I recently made a new friend who has turned out to be the bane of my photographic life. He keeps sending me or giving me cameras that turn out to be broken in one way or another. Me being me, I can’t just leave them. I have to try and fix them. There is no such thing as a shelf camera, which is what he intended this one to be. All joking aside, look at this beautiful camera.

When I first got it, the viewfinders were not that bright and clear. That would be my second line of attack. The first was to check the bellows. Sure enough, there was one small pinhole in the bellows which I fixed with some fabric paint.

Then it was the viewfinders and lens. The viewfinder bezel just unscrewed, well the first one did. The second needed a little more encouragement which resulted in a little scratching. I justified it as it was unusable without out the clean. I did feel bad though. The mirror and glass benefited from a cotton bud and water.

The lens was just as easy. The front of the lens was covered by the aperture blades, so I set the camera to ‘timed’ and used another cotton bud. The back of the lens was accessible through the bellows, quick and easy.

And that was all I intended to do. The camera is very old, 1905 old. I didn’t want to change the character at all. My friend said he wanted it for display so changing the look in anyway would not make him happy at all.

Looking at the front and the shutter mechanism you can gain all you need to know about the settings.

There is an instant, bulb, timed setting with three aperture choices 1,2,3. Well, what does that mean? You can’t see the aperture unless you set the camera to bulb or timed. When you do that you will find that 1 is the largest and 3 is the smallest, I forgot that when I came to testing. I didn’t find any information about the meaning of the numbers apart from this which said f11. The only other post I found with any information was this thread on reddit, but it might not be for the same camera. It is a similar camera from the same era though.

On mine, the shutter averages 1/65th of a second with the f-stops being measured and calculated at f/14, f/19 and f/26. It would be best suited to films like Ilford Pan-F, Ortho 80 or FP4+.

That seems plausible for this camera, especially given the results I got which you will see later. There is a 1a version with 4 aperture choices. So with all the information I have, I am going to guess, and it is a guess:

1 – f11
2 – f16
3 – f32

The shutter speed definitely looks quicker that 1/30th or 1/50th which is what I usually guess at for exposure guesses. As you can see the viewfinders are fixed, so that should help with my tilting problem. The double viewfinder version seems to be a little rarer.

So, then it came to loading the camera, lo and behold the camera took 120 film. I had read it was 105, but nope 120 fit very well and the number matched up with the red window at the top. The other red window had been covered by a previous owner. The film is loaded by a clever mechanism. You push down 2 leavers and the stabilizers are pushed out of the way.

I loaded a roll of Ilford Pan F 50asa and took it out for a play. Using the camera was easy too. The front folds out, but doesn’t lock into place so there was nothing to get jammed or stiff. Now the viewfinders were clean, framing was a dodel. I set the aperture to 1 and got to shooting.

Here are the results.

At this point, I didn’t know the settings and thought it would be f11ish at 1/50th-ish. When the sun was out, that was fine but when it was behind the clouds or I was in the shade, it wasn’t enough light.

Clearly there were light leaks though. I used my usual method and put some light balls inside the camera. There were clear leaks around the join of the bottom to the top. As seals would not alter the outside of the Kodak, I asked if I could add some, the owner said yes. So I put some felt strips on the wood beams and foam on the base part.

I think the felt looks good and doesn’t detract from the beauty. Hopefully, that would solve the leaks. I loaded another roll of Pan F, thinking I could increase the development time based on the last roll. I took the camera to Halifax…and completely forgot which aperture I used on the previous film and switched it to three. I call that a brain burp. So of course, the film didn’t get as much light and the day was duller. The results were as expected even though I doubled the development time. 🙁

Here are some of the naff results:

BUT, no light leaks. Yatta!

Unfortunately, I have to give the camera back very soon, so I don’t have time to take another film. Maybe I will get the owner to send me some to update this post with. If he takes it off the shelf of course.