The Saga of my OM-1

A couple of blogs ago I told the tale of my Olympus OM-1 having a tizzy and making me lose confidence in its accuracy. I have also spoken previously of wanting an Olympus OM-1 since childhood and finally getting one in my fifties was proof that childhood dreams can eventually come true. It was with this firmly in my mind that I decided I couldn't just leave my childhood dream sat on a shelf and me feeling sorry for myself so I set about hunting for spares.

Camera servicing and repair can get expensive in a hurry and for the vast majority of folks a decent Camera Technician is the first port of call should anything go awry. I'm one of the minority who would like to have a go at fixing things and mending a film speed dial was surely an easy task, right? I have many years experience at maintaining my motorcycles and keeping them roadworthy so mending a camera is just a case of scale, right? 

I had a good think about what I was going to do about it and decided that a replacement top plate was probably the easiest way of mending my beloved OM-1. A swift search of ebay found an OM-1 top plate for not a lot of cash. It arrived a few days later and I got my tools out. No, not my bike maitenance tools, they are far too big. I have a set of small screwdrivers and torx drivers for small stuff like this as my youngest had a habit of putting all kinds of stuff into my CD Player whe he was a toddler. I soon learned how to take it apart to retrieve the offending item and have a working CD player again. 

Taking the old top plate off was easy as it is only held by the wind on lever, the rewind crank and the shoe mount nut. Getting it back on was a little fiddly as I soon learned that the light meter on/off switch had a different mechanism on the new top plate than my old one. Thankfully the location hole was the same size for both so I just swapped them over. I then had to fit the new top plate and this is where it got interesting.

I wasn't at all certain that the film speed I had set it to the last time I used it was the correct one. A lot of research soon got me placing everything in the right orientation. It's exactly the same with engines, the valve and ignition timing has to be set right when rebuilding an engine or changing the timing belt. Get it wrong and the engine simply wont work. Once I was happy that everythng was in the right place I put the top plate back on. Thankfully everything appeared to work smoothly and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The proof of a good repair is always in the first use and from what I could tell, my OM-1 was looking good as new. I loaded a roll of Kentmere 400 into it the next day and went for a walk round the local farms. I used three different methods of light metering to check all was well. I put a roll of Tri-x in my Pentax SP500 as it was the only other 400 speed film I had and I know the light meter is accurate. I took my Nikon D90 with me too as I trust the light meter on that and I also used a free android app, Light Meter, on my phone to cross reference my settings.

It took me just a few images to discover my OM-1 was in fine fettle again. My plan of using three different meters was proving itself reliable and I was once again confident that I could use my OM-1 without having that nagging dread in the back of my mind. I call that a success, but that doesn't mean you should do the same. I was always aware that the potential for making a terrible mistake and having to send my OM-1 to have a proper repair was huge. It would also be very embarrassing too.

The next job it needs is to have the resistor changed to allow me to use cheaper, more easily available and longer lasting 1.5 volt batteries than the 1.35 volt wein cell it currently has. However that is a job for a person more qualified than I am. Mechanical stull I can do, electrical stuff is witchcraft. I will send it to my trusted repair wizard to have that work done, but not until I have had some more fun with it and shot a few more rolls of film.

Here are a few of my photo's from my OM-1, you can see more in an album on Flickr by clicking the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Flickr Album Kentmere 400 Olympus OM-1

I love the texture on this gate post

This is one of my favourite views

Local Horses awaiting their humans

Farm road

Nature Trail Marker

Nature Trail

I guessed the exposure of this at 1/250th f/11
My light meter app agreed with me

Nature Trail

Salvage part 2

 Last week I was feeling a tad miffed at the mishap with my OM-1, but as I had managed to cut the film and not damage what was left in the cassette I decided to load it into my OM-2 and go for a walk along the canal near my home. It was also a perfect opportunity to shoot it at 200 and see just how far out last weeks images were. I also fitted my Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 as I was hoping to get some good photo's of Narrowboats at Crooke just outside Wigan.

