Film Photography Podcast – Episode 121 – March 15, 2015
The internet radio show for people who love to shoot film! Shooting Infrared Color! Kodak Instamatic 500! 126 Film! Seattle Filmsworks! Darkroom Tips and More!
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Film Photography Podcast – Episode 121 – March 15th, 2015
Show Notes By Alex Luyckx
It’s the Internet Radio Show for people who love film, and in studio today joining Michael Raso is John Fedelle, Mat Marrash, and Leslie Lazenby. Topics the table along with Pearson’s Nut Goodies include Infrared Photography, Listener Letters, Book-Of-The-Show, Darkroom Tips (Battling Dust), the Kodak Instamatic 500, and 126 Film!
Out Of Sight – Infrared Film
Listener Joe writes in about his want to try out Infrared film because a recently acquired camera has a red filter on it. Michael reminds the group that the FPP Store sells fresh Aerochrome Color Infrared in 35mm (image pictured above) and expired Efke IR820 film in both 120 and 35mm formats (you can also get fresh stock in the form of Rollei Infrared 400). You can also get the wild Colour Infrared film from the FPP store! Now the one thing Leslie reminds the group that you need for shooting IR is a filter. For B&W (such as Efke and Rollei) you’ll want at least a Red 25a (also a 089 or R72 would work well also), the film will have a box speed then just meter to match the filter factor. You will also need a filter for the colour stock, yellow, orange, or red will work each yielding different results. But the time to shoot is coming up with spring on its way in! If you don’t want to go full IR, you can pick up Ilford SFX200 for near-IR results with a filter (A red will do).
Rocking the One-Two-Six
What was once a popular format among consumer users, the 126 cartridge film is now somewhat of a cult film. Originally introduced by Kodak in 1963 and production was discontinued in 2008 with Ferrania the only producer by the end. This cartridge allowed for easy drop in loading and produced an image approximately 26mm square. Most of the cameras that used this film often were plastic snapshot cameras. But Leslie has a nice little gem, the German made Kodak Instamatic 500.
This metal/plastic camera is an all manual (with a Gossen produced selenium meter) and has a lovely Schneider-Krueznack Xenar 38mm f/2.8 lens on the front. The focus is sadly manual guess-focus. But other than that both Michael and Leslie love the camera. It’s also nice and easy to run with 35mm reloaded 126 cartridges, no need to fiddle around like you would on Michael’s Keystone Auto Instant 125X. So how do you go about shooting these old 126 cameras when the film is no longer produced new (maybe will see some new stock from Film Ferrania)? Well you’d have to reload an old cartridge, back in Episode One Michael found a video on YouTube on how to do that, you just have to make sure to put gaffer’s or electrical tape over the window, or get your hands on some of the original backing paper. So what’s the top three 126 Cameras according to Michael, well in addition to the Keystone and Instamatic 500 there’s also the Instamatic 100 another solid camera.
Seattle FilmWorks
Back in 1976 a new company, named Seattle FilmWorks started re-rolling motion picture film into 35mm cartridges for use in still cameras. Seattle Filmworks would also process the film, and send you back another unexposed roll, all marked with “SFW-XL Process only”, which was basically Kodak’s ECN-2 process. The company began to aggressively market their products through the 1980s hitting a peak in 1997. However when the company changed names in 1999 to PhotoWorks, and the next year was hit by a lawsuit, claiming that the company was using poor marketing practices. It seemed that for years the company had been using regular C-41 film without removing that SFW-XL Process only label, and that their ‘free’ roll of film wasn’t exactly free either.
The claim was settled out of court, but by 2011 the company had folded. Most of the gang (Michael, John, and Leslie) remember and have used SFW, Leslie even had experience with what would happen to a regular lab if a motion picture roll would be run through a machine. She explains it would require a full teardown and clean then a team meeting to warn against putting the film through. SFW also was one of the first labs to offer your images digitally scanned and would send them either via a website or on a 3.5” floppy disk!
Darkroom Tips – The War on Dust
We all face it, dust is everywhere, but Mat has a neat tool to help with that. Between your scanner being in the basement, or the dusty FPP studio, it gets everywhere. But there’s a company out there who sells a wide range of products designed to help combat it! The company’s name is Kinetronics they sell a great range of non-charge brushes that range between 30$ to 50$, or a full out static vac that will run you 625$.
Book of the Show!
We continue to move through Mat’s collection of books he keeps on finding at Half-Price Books, today’s offering is People by Stefan Ruiz. This is a wonderful and surreal (according to John) collection of portraits of both famous (Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys) to patients in a Cuban mental hospital. In addition to the fantastic portraits, Stefan has also included his notes as to why he took the photo. If you can’t find it at Half-Price books you can find it on Amazon!
That’s it for this show, but we’ll be back in a few short weeks! In the meantime if you want to keep our sugar levels up you can send treats to: Film Photography Podcast PO Box 152 Butler, NJ, 07405 USA, we also like film and camera donations, letters, and darkroom prints. You can also email us at: podcast@filmphotographyproject.com