In my recent blog for my March roll of Ilford HP5 for this year's Frugal Film Project, I spoke of the bother I had with Baldy the Baldax and fearing I may have to bring on my supersub. It all hinged on my ability to find a parts camera to mend Baldy properly rather than rely upon a bodge I made to the mechanism with a piece of guitar string. That was only meant to be temporary and I went hunting on t' interweb.
It's not easy finding a specific camera at the best of times, but finding a Balda Baldax 4.5x6 folding camera with the identical folding mechanism to Baldy was a quest of Arthurian proportions. I found one in Paris, France and it was reasonably priced, but the taxes and postage cost more than the camera. Can someone please tell me where the Brexit benefits are? The leave brigade seem to have misplaced them. Quelle surprise!
But I digress.
Royal Mail and the French postal service managed to get my "parts camera" delivered quickly and I was able to see it in my hands for the first time. I was rather impressed with it and took a closer look. It's had a long life, but it may have been serviced at some point. The folding mechanism springs open very quickly and smoothly for a 90 year old camera. It's smoother than Baldy! The Prontor shutter works nice and crisply through its range of 1/25th, 1/50th, 1/100th and 1/125th of a second speeds and both Bulb and the double click timer settings work just as well. The Schneider - Kreuznach 7.5cm f/4.5 Radionar lens could do with a clean as there's dust inside, but hey, it's 90years old! It's done well to get this far.
I very quickly decided it was too good to harvest for parts and loaded a roll of Fomapan 100 into it to see how it fared. This would be the deciding factor on wether Baldy Jr, as I have lovingly christened it, will be my supersub. It finally stopped raining in mid April thus allowing me to get out and take some photos with it.
I headed out with a dual purpose as it was peak Sakura Season here and I have to get photos of the display of colour a short walk from my home. On my way home I walked via the local farm and shot my roll of Fomapan 100 in Baldy Jr along the way. My photos were nothing special, just whatever caught my eye as I made my way past the farm. I soon discovered how much fitness I have lost over the last month as I haven't been able to get out much, if at all. By the time I had arrived home I was ready for dropping, but I did accomplish my mission for the day and that was cause for a celebration cuppa tea and a long sit down to rest my weary legs.
I developed my roll of Fomapan 100 in Rodinal 1+50 for 9 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. I scanned it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi medium format film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 sized led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.
I was quite impressed with how Baldy Jr performed on this first use. No clunkiness, everything was quite smooth where needed and it was a really pleasant experience. However, I totally chose the wrong film, but it did have an unexpected strong point. It represents dark, wet, cold, dull and gloomy Wigan perfectly. What I saw as a sacrificial roll for testing purposes became a true representation of the weather that day. It was a total fluke of course, but I will take that as a win.
Here's a few images from my first roll of film shot with Baldy Jr and, as always, I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr and also a link to the ebay store I bought my camera from that you can visit using the links below. I hope you enjoy them.
Baldy Jr - Foma 100
Camera Sanctuary ebay store
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