I'm well into my fourth decade as a resident of Wigan and I love the surprises this town holds if you want to explore. One of those is Crooke, a former mining community built on the banks of the Leeds Liverpool Canal just a couple of miles outside Wigan. The coal mine at Crooke Hall sent it's black diamonds to the loading pier on the Canal side and from there the coal went east to Wigan and westwards to Liverpool and beyond.

There was a pair of Coal Barges moored at Crooke on the day of my walk named Ambush and Viktoria. Both could carry 60 tons of coal along the canal from colliery to coal merchants or the local Westwood Power Station. Research tells me Ambush made its last coal run along the Leigh branch of the Leeds Liverpool Canal from Bickershaw Colliery to Westwood Power Station just outside Wigan town centre in 1972.

Both the colliery and the power station have long since been demolished and the land left to nature, but Ambush and Viktoria are still afloat many years after their retirement. I was having a lot of fun along the canal photographing the barges and after a few last shots at a nearby canal lock I ran out of film and headed home.

I decided to use the same developer as used in my last adventure with EZ400, Rodinal 1+50 for 11 minutes as per the massive dev chart. I never get tired of the antici...... pation of seeing my film come out of the tank. I was rather pleased with the negs as I hung them to dry and soon had them dried, scanned and inspected ready for this blog.

Here's a few of my images from my walk along the canal. I am sure now that last weeks images with my OM-1 were not shot at 200 iso. The images shot with my OM-2 have nice contrast with excellent detail which makes me think I may have found this films sweet spot! Yes, the sky is blown out which to be fair I am not too worried about as I was metering for the barges.

The Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 may not be the fastest lens in the Olympus Zuiko arsenal, but it certainly holds its own against its more expensive siblings. It also brought the best out of EZ400 with nice detail in my shots and developing it in Rodinal gave the film that classic grain which, if you know your film, is a dead giveaway for where the film was made. I really enjoyed this weeks photowalk and I have put all 24 images on Flickr which you can visit by clicking the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

EZ400 and OM-2 Flickr Album

Salvaging A Potential Disaster

 I had a bit of a scare this week, I was out and about with my OM-1 shooting a roll of EZ400 and for some bizarre reason the film speed dial on my OM-1 fell off. It's screwed onto a plastic lug on the top plate, but a quick inspection showed it had been cross threaded. To be honest it's been a while since I used my OM-1 so I don't know how long it had been in this state. This left me in a bit of a quandry. I had set the dial to shoot the roll at 200 iso, purely for no other reason than I can, but after having shot 10 frames I was now totally uncertain that the setting I had selected was the correct one. I headed home a little deflated but also curious as to what the shots looked like.

If you ever suffer a problem part way through a roll, but don't want to waste a whole roll of film, it's easy to open your camera in a dark bag or a totally dark room and cut the film. Just remember to leave a little bit of film sticking out of the cannister. This is what I did and soon had the film I had shot loaded onto a reel and in my developing tank. I cut a little bit off the end of the now shorter roll of film I had left to form a leader ready to load for another day. I thought I had shot the film at iso 200, but now had no clue what iso it was. I decided to develop it using times I got from the New Classic Film website and hope for the best. I mixed some Rodinal 1+50 and got started.

When I had finished the process I opened the tank with some trepidation, not knowing how it had turned out. I carefully pulled the first few frames from the reel and I had some images! The negatives looked pretty decent, perhaps overexposed which is what I had gone for originally, but not as much as I thought. All sorts of thoughts had gone through my mind when developing the film ranging from very thin negatives to a totally black frame. I could see some nice detail in my negatives and breathed a sigh of relief as I hung the film to dry.

I scanned the film using my cheap and cheerful Ion Slides to PC scanner which is basically a 5mp phone camera in a box. It does the job when you want a quick scan to evaluate your results and has a user interface that inverts the negative to a positive automatically. Once I got them on my computer I had a look at each frame in Affinity Photo and did a basic edit, just to bring the brightness down a little and boost the contrast where necessary, no more than I could expect to do in a darkroom really and I am happy with them. It worried me when I got an unexpected problem with my camera, especially one that I had wanted since childhood, but it was also a great relief I managed to use the skills I have learned over the last year and a half to salvage some useable images.

