110 action :D

I've been craving something wee little in the camera line for a while - I got 400' of very expired pan-x transparency film a while back - so I've been on the hunt for sub mini 16mm camera's - to begin with I was fantasizing about the fancy wee ones - which is prolly a hang over from a crush I had on Sean Connery I had as a girl (hey! I was young).


Eventually I managed to find a couple of rolls of 110 - one in a camera from an op shop and the other came with a camera from an internet auction - neither camera worked - so the cartridges cost me $5-10 each in essence. Armed with these I learned to open the cartridges and how to load 16mm cine film into the cartridges - I've hand loaded the last 50 - 60 35mm rolls I've used, so this wasn't too daunting (I really should get a daylight loading reel some day).

Thus my search refined itself to 110 camera's - after 3 non functioning clunkers (including a little metal fuji which is beautiful, solid, practical, and I hope I can fix sooner or later) I managed to get a hanimex VEF2 which sorta works. Of course i have my eye on some terrible plastic pieces of crap too :D

It jams every 2-3 frames - which I found my way around - I have to wind it on with the lens facing me and when it comes to pressing the shutter release I have to jab it like grandma. To be fair the problem is caused by the frame spacing on movie film being about 1/3rd the size of what it was designed for.

Anyhow, I've just finished developing and scanning the first roll - I under developed it drastically - perhaps I should have looked the times up 'before' developing it - I gave it 10 min - the dev guide said 17.5 min for my dev technique. Anyhow...

The first frame - I literally don't have to leave the house to get this - thus it's my current calibration shot (for some reason cabbage trees seen to occur frequently as calibration shots in my neg files).













I had a few episodes like this caused by my forgetting to wind on three times between frames, forgetting to cover the lens when I did, and random camera jams - I think I'm starting to get the hang of this now though.









This is the reason I hate the neg savers that I'm currently using - I just popped the 16mm into a 35 neg file - these files come on a roll, cost nothing (well I didn't pay thankfully) and seem to tear quite often - they're also a magnet for dust. This dust is all on the outside of the neg file - I forgot to wipe it down before the first scan.

















You might not be able to see clearly - but in this neg I've under developed by probably 2 stops or more, thus they're really low contrast, and it's from a 10mm high negative - but you can make out all of the power lines easily - and there's no appreciable grain at all - this camera has a remarkably sharp lens for a fixed focus point and shoot. The film has a base fog caused by age and bad storage i guess - it's perfectly acceptable right now - less than the tint of a regular neg - I'm hoping it doesn't come up when I push the next neg.













The Hanimex VEF2 came with a dedicated flash which won't work with any other camera (I got the whole kit including the shop display box - though sadly no extra films) The batteries go into the camera and then the flash - which is tiny and weighs nothing kinda locks onto the end with a Frankenstein style 'throw switch', the flash unfortunately sucks - it's okay for myspace style self portraits (at 2'8"), but beyond that it falls off remarkably quickly - which can be an interesting effect.