Autographic Kodak Junior Images

If you have stopped by the blog lately you may remember seeing a camera collection update post. One of the new (to me at least) cameras as the No. 1A Autographic Kodak Junior. This beauty is from about 1920, still light tight and functional. How many cameras produced today will still be functional in 90 years? Probably not very many. It was sort of an experiment to shoot with this camera, hit the link to find out why and see more images and as always click a photo to see it larger…

The above photo is four images that were combined (somewhat accidentally) in camera.

The first and biggest problem with shooting this antique camera is that the 116 film it is intended to shoot doesn’t exist anymore. To solve this I used 120 film which is easier to come by today, but still quite a bit narrower than the 116 film. By using rubberbands, foam padding and some gaffers tape I had the roll of film in the camera…

The next challenge is that of advancing the film the proper distance after each frame. The film counter printed on the backing paper of 120 film is spaced much smaller than the 116 film would have been. Even though 120 cameras have quite large image areas, the 116 camera is wider and longer…I decided to just advance the film on the 120 markers and see how much overlap there was so I could figure out how much more to advance on the next roll. Also some image area on the sides of the frame would be lost due to the narrower 120 film.

Exposure was easy. I have a nice hand held light meter and the camera is fully adjustable, the only gamble was if it was still accurate (it is). As you can tell by looking at the images so far, I didn’t advance the film far enough to make distinct frames. Instead, the whole roll was exposed from beginning to end in kind of triptych of my day out in Flagstaff.

I have presented them in the order they were exposed. The final issue with having images across the entire negative strip came in scanning the images. The film scanner I use doesn’t have the ability to accept an entire roll of 120 (or any kind) of film. Instead, I had to use a slightly larger negative carrier and cut the strip where I felt like it would look best.

For the next roll I want to make one extra large panoramic image of the entire negative strip. With careful scanning and some photoshop stitching I know it can be done.

This one image was an exception to the rule I have been describing. It was an exposure all to itself. It was etherial and otherworldly, it scanned in a different way than any other image and I left the toned look rather than make it stark black and white…

Another slight exception…This is the bottom of the next frame…However I thought this piece of it stood alone very well. This is two or three exposures combined.

On the left you can see the chunk of image used to make the above photograph…

The end of the roll…Using large negatives like these is the modern day equivalent of a $60,000 medium format digital camera (just for the body, no lens) and it is turn of the century technology. It is amazing how much resolution one can get out of these when pared with a top of the line film scanner. I had a lot of fun with this and will certainly post more as they become available…