LESSONS, LENSES & LIGHTS (Pt. Two)

By Alan Coldman (Area 22).

Apart from the weight problem it displayed a nerve rattling trick. At one wedding in a fine rain it delivered, to me, most of the 2,700 volts it would charge to, thank heavens I did not have a motor wind as the spasm in my arm & fingers would have fired off the complete roll of film.

When making a repair to the beast and it was necessary to carefully fire by means of the open flash button I managed to get my finger between a live part and the earth. Bang! it felt as if I had hit my finger very hard with a hammer and there was a hole about 1mm wide from one side to the other and through the nail.

When I first bought the flash gun the camera was not syncronised so I sent off to some manufacturer for a plunger synchronizer that fitted into the cable release hole. It depended on how fast you pushed as to whether it would be coincident with the shutter opening. I soon had the camera fitted with a proper flash socket.

Back to the little boy. I took the usual shot of bride & groom cutting the cake, which when printed, reveals a seven year old boy, with his chin on the table and his tongue sticking out. I told the bride when showing her the proofs that it would be possible to retouch & remove the little beggar. She insisted I did not and indeed I sold more of this picture to the guests than any other.

I had by now purchased an unusual, for them, Oberland enlarger with a Wray supran lens. It was somewhat like a small present day Durst enlarger with rounded contours. I also had a Paterson self loading developing tank. It was anything but self loading. One day a young lady of seventeen expressed a desire to learn about photography and I assured her I knew everything to know and her not having heard of my processing of other people`s films, agreed to assist at a developing session. We started in her parent`s house, as there was a small room with an almost perfect back roller blind. I remember I quite liked the idea of being in a darkroom with a pretty girl and so started to load the Paterson. Of course the film jammed as usual and I removed it and started again and again and yet again. I think at this point the young girl`s mother became somewhat suspicious as we had gone into this room and it had gone very quiet for some time, she thought she would check.

I heard mother`s approaching steps and her voice asking what we were doing, I knew what would come next, as mother opened the door and light began coming in. I suppose I must have panicked for I quickly knelt down and held the tank & film under the girl`s skirt, between her legs. This is how the mother found me. I was forbidden to ever speak again to her daughter and no amount of explanation would alter this.

At another loading into the tank, this time in a dark room at my laboratory, I locked the door, pulled the blind down and started, part the way through the roller blind unlatched and shot up. I thrust the film up my jumper, there being no convenient lady at hand, and crouching almost double, sidled over to the blind cord must have looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with severe stomach cramps. The film survived this.

Two small things return to my memories. One was a help in focusing in dark places where it would be necessary to use flash and because my Weltini had a coincidental image rangefinder that was even a little tricky in good light. I constructed a small tin box containing a battery, switch & bulb behind a white plastic screen with a bold cross drawn on it, this would be stood, illuminated, upon the subject, when focussing became easy. The other was a focussing aid for the enlarger.

Do you remember the 1950`s Dulaycolor film ? It was an integral tri-pack type with a very fine grid of the three primary colours on the unexposed film. This, when held in the enlarger negative holder gave an easily visible image when sharply focussed.

In the early sixties, I tried Ferrania colour film, home processed, and was delighted, though the colours were rather over saturated. I never had any failures with this film except for once, when, being used to the rapid drying of my B&W negatives in absolute alcohol, I did the same with the colour film. This removed all of the red dye. I still have the slides, some hand bound with cover glasses, home made black masks and passepartout. They have retained their colour very well indeed.

About 1972, in response to an advert, I joined the CR50 Club, now of course CRC. I learned not to phone Oliver Barron who was my area leader and lived fairly near, because of his extreme deafness, a phone conversation could take a long time. Dear Oliver, a most kindly man.

In my new home, a maisonette, the kitchen served as the dark room and was a `natural` darkroom, ie. it could only be used in the darker nights. Even then, when car headlights shone past the venetian blinds, a black card was used to cover printing paper.

I often would sepia tone prints with a now smelly bath, indeed in many ways I prefer B&W for quality and charm.

The chief photographer at my laboratory gave me a box full, about 160 36 shot cassettes of Ektachrome E4 film as E6 had now arrived, this film had always been stored in a deepfreeze and lasted me some seven years without showing deterioration. It was processed in the Moorhouse formula and gave truly superb results. One thing learned was that you could not develop Ektachrome and some other makes in the same solutions as the Ektachrome poisoned the other film and you were left with grey fog.

There is one thing I regret, particularly as I am a collector of cameras, ranging from an almost mint Leica C with valuable special view finder, to a bakelite woolworth`s camera costing one shilling and sixpence, that is, that I sold both a Leica M3 and a very early Oscar Barnack designed Leica. Its the old one I should have kept, of course.

However to balance against this, a friend told me he had discovered from a skip something he thought was perhaps a "photo light or some- -thing and was I interested?" It turned out to be a self focusing Leica enlarger complete with lens all in very good condition. I considered changing it for my Durst but eventually gave it away to a young lady who was somewhat of an impoverished photographer.

I don`t suffer with film loading now since I bought a Durst tank, in fact I have five of them.

The sort of problems I do have to contend with, in my loft darkroom, is for example, when my wife and I were working with very large, expensive paper and the cat got into the room, jumped onto the bench top and walked through the dish of fixer and across the paper laying on the enlarger dish. We do still have the cat.

I will close with these two true stories. When I, as a youngster, appeared in a relative`s wedding group with my long socks around my ankles. The professional pointed to the fact he had retouched out a stick laying on the grass my mother asked why he had not pulled my socks up. This was later repeated when an elderly lady asked me if I could remove the hat off her dead husband`s photo. "Of course" I replied "which side did he part his hair?" "Well" she said "You will see that when you get his hat off, won`t you."

If I were asked what has been the most useful accessory. I would say a changing bag. I never go out with the camera without this, though somebody I know of might have wished he had one. He was photographing in a park one autumn when the film jammed. He sat upon a bench and placing his rain coat over his lap, started freeing the film, when a lady who had spotted him working beneath his coat said in a loud voice "Stop that at once you filthy young devil" Some you can`t win.

It`s all been so much fun.

ADDITION A
Another memory from long ago is of street photographers with tripod cameras that gave a finished print in under five minutes. These were Aptus cameras in which the exposed paper film dropped from the camera into a light tight vertical cylinder containing developer & fixer. The wet negative was then placed in a folding bracket in front of the camera and re-photographed, processed as before and provided the finished print. There is indeed one of these being used upon the Acropolis in Athens today. Happy days.