philly

Above is a photo of an antique camera, the Brooks-Plaubel Veriwide 100. It's a medium format camera spitting out a 6x10cm panoramic negative. It was produced from 1959 – 1965 so it's at least 43 years old. My landlord, a former commercial photographer with a studio full of photographic goodies I can't even begin to describe, graciously lets me use the now unused gear. On top of it all, a box of at least 10 years expired 120 film is mine to experiment with.

The viewfinder at the top of the camera replicates fairly well the 100° angle of view the lens sees. It's a fully manual camera so it's not for those without a little bit of understanding of basic photographic principles of how shutter speed relates to f/stop and speed of film and determining the correct exposure, using the three variables. I haven't done that in a long time and it takes a little bit of quick math to set things. On a roll of 120 film, you get 7 exposures instead of the 12 or 16 you'd get with more typical medium format cameras. And one more thing to make things more complicated, none of the places in town can scan 6x10cm negatives – Photo Lounge and Philadelphia Photographics have 6×9 carriers for scanning. My solution was to get a scanner. A HP G4050. It's on the slow side, but the results are pretty good. Nothing close to the big machines the two places above have, but nice. If one were to lose the viewfinder, you could always flip up the wire finder which works fine.

Other than the viewfinder which is different, there's the process to actually shoot. Once the film is loaded in the camera back (and it's loaded backwards from right to left) and aligned, you wind the film via the big knob (top right in photo). The number of the frame clicks into place in the window next to the winder and holds the knob from turning further. So then, you set your aperture and shutter speed via little levers on the lens. You set the focus distance by guesstimation – with this being a very wide angle of view, most everything is in focus. Then you cock the shutter via a lever underneath the lens. You pull it from left to right and you hear the shutter get into place. Trip the shutter via the release (next to the orange spirit level at left in the photo) and you hear a nice 'snick' sound. Then you advance the film to the next frame. Repeat 6 times and you're golden. Unfortunately, no way to get a double exposure from what I can tell.

I'm still getting the hang of using the scanner, but the results aren't half bad. It's much easier to do black and white than color films. The orange color cast of the negative is annoying to compensate for. Above is a shot around 24th St and Panama St. That's Panama St littered with cherry blossom leaves and pair of paths drawn by cars. Check out the first 7 shots I took with the Veriwide 100 in this flickr set.

Some more info on the camera via Ken Rockwell. And more shots with the camera from others on flickr here and here.

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