First light with French made, Camex Ercsam GS 9.5mm camera c1947

You know as soon as you hold it, that this is a quality camera, and it becomes even more apparent when you look at the features, including 4 speeds, single shot and focusing down to 0.5m. And when you turn on the clockwork motor it purrs beautifully.

 It hadn't been used with film for many decades, but after a clean up it shone like new and was ready for a test:

The charger is unique to the Ercsam, and has a very clever design feature, which is that the back pressure plate is built into it:

I loaded about 12 feet of the expired Ferrania negative film into it and shot it in Old Hatfield, Hertfordshire.  

Developing, as usual, was done in a bucket of stock strength Perceptol, for 9 minutes + 10% as it was the second use of the developer.  

There was the weakest of winter sunshine, which mostly disappeared behind haze and cloud, but the lens is very fast, a Cinor C, f/1.9, so the 6 ASA film was just usable with the 1/32nd of a second shutter, and a fully open aperture. 

The first section, showing the pub, was shot at 32 frames per second, another section ( I forget which...) at 8th second, and the rest at standard 1/16th second. 

The final "talking head" test is me holding the camera at arm's length. I set the focus at its closest point, and luckily it turns out my arm is exactly 0.5m long so the focus is spot on. Everything  looks sharp, and this was with the most challenging of light conditions, so it will be interesting to see how it performs on a brighter day with smaller apertures. 

I did 2 versions of the Telecine, one more exposed than the other. The difference between the 2 is remarkable. The top part (with inverted and original frame) was exposed for a longer time when photographing with the DSLR in the telecine, the bottom part is the same frame, but exposed for less time. The cropped sections next to the frames show that the longer exposure gives a far sharper final image. I'm not really sure why:

The only small issue is that the camera stops working if you take more than 2 consecutive single shots. Again, I don't know why, but popping open the camera and moving the charger resets everything back to normal .

The video:

Results from developing 1940s (?) film in sealed P Charger, Part 1

I bought this sealed charger off Etsy this week. The seller obviously had no idea of age or condition of the film inside, but I thought it was such an exciting idea to try to develop whatever was in it that I took a chance at £20 +£2 postage.

It's a P style charger, and I read that these were introduced in 1927 and superseded by the H charger in 1937. The film could be much later than that of course, but it could easily be from, say, the 1940s.
It was very hard to open it, (yes, in the dark ;-) even after the seal was broken and inside was a very full chamber of film. In fact it was so packed with film it was difficult to actually get any out.  I clipped off 2 sections and developed one in stock Perceptol and the other in coffee (Caffenol C-M) with iodised salt to address fogging. I've had success developing glass plates from the 1920s in coffee so it seemed a  good place to start.

The results: oh dear.  I try to be brave but  little bit of me when I pull out a failed piece of film from the fixer.

The Perceptol clip had no sign of any images, just blotchy thick dark fog. The Caffenol clip looked the same, but looking closer, there seemed to be vague shapes in some areas, so I developed another section, and this time there are faint images to be seen.  I don't know if it's negative film which would be turned positive during development, or reversal film but here it is reversed:

I'll be experimenting further with different developers and methods but it seems reasonable to hope there are better images to be had from this. It would be a cruel trick of the Universe if these few frames are the best from 50+ feet!

I'll update here as improved results appear, but for now here's the best frame of the lot. Intriguing...

Cine Nizo Model F camera

I now have my Cine Nizo Model F camera and can't wait to try it with film.
The seller bought if for display in Germany in the 1980s  so goodness knows when it last was used with film. I believe these were produced stating in 1929.
According to Grahame Newman's site
"The company Neizoldi & Kramer was founded in Germany around 1925; from then till the late 1930s.
Little of this early cine equipment arrived in the UK. But we do see that a UK distributor, Peeling & Van Neck Ltd of 4/6 Holborn Circus, London, E.C.1 began importing some of the Cine Nizo cine equipment in the 1930s. [An advert] shows that certainly models 'F'; 'K' and 'M' of their 9.5mm cine cameras were certainly available in the UK. Prices were rather high compared to 9.5mm cine cameras from companies like Coronet, Dekko and Pathéscope meaning UK Cine Nizo sales must have been quite low."
I'm told it's a very rare camera to find in the UK.

The claw mechanism is lovely: Video here:

Part 3 of the mystery film, early 1950s. Couple in a river.

Just a short clip but it captures a moment in time