarettes. All in all those were frugal times and called for extreme measures.

The whole thing worked very well and I hope to bring it along to the next AGM at Didcot for you to see. By todays standards it is a bit Heath Robinson but it worked.

Now that I have started on 6x6 slides, my next purchase should be a 6x6 projector but as the cheapest I could find cost almost £100, I think that I may have to resort to DIY again unless some very kind member of the club has one that he or she does not use or want.

I am pleased to say that the period of frugality has long since passed and that my equipment is now somewhat more sophisticated. I have a Philips 6x7 additive colour enlarger with a colour analyser to help things along and a Jobo CPE2 processor that gives me 16x12 Cibachromes. I wish now that I had bought the CPA2 at the time as it gives 20x16 prints, but I am one of those unfortunates who always learn the hard way. I would like my next move to be up to 5x4 but with the present climate of inflation and resession I am afraid that it will be absolutely impossible.

I do hope that all this diatribe has not bored you but will encourage some of you to do better and tell us of your experiences and the things that have happened to you as I know that we, the other members of the Club, will be only too pleased to hear them.