Week 36 – BENCINI COMET III
I am by now settling into particular formats, styles and
types of camera I like and want to explore further. I still however have a
yearning for a folder of which there is one I have my eye on, and a little box
camera. The Comet falls into the posh box category. A fixed shutter at 50th
or bulb with a fixed aperture of f11, there is a focus ring on the 65mm
lens requiring guestimates. The camera itself is very stylish with typical
sleek Italian styling, made c1952 of polished aluminium trimmed with black
leatherette giving this tall thin pretty boy a classy look.
So with an eye on @SummerFilmParty I picked some film, first
up Lomography colour negative 100 expired was the only film I had that
qualified and I was prepared to risk cutting down to the 127 format it takes, then
I picked out similarly expired Ilford delta 100 I knew previously had shot
pretty well. Cutting down 120 film to 127 has risks so these were fair game as
practice rolls.
I knew the Lomo 100 needed shooting much lower than its
native 100 having shot one before badly at asa 50 so I rated it at asa 25 and
set off on a walk through town and along the seafront, I struggled to be
honest, and its slowness just wouldn’t let me get into the shadows so I ended
up concentrating on more open cityscapes. It was hard hot work in blazing sun,
I just didn’t feel it. The camera itself was nice to use but the 16, 2cmx3cm
half frames seemed to never end! I was hoping for some nice colour shifts to
compliment the Lomo film but results were flat low contrast bland images, I
felt I had let myself down. I put the softness down to the expired film but
some of the resulting compositions had me at a loss, there seemed to be a trend
toward down and to the right. I put this down to my holding position as the viewer
is directly above the lens so should be straight forward.
I loaded the Delta a couple of days later, it was still
bright but lots of grey clouds meaning I was in safe black and white territory.
I was determined to make up for my first roll and work on composition. I took a
trip over the bridge to the Cornish side of Saltash passage as a scouting
mission for future personal work. I took a little yellow filter that I could
hold in front, but the lens just wouldn’t marry up with any hoods. I used sunny
16 for exposure with a quick preliminary meter to set the tone. I worked hard
on composure! Trying different things, I fully expected some loss of shadow
detail and knew the delta would have some issues, lack of hood gave a risk of
glare but I could live with that. I wasn’t however expecting such soft images
particularly toward the edges! The down to the right was clearly there again
even with my careful framing. I was somewhat frustrated!
I have to say, given the effort in the design and styling I
expected more, lens quality was definitely overlooked! I was pretty disappointed, the simple Kodak
brownie box knocks it into a cocked hat. That said, it is a perfect candidate
for Lomo budget colour photograph that seems to be trendy once you get used to
its little issues.
Let’s quickly move on
