120 film camera

I was delighted by all the positive responses to last week’s post, which frankly I didn’t expect. One friend in particular encouraged me to “get out there and use film cameras to photograph more old cars”, which I intend to do once the 2024 show car season flips its switch to “on”. In the meantime, I leafed through a couple of photo albums and found snaps which up until now have not made it onto the blog.

According to my documentation, these shots were taken in 2006, which is when my antique-camera obsession was born, triggered by a dear aunt of mine who gifted me with a bag full of old cameras she discovered when cleaning out her attic. The show was the All-British Car Show in Succasunna NJ, the camera was a Kodak Brownie Bullet, and the film was Kodak VC160. While I no longer own the camera, I’m certain that it was an inexpensive fixed-focus model, and these photos appear to be mostly in focus, with good depth of field.

If it weren’t for the minivan in the background of the Bugeye Sprite (and perhaps the QQ “antique” license plates), you could be convinced that these were taken 50 years ago. In the final photo of the yellow MG-TC, you can see some camera flare at the bottom, adding to the old-time aura. Looking at these photos again reminds me how spoiled we are by digital picture-taking, with its instant gratification. With this roll of film, first, I had to finish it, then send it off to developing, then patiently wait a week before being able to critique my image-making. Here, I felt lucky that the compositions captured what I had hoped they would. But that is part of the charm, isn’t it?

Among other hobbies of mine which drain money from my wallet, I have a modest collection of old cameras. Not to turn this into RichardsPhotoBlog, but most of the cameras take 120 (medium format) film, utilizing a negative that is roughly 4 times the size of a 35mm negative. Everything being equal, the larger the negative, the more detail which can be captured. However, these old cameras (3 of my favorites date from the decades of the 1940s and ‘50s) have inferior lenses compared to “modern” film cameras. These cameras are also completely manual in operation: there are no batteries installed, no light meters, no (gasp!) auto-focus. Yet the larger negatives can produce results which a technically better 35mm camera cannot. Part of the fun is to see if I can A) load film into them; B) operate the controls; and C) produce acceptable images.

I’m not the first with this idea (check out Murilee Martin, who’s carved out a corner of the Internet by combining his passions for cars and film photography) , but when I remember to bring an old camera, I’ve enjoyed using it to photograph show cars. This all came to mind recently when I uncovered a few envelopes of prints. My photos go into albums in somewhat chronological order, and I had not attended to that task in several years. Hence, the subject of this week’s blog post. The pictures I found had been taken during the summer of 2021, when I attended 3 different events, each time with a film camera in tow. Posted below are samples of the results. There is definitely a softness, a color shift, an old-world quality to film that digital does not possess. I did use an older (1981) 35mm film camera for some of the snaps, and I’ve indicated that below. See what you think compared to the cold perfection of digital.