Week 47! – Double trouble!
The Robot 2 iia
So Russell’s daughter Roma had gotten here GCSE results back
and they were good! In fun we teased him that for passing her photography one
he should give her a camera. Much banter later I ended up promising to shoot
anything of his choice this week if he did – he did not disappoint and tried to
make me suffer! Enter the little clockwork Robot. This will be short for
reasons that will become clear! First I needed to do some research as it is a
little different. This one is from around 1951 given that is when they started
to accept standard 35mm cartridges, however it still needed a type N take up
spool which was missing. I crafted one from a normal 35mm spool and it seemed
workable. The 40mm Zeiss Tessar f2.8 lens looked like it had been cleaned with
a Brillo pad but I have used worse! Basically there is a big knob on the top
you wind up like a clockwork key which both powers the shutter that you can
manually set from B to 1/500th and it auto advances what is, on this
type 24mmx24mm frames. The lens houses an aperture ring, f2.8 to f16 and a
guessing focus ring.
Film choice was easy as I had 3 part rolls of Ilford FP4+
left over from hand rolling sprockets. I loaded up the first one and set off on
a walk. I actually found the little thing a lot of fun! My spot meter is
somewhat bigger than it so I wish I had a better feel for sunny 16 rules as I
think that would be perfect for it, sadly I am rubbish at this so I used basic
metering. 16 frames later I knew I had passed the possible frame count and went
home. Once in the changing bag I was gutted to find it hadn’t advanced at all,
it had pulled the tape off the spool. I reloaded with lots of scotch tape.
Round 2… A much shorter walk this time treating it as more of a test, again I
enjoyed the way it worked. Its viewer is small but clear and it is nice in the
hand, it is just a fun enjoyable camera. This time it stopped on 10, sure
enough it had advanced! Sadly on developing it revealed lots of overlap. I have
scanned these for you to see. On to roll 3 – well, this is a repeat of roll 1
as it did not advance again, this time I opted to manually add half a turn on
the advance knob but in doing so I had torn the sprockets. I admitted
defeat…for now!!!! Please read on…
Part 2! Rollei Magic – last minute stand in.
Several weeks ago I had willingly agreed in exchange for
repairing my Kodak’s shutter to run a test roll through a repaired TLR Rollei
Magic. Lyndon who services Russell’s cameras had bought and rebuilt the dropped
Rollei and replaced the dead selenium meter cell, this is vital for its auto
exposure system. Without it the camera is dead.
I chucked in a roll of HP5+ planning to run it at box speed with no
filters then I would have a good idea on the meter performance without
complicating with adjustments. I set off to shoot movement for a camera
challenge, it jammed after the first 6x6 frame. I unloaded said film in the
darkroom and promptly fumbled it onto the floor and scrambled around trying to
find it! I rerolled it and set it aside. I waited 2 weeks to return it to
Lyndon who fixed it easily and on the next 2 week cycle we gave it another go,
I reloaded at his house with the same roll. I popped it into a changing bag and
advanced 2 frames, I looked at the counter and it was on 2 of 16! We had left
the 4 x 5.5 mask in! You get an option on this camera, I needed to use 6x6 as
there was no 4x5.5 mask for the ground glass so I was just going to have to use
my judgement. I will be honest I forgot several times and shot as 6x6, even
when I remembered I got some slightly off. It was however, as an auto exposure
system ideal to carry around along with the Robot. I found the focusing through
the viewing glass as you would expect from a Rollei, impressive! Making it fun
and quick to use. On developing the roll I was pretty impressed with its
metering too, loads of shadow detail and never more the ½ a stop off. The
Schneider lens was as I expected nice and sharp. There is a lot of dirt from my
darkroom floor and I did damage a couple in the scramble but that is all on me!
In hindsight I should have abandoned the Robot earlier and pushed the Magic
further testing the aperture priority option. Lyndon thinks he can sort the Robot so there
is a chance it will return. I apologise for a quite scrappy week but it is what
it is! I hope next week’s soviet incursion is a little less troublesome…but I
doubt that.