Here are a few of my photo's from this short roll and I have posted all ten in an album on Flickr for you to see in full resolution. We will all have a disaster at some point with our film photography, indeed it's been a while since I had one, we have to rise to the challenge and see what we get out of it. Some days can be a nightmare, but the positive outcome has given a boost to my confidence in my skills as a film photographer. I hope you enjoy them.

EZ400 Flickr Album

Boutique Film - The New Kids On The Block

 This week I have been having some fun shooting a new brand to the film market, EZ400 35mm B&W film from New Classic Film owned by You Tube film guru Ribsy. Ribsy's passion for film shines through on his you tube channel and he decided to put his cards on the table as it were and present a film to the world his way. The challenge is in the marketing and packaging and I think Ribsy's done a fine job of it. He put a lot of thought into making film a little more eco friendly and sustainable and he was helped by the folks at Street Candy film who pointed him in the direction of their supplier of fully recycleable cannisters. Even the ink is made fom Soy and wont harm the environment.

I am on record on the Negative Positives Film Photography Podcast group on facebook stating "If you think buying a re-branded film isn't for you, think back to the golden years of film photography. All the film manufacturing companies supplied every last high street Photo Store, from multinational conglomerates to small "Mom and Pop" stores that once thrived in every town and city around the world and I whole heartedly support it."

Business to Business (B2B) contract coating is not new. Kodak, Ilford, Ferrania/3M, Fujifilm, Foma, Agfa etc. all had a share of that thriving B2B sector. The digital revolution tore the ass out of that market, but it is still there, waiting for guys like Ribsy, Stephen Dowling and Bellamy Hunt to come along and put their own spin on emulsions with creative packaging and promotion. This is still the early days of the Film Renaissance and Ribsy investing his money into it is a sign of more to come.

The recent Agent Shadow 400 kickstarter was a success and those of us who invested in it wil be receiving our rewards in the coming months as each item goes into production. Cinestill recently released the legendary Kodak Double X as Cinestill BWXX in 120 medium format. This is the very first time Double X has been available in medium format, I was lucky enough to get hold of a couple of rolls as it sold quickly and you have seen my results on this blog.

Kodak did tease us by saying they would release a new film this year, maybe the partnership with Cinestill was the one or maybe they have another surprise in store for us? The fact the biggest player left in the business is prepared to have a 3rd party company release one of their legendary films in a new format before they do shows the renewed strength of the B2B market.

This is an exciting time in the Film Photography community, more people are putting their money into having their own "Brand". For some it is because they want to share their love of film with as many people as possible, for others they are doing it because the big players are sticking with the few remaining emulsions they have, perhaps reluctant to invest in a new emulsion until the film industry picks up some more momentum.

Yes, this is an exciting time in the film photography community, but we face an uncertain future unless we take control of our destiny. I am happy to spend my money on EZ400 and support 3 film photography businesses, namely the manufacturer of the film, Ribsy for hs creative packing and marketing and Analogue Wonderland my favourite film retailer where I bought it.

Here's a few photo's shot with EZ400 35mm B&W from New Classic Film using my FED 2 and Industar 26m 50mm f/2.8. I developed my film in HC-110 dilution B for 7 minutes. Yes I know what emulsion it is and no I'm not telling you. The fun of shooting a rebranded film is finding out for yourself when you have shot and developed your first roll. I'm going to have some fun over the next couple of weeks shooting EZ400 at different speeds in different cameras. Check out more of my photos on Flickr, Ribsy's you tube channel and buy some EZ400 from Analogue Wonderland or direct from the man himself at New Classic Film using the links below.

Flickr EZ 400 Album
Analogue Wonderland
New Classic Film
Ribsy on You Tube 

Creative Packaging

My Fed 2 and Industar 26m

Bandstand

Wigan Brewhouse

Closed down DIY store

One of many terracotta facades in Wigan

Achievable goals?

Old and New compliment each other

Busker from Ecuador

Standishgate